Weezl's phase 1- recipe testing and frugalisation- come one, come all!

nopot2pin

I'm just catching up with the thread....

phoebe03cat wrote: »

Quick question for people who made buttery spread, did you use a blender, or a elec whisk? thanks

I had my first go at making one of these recipes yesterday and chose this as it looked the easiest!
I used an electric whisk, although people that make this regularly may be along to tell us otherwise. Blended well for me. I used olive oil and the spread has a lovely faint green tinge to it;spreads just great from the fridge. Comments from the kids were that it was a bit too milky so might try gradually cutting back on some of the milk to see what happens. I love knowing whats in it, but the trade off is is a few extra cals I guess.[/QUOTE]

It sounds like its a definate thing I need to try now.
Thanks :T

FrankieM wrote: »

potty Would you be able to tell me if there are any meal etc in the first planner that haven't had many surveys and I can put them into my next weeks meals. Thanks

There are some things in the first month that have no surveys yet ....
But I hope to sort that out in the next week...

Now, the way things are with the surveys, it is easy to see if or how many responses there are...
If you look at the survey results link, you can see how many persons have filled in the survey...

But if you still get stuck, let me know, and I will see whats what

shanks77 wrote: »

Now that Weezl is resting is there anything we can be doing in her absence?
Lesley, Arty or Potty are there any recipes that dont have surveys or that need testing you 3 seem the best to ask and we dont want to stop this yet will be more difficult to pick up if we take too long a break.
If you think of anything let me know and i am happy to do what i can.

Answer as above
Ta shanks....:D

Off to catch up proper on the thread now

nopot2pin

artybear wrote: »

Oh and on a personal note:o-could someone give me a step by step account of how ud make soup. I know this is really silly but mine just doesnt seem to be coming out right.:(

I really want to make a really simple tomato soup but without cream as im trying to be healthy. Any ideas would be great.

Im just using and abusing you all for your food wisdom hope you dont mind!!:A:p

artybearxxxxxxx

I think shanks helped somewhat with your soup
Making soup, is such a good thing to master.....
Make a gooooooood filling soup, and you have a good meal, lunch or dinner :cool:
Choose flavours you like to make soup... and build from there

I have to say, for stock, I use Marigold stock....
For veg soups, it is by far the very best, IMO, on the market :A


Ok... I will be back tomorrow...
TTFN

OrkneyStar

Not been on this thread for ages- sorry!
Not made anything else yet (had planned to) but hope to soon, and read some of the wealth of pages!
ETA And congrats Weezl- he is lovely, your boys were both cooked to a very similar weight- precision as always .
xxx

carriebradshaw

congrats to Weezl, AM & Fergus & welcome to the world Kester

aless02

weezl, if you're lurking...I remembered today that I never answered your questions about marmalade

I'm not sure it would work as well if you used the remnants of the oranges from carrot cake, mostly b/c I think you'd be losing something from the missing zest - so the "shreds" would just be pith, ugh. Plus the juice is gone, too. Someone's free to try it, but I have a feeling it would be too bitter without enough orange-yness to balance out the flavors. Of course, I am NOT a marmalade expert by any means!

As re: the 5 a day...well, my batch was made with 3 whole oranges, right? A batch makes, let's make up a number of 45 slices of toast. That's equal to 1/15th of an orange per slice of morning toast...nowhere near a serving of fruit!! I think that's why - but also b/c it's made with sugar and all cooked down like, not something I would normally think of a serving of fruit/veg. HOWEVER, you & this thread have taught me to count onions, potatoes and corn so I'm coming around on the fruit-in-baked-goods thing. I just suspect that even if you add up the marmalade plus the tiny fruit content in your 3 snacks a day it still wouldn't even come close to a serving, so why bother?

ALSO, some bad news...we've been following a very rough, early days B&S plan this month. DH has started to notice and complain about the lack of meat . His obstacle isn't so much the evening meals, but two-fold: 1) lunches are a sandwich and cake(s) which is both unhealthy and sometimes not filling enough in his eyes; 2) lack of snacks OTHER THAN cakes. He snacks a lot and his favorite is sandwich with pork luncheon meat, so I can see why he's feeling deprived. He misses the simple grab-and-gulp snack (though I've been bad and forgot to make peanut butter, which would help mitigate this). I did do spicy dried chickpeas, but am struggling for other things that he grab out of the cupboard to munch on.

I always knew lunches would be the obstacle for us, as that's where we eat all the fresh fruit...he says he doesn't MIND cakes as such, just that eating so many "feels" wrong. Also that lunch is all carbs in his eyes. Now that his workplace have bought a microwave, I hope I can appease him with some soups and beans on toast, fingers crossed.

Anyway, just thought I would report back. Oh and we've run out of both onions & SR flour wayyy early, but have far too many oats, potatoes & carrots.

Murrell

Aless, interesting to read your early report. Sounds like we need a savoury as well as a sweet snack instead of 2 sweets snacks. I am also puzzling over this as we have 2 diabetics and and the rest of us choose not to eat sugar as a general rule. Its sometimes hard to think of savoury snacks. We have nut butters on oat cakes/rice cakes/ryvita/cracker type snacks, (as well as fruit or carrots) for snacks, but somedays our sandwich spread is peanut butter if i've not made a bean, mushroom or lentil type pate. I had peanut butter today, so tried fruit spread on rice cakes and it was nice, don't know why i'd not tried it before.

I've to report that the spicy vegan rissoles didn't defrost very well. They were a little soft anyway, will need to thicken them next time, perhaps with instant oatmeal?. When defrosted they all broke up and it was more a fried scamble than individual burgers. They still tasted good, I just need to work on firming them up, otherwise they just aren't suitable for freezing.

Sandra
x

lhd4

hi, this is the first time i've looked in here and i'm really interested in what your all doing. Any room for a newbie? Can anyone point me in the direction of where to start?

Leanne

domesticgoddess789

lhd4 wrote: »

hi, this is the first time i've looked in here and i'm really interested in what your all doing. Any room for a newbie? Can anyone point me in the direction of where to start?

Leanne

Hi Leanne :hello:

I'm sure Weezl would say the more the merrier! So as she is away at the moment enjoying her newborn baby boy I will say it now until she pops along to to welcome you herself!

I have learned so much from this thread already and I hope you do too

weezl74

aless02 wrote: »

I just suspect that even if you add up the marmalade plus the tiny fruit content in your 3 snacks a day it still wouldn't even come close to a serving, so why bother?

.....Oh and we've run out of both onions & SR flour wayyy early, but have far too many oats, potatoes & carrots.

About running out of things, which spreadsheet are you using?:o:) the one I sent Lesley on March 16th doesn't run out of the things you've said, (at last!) so I'm wondering if you might be testing an older version? is that possible?:(

Hello Aless and a big hello too to anyone who is srill reading after I abandoned you all on thursday to help bring little kester into the world

It's early days for me yet, but I believe that my heart is still very much in this project, and I know I have more to give to it.

I know I didn't get hugely far before Kester came, a big part I think of why your lovely, brave attempt to live it out hasn't been easy. It's good that you've tried and I know exactly where you're coming from and you've chosen to do that in an 'at your own risk' and just for fun and to see how it is way, which is great.

Please however anyone else reading, don't interpret Aless' willingness to try things out as they are now as a sign that we, this project team think this is ready to 'roll out'. It's not, and none of us think this.

Sorry to speak for you there Aless, but I know from PMs that a lot of folk would love to start this in earnest, and I just didn't want your message to make people think we could start living it in earnest, IYSWIM?

About fruit being less than a serving so why bother. I guess this is a question I've been trying to get a majority view on for a little while now, but I don't think I've worded it very well. At first I thought people were saying that they didn't mind portions sizing not being exact, and I remember a few people chipping in and saying, 'have any normal shirley's ever really weighed out the veg portions every day for the family?' etc, so I thought it was more ok than it is perhaps...

So this is something of a set back, if this is the majority view. I said we were close to signing off planner one, but I'm not sure that we are (but not by loads so don't worry!) untill we have a clear response to portion sizes and the 5 a day.

Here's what I'll do, I'll say how I see it, and then we'll have a bit of discussion over the next couple of days (while I read between burping kester and pushing cars around for fergie :rotfl:) and then (because people have asked me to take more of a firm lead so the project doesn't drift)on about wednesdayish, I shall post saying, 'ok chaps I've thought about all of this and the best way forward seems to be xxxx'.

How I see portion sizes and the 5 a day. (not aimed at anyone in particular, just at anyone who is, like me, debating how exact the planner should be about portion sizes)

The amounts were chosen with a safety margin built in. I have read how the 5 a day campaign was put together and why and I know that the dieticians and decision makers involved were very aware of the real life situations which people are in. They knew things like: not every family in the uk has an accurate set of digital scales. They knew that not all fruit and veg are equal, but included them. Some like broccoli are superfoods and pack a good nutritional punch. Others seem to have less nutritional punch. They knew that if you tell people to aim for 5, they'll have days of 6/7 and days of 3, and go on holiday and have a whole week of none cos it's all chips, and their mates hen weekend so it's 4 days of rioja and quavers.

people have normal lives and it all balances out.

Is this license then weezl for you to just say oh hang the 5 a day and not put proper serving sizes in the planner?!

Nope! By no means! But here's what I am saying: No -one at a leadership level in the 5 a day decision making team needed it to be that exact for it to fulfil it's mandate (to get everyone in the uk to have sufficient of certain nutrients in their diet) they built in a buffer. So here's my thinking. We start the month with 6 a day's worth in the cupboards. We teach shirley to use the food with minimal waste and max nutrition, ie we incorporate potato wedges keeping the skins on, we use the skins of the apples too in the curd and we structure the weeks so she's cooked before it's all gone mouldy. So we know there's been minimal waste.

At the end of the month the fruit and veg is all gone, and when we look overall at the planner there is a good balance of where the fruit and veg appears, and mostly it does in its 80g exact portions, But sometimes there's 20g of one thing and 60g of another. For me that's not troubling, it's good and normal.

So back to the marmalade: if we start a month with 6 oranges and at the end of the month none are left and we've eaten even the skins, then my view is let's count them! Their nutrient benefit has been given to this family.

I guess we need to work out whether this is ok with Shirley average :rotfl:

In summary, here's what I'm saying, this is how MY PERSONAL maths and nutrition brain plus my personality works:

If you set me a challenge to come up with a vegetable broth to serve to a bunch of school kids at lunch time because it was felt that they had a poor diet and needed to have their 5 a day all at school, I'd buy enough veg to give them all 5 and a half portions each, of a variety of random things carrots, peas, broccoli,.... cook it all up with minimal waste into a tasty broth and serve it out as evenly as I could under the circumstances.

With my personality type, if asked at the end of the day, did you make sure those kids got their 5 a day, I would sleep happily in my bed thinking, 'yes I did:)'. The fact that Jonny has 84 grams of onions and 76 g of peas but 100 g of broccoli in his would not trouble me. I believe in his body's ability to absorb vitamins from all of them.

OK so that's as clear as I can be on where I am in my thinking at the moment and why. Maybe we'll talk it out on here for a wee while and then on Weds I'll draw a line and we'll go forward.

Much love Weezl xxx

PS Lesley can we do a bit of an online chat at some point, I know you've been working hard and I don't want to repeat anything/ do anything you already have covered

weezl74

lhd4 wrote: »

hi, this is the first time i've looked in here and i'm really interested in what your all doing. Any room for a newbie? Can anyone point me in the direction of where to start?

Leanne

:rotfl:hiya! welcome

Would you like to test some frugal recipes?

xxx