February 2014 Grocery Challenge

Ladyluck1

Mustard are fine in curry, fenugreek no idea. I used it to get my milk supply up haha.

kayester

£79.40 delivery from mr A.

advice please. never made a cottage pie before, and wanting to do one to freeze, do i put it together and freeze, or bake it first, and do i defrost before oven or straight to oven....any nice recepies would be helpful too

Ches

NSD for me today

spendinglikemad

Last shop of the month and was very careful and got DD in on the act counting up and told her we couldn't spend more than £17! She was very good and helpful and we spent £14,66 so now have £3.14 to get any extra milk unto Fri - yippee should manage it now

Got free coffee in waitrose and free kitchen cleaner (voucher in post)
Got DD free glue stick, pencils and pencil case in staples (loyalty voucher) so teaching DD the value of vouchers. She was enjoying it!!

HM dough balls were a big success last night - made a white dough as normal and rolled into about 30 small balls - made some garlic butter with herbs and a bit of chilli paste and put this on the dough balls with a little sprinkle of grated parmesan - they were really yummy and all got eaten!!! (will definitely make again)

Made fruity nutty flapjack (grated apple, raisins, dried cranberries and maple syrup and sunflower seeds) hope its nice, its cooling now. Also cooling some HM custard to make ice cream later (will add some choc sauce and broken soft HM cookies when its done)

Hoping to make some puff pastry tonight and use up a bit of beef casserole (will add potatoes and carrots to make pasties to eat in the week) - well thats the plan!!

Had a big sort out of the freezer today - boy that felt good!!

Meal plan changed slightly to Friday:

Sat - marinated salmon veg rice (green pepper and carrot and green beans)
Sun - fish cakes (from freezer) with carrots and peas
Mon - gammon steaks and HM wedges and bbeans
Tues - crispy chicken from freezer & HM wedges and peas
Wed - chicken curry & rice
Thurs - pasta bake
Fri - beef and veg pasties with veg

SLM

meg72

cw18 wrote: »

I'd normally use rice rather than potato, and do sweetcorn alongside the peas, but that was a favourite stand-by of mine for a loooong time

I really must make some freezer space to pop some of the fish in, though I'll probably start with just the one pack as I'll be taking a gamble there's not enough dairy in the meal to trigger my lactose intolerance - which is thankfully only fairly mild and not easily kicked off most of the time. I've been trying to make my own from scratch using soya milk for the sauce, but it takes that much longer to make that it's fine as a planned meal, but not when I'm short on time and need something 'now'.

Sorry to come back to this one love but I was puzzled as to why you could eat these for a long time but now worry that they may
kick off your lactose intolerance if they didn't then.

I thought lactose intolerance was something you were born with
Is it something you can develop in later life?

I discovered yesterday that its possible to partially defrost and remove the sauce I wanted to make fish cakes and the sauce would have made the mixture too sloppy so I wondered what the sauce would be like if I watered it down a bit, so I divided it into half , watered it down and it was fine and would make it less dairy

Anyway my ultra frugal soul is delighted that I got 4 fishcakes with a sauce plus an extra portion of sauce to go with a few gammon bits for later in the week Ah forgot to say this was the parsley one.

spendinglikemad

The added bonus of sorting the freezer - found 3 magnum ice creams and an ice lolly - will be a good treat in the week - as we don't have puddings generally in the week

Also found some quorn sausages and some bacon in the freezer so thats made a couple of potential extra meals!!

SLM

meg72

kayester wrote: »

£79.40 delivery from mr A.

advice please. never made a cottage pie before, and wanting to do one to freeze, do i put it together and freeze, or bake it first, and do i defrost before oven or straight to oven....any nice recepies would be helpful too

Either way will be fine. Personally I bake first,

freeze and then microwave the second one.

Ladyluck1

£4.54 in coop on YS and lidl weekend offer carrots, potatoes and tortilla chips
Updating siggy in a bit.

JIL

£170/£180.

Made full use of the Lidl offers, spent £22. (salsa, chicken,carrots,bacon)
Spent an hour this afternoon sorting out the freezers. while waiting for my banana bread to cook. As i thought there is still loads in there and I added the special offer chicken to it.

JIL

kayester wrote: »

£79.40 delivery from mr A.

advice please. never made a cottage pie before, and wanting to do one to freeze, do i put it together and freeze, or bake it first, and do i defrost before oven or straight to oven....any nice recepies would be helpful too

I am a big fan of the freezing blocks system.

I use the containers, that are similar to the tubs you get with a takeaway. I then freeze the mince mixture and the mashed potatoes separately.

This means that if theres one person eating I just get one tub of each out to defrost. I then put them together in a single portion sized dish and bake in the oven. If theres two they get done in a bigger dish.

It also means that the mince mixture or the potatoes doesnt have to be used for cottage pie, the mash can be used as mash or made into fishcakes. The mince mixture can be served with savoury pancakes or can be added to.

My recipe for [STRIKE]shepherds[/STRIKE] cottage pie is.

A pan full of potatoes to mash

400g mince
1 chopped onion
2 chopped carrots
handful of peas.
knorr stock pot or gravy granules and water
salt and pepper.

I lightly fry/saute on a low heat in a little oil the onion and carrots.

After 5-10 mins i add the mince and turn the heat up a little, brown the mince. Add the stock pot, seasoning's and a little water.

I just then cook it for about ten minutes and then add the frozen peas.

Transfer it to an oven proof dish and cover with mashed potato.
Sometimes I top with grated cheese. I then bake for about half an hour.

(this is where I would then put some into dishes and freeze for another day)

You can experiment with how you and your family like it, you can bulk it out with lentils, and add extra veg such as swede and celery.

My family prefer it not to be too runny, but others prefer it to be swimming in gravy.

HTH.