Reverse Meal Planning

joedenise

That sounds amazing Suffolk_Lass.  Sounds like you have a good sized garden.  We grow a few things but mainly in pots as most of the garden is paved.  DH has dug over a small area so we can grow a few more veg.  As it's only recently been finished we were a bit late with starting off some seeds for it so have ordered some plants ready to go.  Currently waiting for beans and peppers.

In the pots we have courgettes, butternut squash, tomatoes, garlic, peas and various herbs.  We could only get yellow courgette seeds so that's what we have this year rather than the usual green.  We have loads of little baby ones so just waiting for them to grow big enough to actually eat - can't wait for really fresh veg.  We have a few tiny peas as well and loads of flowers, pleased about that as it's the first time we've grown peas for about 40 years!

Pyxis

@Suffolk_lass, in normal times, you don't have to have a set box of veg. You could swop two, I think, or maybe three, of the items in a box, and you could also set a preference for "never send me x or y as I hate them'.

When I first started with Abel etc., I had a set box each week, and then that progressed to once a fortnight with the intervening week making my own choices. Before I returned to the internet, I didn't know what was coming in the box, so it was a bit like Christmas! (So sad!)

Now, though, I don't usually have a box, I usually just pick whatever fruit and veg I want, with some things coming every week regardless.

Since lockdown, there's been much less choice, but I was so grateful to get fresh fruit and veg each week, I didn't care. Plus I was able to get a few other things, a godsend as I couldn't get a supermarket delivery slot for love nor money!
They have been able to increase their ranges since then, but a box is still the main source of veg for me at the moment. 
I will, eventually, go back to just ordering individual veggies, though, although the Cooks' Ingredients boxes have been pretty good for me so far, so I might stick with them some weeks, depending on what each week has to offer!

I can see that for you, a veg box might well be surplus to requirements, as you grow so much veg yourself.

I envy your growing garlic. Last year I experienced green garlic for the first time and absolutely loved it, had it every week while it lasted, so much so that when the season ended, I tried growing my own, but it all went flopbot. ☹️

There hasn't been any green garlic this year, and it's probably too late now. ☹️☹️

rtandon27

Tonight's dinner was a pan-fried gnocchi, pork steaks from the freezer with bbq sauce from the fridge, carrots & broc from this week's veg box.  Simple, tasty and cooked up in about 15 mins!

Suffolk_lass

Quick is good for us - after chatting to my Mum every evening at 6pm and then watering it is getting on by the time we are indoors so cold chicken pie and salad here last night - so much salad on the brink of readiness in the garden that I wanted to have cleared all the SM bought salad. I made the pie in the morning as I have arranged to meet a friend this afternoon for her birthday so will take some and a bottle of wine to the nearby field with a picnic table. We are more likely to see others passing by and they will stop and chat and that is what she needs - a bit of social interaction, and she likes a glass or three. 

Pyxis

Another weird meal for me.
Fried oyster mushrooms as a starter.
Then stir-fried some onions, garlic, tomatoes, left-over cooked new potatoes, chopped radishes, a load of fresh herbs, asparagus tips and the left-over steamed purslane.

It was an interesting combo of flavours and textures!

Just about to tuck into the rest of the strawberry/blueberry fruit salad with mango coulis.

rtandon27

Dinner was thai green chicken curry and sticky rice - all the ingredients from the freezer and storecupboard! Served with steamed bok choi from the veg box.

Have started to buy curry paste in larger glass jars and dividing them up into 5 portions then freezing 4 of the portions. Means we can always have a fakeaway and actually have a choice of flavour!

Suffolk_lass

Planned picnic took place - great fun for permissable socialising and I know much appreciated. I think we will have the fillet steak that DH bought in last week's shop (it was not even YS!) - it will need to be stir fried or lightly grilled to have with salad I think. We have ingredients for both, plus a lovely bag of fresh spinach from a neighbour. Simple pleasures.

joedenise

rtandon27 said:

Dinner was thai green chicken curry and sticky rice - all the ingredients from the freezer and storecupboard! Served with steamed bok choi from the veg box.

Have started to buy curry paste in larger glass jars and dividing them up into 5 portions then freezing 4 of the portions. Means we can always have a fakeaway and actually have a choice of flavour!

I do that with tins of coconut milk; as I'm doing Slimming World coconut milk is quite high syn so I only use 100ml; the rest of the can I divide into 100ml lots in a silicon muffin tray to freeze and then once frozen transfer to a freezer bag.  Means I can make 4 curries out of a 400ml can.  Way cheaper than buying the small cans and only using half and then freezing half, although having said that I found a pack of 200ml cans recently on offer and worked out cheaper than buying the 400ml cans! but that doesn't happen often.

ailz95

This weekend I seem to have spent a lot of my time skinning chick peas.  I was watching an online video where she (Rachel Ama) gave instruction on how to get them off dried ones easily. I started with a tin of them for burgers - skinned 'em, then I cooked some dried ones to roast - and couldn't remember what it was she used, so I added salt (wrong).  Yesterday I steeped some more dried ones and added the correct thing - bicarbonate of soda - to the cooking water and the skins mainly just floated off - took me ages to skim them all though as they sink.  I also removed part of the oil floating on the tahini and replaced it with water and lemon juice.  The hummus is really good though.  It will go nicely with my hm sourdough muffins/baps.  I've still got over 250 grams of yeast going spare if anyone would like some as sourdough doesn't use it.  

I'd never heard of purslane before reading it on here.  I'm going to run off a picture and get DH to see if we have any in the garden or fields, if not I'll be buying some seeds for the kitchen garden.

Pyxis

ailz95 said:

I'd never heard of purslane before reading it on here.  I'm going to run off a picture and get DH to see if we have any in the garden or fields, if not I'll be buying some seeds for the kitchen garden.

I got some purslane seeds online from Suttons, but haven't tried growing them yet.