Family of 5 'shop from home'food storage challenge...

bellaquidsin

Jamie - marzipan fruits are easy. You need a packet of bought (yellow) marzipan (unless you really want to be purist and make your own, but I wouldn't for these) and some food colourings (I use paste) brown, red, green would do but you might get adventurous and want to do blackberries, blueberries etc. then you would need to get purple. If you have to buy the colouring paste it is not cheap but it lasts forever and comes in useful for decorating children's cakes etc.

You just break off pieces of the marzipan and mould it into the shapes of various fruits.

Apples - add a very small amount of green and red colouring to give a mottled effect and shape an apple.
Pears - as above with just green colourning
Bananas - no colouring just a banana shape and paint brown stripes on.
Strawberries lots of red, mould into a strawberry shape then stipple all over with a cocktail stick.
Raspberries, blackberries etc, a little more difficult, add the appropriate colour and shape each little bobble individually.
I'm sure you will think of more fruits once you get going.
We use cloves for stalks.
They look very attractive placed in petit four cases and placedm in a box lined with a paper doyley. If you don't have doyleys the children can make these too. Just a circle of paper folded into about eight 'segments' then snipped with scissors to cut out shapes. When opened they look a bit like snowflakes but you probably know this already. We make small ones of these to stick on the window along with cotton wool to create a snow effect (I digress).

Hope all goes well, I am impressed by your 5a.m. rising. I am doing it the other way at the moment, staying up all hours to complete baby clothes for two babies due any minute. Sometimes I get up early as well, it's amazing what you can do with this stolen time.

Bella

D&DD

Wow thanks Bella I know a little boy who would love some of these Will have to dig out a recipe for homemade marzipan I'm sure I've got one somewhere...I've made it before and it was pretty easy *I think*
I wonder if he'd only eat the strawberry ones though :rotfl:

lil_me

Had a quick browse in the books, some nice looking recipes, when I get chance will share a couple , going to type the ones up I will use on the computer when I get time (I can type 10 times faster than I can write!)

Well change of plan, opened the ham shank and it'd gone off, poo, what a whiff! I have improvised with bacon mishapes I got cheap, pressuming it will work almost the same, suppose we'll see later...never improvised like this before so a tad scared. If it's not nice I am sure the dogs will eat it (youngest dog is a pig, was stealing beetroot & bananas last night)

cheerfulness4

D&DD wrote: »

do you think t would cook the sausagemeat for long enough or not..

Hmm I'm not too sure. The recipe for the sausage rolls in Delia's says to cook on gas mark 7 so i'm wondering if they would cook through enough from raw.

I know what you mean about loving gadgets etc. I can spend many a happy hour perusing the kitchen section on ebay. I always see something I just have to have a bid at if paypal moneys laying idle. I've also started to add a few bits to my husbands wish list on Amazon. Well, I can try can't I? :rolleyes:

westwardbymanier

jammie dodger i noticed that you used Riversford for your meat deliverys .I use them for my veg but just wondered what did you think of the quality and what size box did you order thanks

JAMIEDODGER

hi westward:)

i bought a small mixed meat box - £46

i got:

A pork joint
A smallish chicken
A pack of mince
Streaky Bacon
Rump Steak
6 sausages
stewing steak
chicken stock
meatballs
cooked ham

i found the quantities reasonable enough, but the quality is excellent and the taste wonderful. It certainly wouldnt be enough to feed me and my four hungry dodgers for a week, but it makes you think about how much meat you are eating. for example the streaky bacon was divided between 2 quiches, one of which i froze and one we had for a dinner with HM chips. if you are creative you can stretch the meat further:)

HTH
jamie

D&DD

Jamie I can't wait until we're debt free so I can afford to buy more decent meat..At the moment we just have to make do with what the budget stretches to..I do buy half a lamb at a time from the butchers but can't afford the chicken etc that I'd love to be buying..yet!
Don't forget to check the ingredients on the sausages and meatballs if you want them for the kids as they often use rusk as a bulking agent so they're not necessarily Gluten free Most butchers now do carry GF sausages though if not Sainsburys do them

JAMIEDODGER

dee:wave:

i bought a burger press this week so i can make the burgers myself so they can eat them:T

i dont think they would eat the sausages anyway as they were pork and leek:D

riverfords now do a gluten free box of just unprocessed meats, when i bought it, it really was just a trial as i certainly couldnt afford that every week!!!:(

i also have my eye on a mincer from lakeland......:D

dND

JAMIEDODGER wrote: »

dee:wave:

i bought a burger press this week so i can make the burgers myself so they can eat them:T

I've made my own burgers for ages - started with the BSE scare when I made pork or lamb ones. It's just so good to know exactly what's been used to make them.

Homemade burgers with fresh herbs very quickly became my children's' favourites. :j

In the UK I used to buy ready minced pork or lamb from either the farm shop or used 'yellow label' pork mince. Since moving here though I've had to buy a mincer and make my own mince. If you are going to mince your own meat the best tip I can give you is to mince a dry crust of bread to clean out the mincer when you've finished. It makes cleaning so much easier and pleasant.

I find burger making is very therapeutic as I have the Bel/Lakeland type of burger press and compress the mince by hitting the press with a rubber mallet!:D

lollyred1

hi everyone well it looks like i will doing shop from home for some time to come yet, our car packed in this morning and just bidding on one on ebay, wages gone down to smp and running out of things to sale.
Havent bought anything since last shop but now beginning to worry about christmas shop, what has everyone got on there shopping lists for christmas food