50p a day til christmas, healthily?!-Weezl's next challenge (part 2)

Lesley_Gaye

Poohbear, I have had a look around at some other recipes I have posted that might be of interest.

There is also the recipe collection board here which has simply loads of good ideas

Butter Bean and Vegetable Curry

Vegetable Stroganoff

Vegetable Crumble

Green Lentil Shepherds Pie

Chole

Split Pea Soup the cheapest meal I know

Lesley

nopot2pin

Confuzzled wrote: »

we also used up the once icky green pepper that mum had cleverly 'turned red' by letting it sit in our very warm south facing kitchen window. the wee one was so amazed i could do that neither of us likes green peppers but it's always so much cheaper to buy the three packs and these were from the 49p aldi's lot so i wasn't going to argue about one green one...

i did however add the pea pods to the evenings dinner. i sauteed them in butter and garlic puree til about half were well browned and a little bubbled (a bit like frying courgettes) omg they were absolutely to die for! i could have eaten an entire pan full of them they were so yummy! at this point i'm not sure we'll get many peas i'm in love with the pods :rotfl:

I would have never have thought of putting a green pepper on a sunny window sill to redden it:o. Although, now you have said it, it does make perfect sense. :T

I am also liking the sound of the pea pods done in garlic butter.
I am off to the PYO place tomorrow, so I may just get a few pea's just to try this out for tea tomorrow night.

Thanks for a cracking and educational post Confuzzled :D

Lesley_Gaye wrote: »

I grew chillies for the first time last year and we got millions of the things. I am just using up the last ones from the freezer (I just chopped them roughly and froze them in plastic pots). If yours are anything like mine, they don't need any encouraging. Inspired by last years success, I have 5 different types this year of varying strengths and they are smothered with flowers and tiny chillies, so looking forward to another bumper crop. Congrats on the red one BTW, mine are a long way off being red

There is a couple of red ones on there now.
I have grown chilli's before...
But I just watered them.. and didn't really pay too much attention to when the chilli's should be picked off, to benefit the plant to fruit more, ect ect...
I need to look into that.....
This year, I will also be freezing them, for use later in the year, instead of giving most of them away:eek:, which is what I did the last time I grew them.

Confuzzled

phizzimum wrote: »

confuzzled - your post really cheered me up!

I'm home-educating too, and your 7 year old sounds just like mine. since taking my girls out of school my attitude to lots of things has changed. A failed cake suddenly becomes a successful science experiment!

I'm not feeling well today, and have been bit (make that very) grumpy with everyone , so your post has put me in a better frame of mind, thanks.

ETA: why are potato eyes poisonous?

.

aww thanks phizzimum, glad to be of assistance to your mood!

the eyes and any green portions of potatoes contain a chemical called solanine that is mildy toxic. eating them will make you have a sick stomach though people in ill health already could get quite ill from them. also, potatoes are from the nightshade family and eating the eyes is akin to eating the actual stems (the eyes are basically the beginnings of new stems) so not a good idea at all!

sweet potatoes on the other hand are NOT from the nightshade family, they come from the morning glory family and the leaves at least CAN be eaten so we'll be trying this soon as we have one happily sprouting away in our kitchen :rotfl:

Confuzzled

cheerfulness4 wrote: »

Me, too Phizz. And agree confuzzled - never miss an opportunity in ordinary life where something can be learnt. Makes for a fun way of teaching, don't you think?

oh i agree, i honestly feel sometimes she picks things up faster when they're just odd bits of relevant info tossed in as we're doing something.
i know for certain i explained about stabbing the potatoes to keep them from exploding (since they are full of water steam builds up if you don't) in the microwave at least 6-8 months ago yet she remembered it np!

Confuzzled

nopot2pin wrote: »

I would have never have thought of putting a green pepper on a sunny window sill to redden it:o. Although, now you have said it, it does make perfect sense. :T

I am also liking the sound of the pea pods done in garlic butter.
I am off to the PYO place tomorrow, so I may just get a few pea's just to try this out for tea tomorrow night.

Thanks for a cracking and educational post Confuzzled :D


.

*takes a bow* thank you thank you

my mum always put tomatoes and peppers and such like in the window (and was careful to keep bananas well away from the light, those b*ggers ripen too fast as it is!) so i picked it up from her.

i've tried it with some success with fruit too though i find fruit easiest to ripen if i place it near bananas, they give off ethylene which ripens fruit very quickly. technically speaking tomatoes do too but i've found banana's to be quite the culprit so since they don't play nicely with my other fruit and veg they are kept in a cool darker area away from the others unless needed for ripening, particularly useful for those pears which seem to be rock hard, rock hard, rock hard, ripe for 30 seconds then rotten :rotfl:

as for the chillis, you might try just hanging some up to dry in your kitchen or in a warm area. these can then be reconstituted for cooking, or use kitchen scissors to cut them up. do remember though that dried anything is generally more potent then it's fresh equivalent.

i've also seen chillies smoked and dried, don't know how to do that (i'm not a big fan of chillies) but i do know that this REALLY adds some heat to them so if you have someone in the family that really likes em hot you might give it a go!

phizzimum

Confuzzled wrote: »

aww thanks phizzimum, glad to be of assistance to your mood!

the eyes and any green portions of potatoes contain a chemical called solanine that is mildy toxic. eating them will make you have a sick stomach though people in ill health already could get quite ill from them. also, potatoes are from the nightshade family and eating the eyes is akin to eating the actual stems (the eyes are basically the beginnings of new stems) so not a good idea at all!

ooh, I never knew that the eyes were as bad as the green bits!

Confuzzled

phizzimum wrote: »

ooh, I never knew that the eyes were as bad as the green bits!

here's a bit concerning that part of potatoes taken from the wiki page

<<Potatoes contain glycoalkaloids, toxic compounds, of which the most prevalent are solanine and chaconine. Solanine is also found in other plants, mainly in the mostly deadly nightshade family, which includes a minority of edible plants including the potato and the tomato, and other typically more dangerous plants like tobacco. This poison affects the nervous system causing weakness and confusion.
These compounds, which protect the plant from its predators, are generally concentrated in its leaves, stems, sprouts, and fruits.[33] Exposure to light, physical damage, and age increase glycoalkaloid content within the tuber;[34] the highest concentrations occur just underneath the skin. Cooking at high temperatures (over 170 °C or 340 °F) partly destroys these. The concentration of glycoalkaloid in wild potatoes suffices to produce toxic effects in humans. Glycoalkaloids may cause headaches, diarrhea, cramps and in severe cases coma and death; however, poisoning from potatoes occurs very rarely. Light exposure causes greening (chlorophyll synthesis), thus giving a visual clue as to areas of the tuber that may have become more toxic; however, this does not provide a definitive guide, as greening and glycoalkaloid accumulation can occur independently of each other. Some varieties of potato contain greater glycoalkaloid concentrations than others; breeders developing new varieties test for this, and sometimes have to discard an otherwise promising cultivar.



Breeders try to keep solanine levels below 200 mg/kg (200 ppmw). However, when these commercial varieties turn green, even they can approach concentrations of solanine of 1000 mg/kg (1000 ppmw). In normal potatoes, analysis has shown solanine levels may be as little as 3.5% of the breeders' maximum, with 7–187 mg/kg being found.[35]
The US National Toxicology Program suggests that the average American consumes at most 12.5 mg/day of solanine from potatoes (the toxic dose is actually several times this, depending on body weight). Dr. Douglas L. Holt, the State Extension Specialist for Food Safety at the University of Missouri, notes that no reported cases of potato-source solanine poisoning have occurred in the U.S. in the last 50 years and most cases involved eating green potatoes or drinking potato-leaf tea.I][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed"]citation needed[/URL][/I>>


generally speaking cut off any green parts and twist off and rub off the bits of eyesyou find. if you can't rub them off then just cut the area around it, you don't have to cut a huge chunk off just the immediate area. i've cooked many a 'shrinkly' potato (i love that word my daughter uses it for any shrinking wrinkly fruit/veg!) and i've never had any problems whatsoever, it's much like cutting off the mouldy part of cheese and eating the rest, not a problem!

nopot2pin

Confuzzled wrote: »

i've also seen chillies smoked and dried, don't know how to do that (i'm not a big fan of chillies) but i do know that this REALLY adds some heat to them so if you have someone in the family that really likes em hot you might give it a go!

Aye... I quite fancy smoked chilli....
Although there is one less chilli to worry about now :rolleyes::p
It was lovely in my pasta sauce for tea tonight

Confuzzled

mmm i just discovered a cheap and very tasty snack that i think might just help me when i'm craving savoury junk food

i recently stocked up on the 6 packages of ryvita for 1.02 from approved foods (normally i just by store brand crisp breads but these were cheaper and i got some of the ones with pumpkin seeds too which are normally a lot more) anyway after having great luck with using the pumpkin seed crisp breads in soup, even the wee one loved that i thought hey, why not see if there are other ways to make them really tasty

my thinking in buying them originally was to use them somehow as a replacement when craving savoury snack, both to trim the budget and my waistline!

well tonight i put a thin smear of peanut butter on the rye with seasame seed variety and it's gorgeous! i'm not a huge peanut butter eater but we have several of the smart price jars at home and i was craving something a little more savoury but i also didn't have anything remotely like dessert tonight either (been trying to eat jelly or fruit instead of 'real dessert' ) so this is really satisfying both the savoury and the sweet cravings!

i've found after a week on no sweets (save sugar in the odd coffee here and there) and more salads i'm not craving like i was before. however the savoury cravings seem harder to quell for me (odd, i have SUCH a sweet tooth!) so i'm hoping this will take the edge off.

anyway just thought i'd share, crisp breads are cheap and healthy so even though AF might not have these on special again the store brand isn't too bad and def cheaper than crisps

Elfinwings

nopot2pin wrote: »

I would have never have thought of putting a green pepper on a sunny window sill to redden it:o. Although, now you have said it, it does make perfect sense. :T

Hear hear! What a good idea! I will certainly be trying that with some of Aldi's peppers, we like the red ones a lot more - thank you :beer:

Discussions on here about veg growing are very encouraging. My OH and I are giving it a go pretty much for the first time this year. I've grown beans and herbs before, and have a redcurrant bush that goes bonkers each year despite me doing nothing to it, but never really ventured further into the realms of green-fingered-ness.

This year we have: beans, mange-tout, courgettes, tomatoes, one chilli plant, one aubergine plant, leeks, brussles sprouts and lots of salad leaves. So far we have one courgette that is about as long as your middle finger, one green chilli and lots of tiny ones still forming, and plenty of flowers on the toms but no fruits as yet. Thans everyone for all the info on growing things (for instance I didn't know now was the time to be feeding my tomatoes!) I hope we are half as successful as some of you!

Wishing everyone a happy and frugal week,
Elfin.