Reverse Meal Planning

Suffolk_lass

@Mrs_Cheshire I would be making a hot cross bun bread and butter pudding and a bread pudding to help use up some of that stash of bread products. Shout if you want my Mum's Bread pudding recipe. It's a lifelong favourite here and goes well warm for dessert, or cold as a snack or cake with a cup of tea... just saying 

Here I have been using an oxtail in a stew, jumbo sausages with mash and veg, and a complete treat, calves liver, bought from our lovely butcher when I ordered the festive meat. Today it is beef brisket. Already in the warming oven where it can stay for 6 or so hours before we decide what to have with it. I don't know why I wrote that, he always chooses roast!!

A giant windfall apple might make a crumble too

rtandon27

@Suffolk_lass - OH is here saying 'yes please' to the recipe!  He says my Gran's method is good but not English enough for him as it has cinnamon, ginger & cloves in a similar way to an apple pie!  He's also asked if you have a proper bread pudding recipe like his Nan used to make? 🤣🤣🤣

Suffolk_lass

I do! Proper bread pudding recipe. My Mum's writing. Feel free to make it your own. I use a bit less fat, sometimes stork block, sometimes butter, and sometimes more bread. I use a medium roasting tin and soak the fruit in hot water so it swells up, at the same time the bread is soaking,  and the fat melting. Just strain the fruit before adding!

rtandon27

@Suffolk_lass - Fabulous! - I'll download and save that recipe image during the week when I'm on a laptop!  OH will be so pleased!  I love that he & I just had a discussion about imperial vs metric measurements!  He's the one that is old school but can only think in metric!  At home we use both so I convert in my head!  Also - across the pond I'd say two sticks of butter (8 oz) instead of 1/2lb! - I just love a hand written recipe so thank-you again.

We managed to source the better than 1/2 price pork shoulder so have masses of leftovers from Saturday's Roast - the piece OH brought home was quite short dated so would keep for today or next week.  Used a recipe for Puerto Rican Assado - marinated in a lovely garlicky rub and slow roasted/steamed in a gentle oven for 2.5 hours. 

Today we used up some beef mince and made a take on Nadiya's Lamb Kebabs from her Simple Spices book.  I improvised with the spices as we had some Goan curry powder in the cupboard and I could not be bothered making her 8-spice mix this evening.  They turned out very well, in burger pattie form baked in the oven rather than fried, with lots of leftovers for the week!

Our meal plan for the week will take into account our weekend leftovers and the start of the festive season so a couple of meals will be had out of the house as well in a social setting.
Monday - Pork & Napa cabbage stir-fry with noodles
Tuesday - Kebab patties in a bun (I'll be out for dinner)
Wednesday - Chicken & Leek & mushroom pie
Thursday - Salmon & green veg & rice (something light as out for lunch)
Friday - something from the freezer or Waitflower yellow sticker deals
Saturday - Bao & Gyoza from the freezer
Sunday - Roast something - not sure what yet

JingsMyBucket

@Mrs_Cheshire you’ve given me a great idea with the chicken shawarma on garlic naan. I’m going to yoink that, if you don’t mind. 

@Suffolk_lass love your mother’s handwriting. I love her classic capital Bs. 

BTW, I’ve been lurking on this thread for ages. Mind if I join, properly? This week I’m thinking these for using up some food that’s rambling around the fridge:

• Stir fry with some sauce that needs to be used up. I’ll pull some chicken strips out the freezer 
• I’ve got some fromage frais that didn’t really appeal to me. I found what looked a French pound cake recipe that calls for fromage frais. 
• Kale, sausage and potato soup. We have lots of saucisson sec in the freezer that needs to be evicted. I’ll use those and a link of soft/fresh sausage make up the meat portion. 

ETA, here's the French pound cake recipe: https://www.isigny-ste-mere.com/recettes/cake-fromage-frais/. You'll have to turn on your browser translation for it. Let me know if you can't understand it and I'll copy and paste it here for you in English. 

Suffolk_lass

Of course you can join properly @JingsMyBucket - everyone is welcome here. Lots of lovely ideas and some successful substitutions and modifications to recipes to help reduce waste and produce food that is tasty and economical.

I'm out from 8pm (nearly my bedtime)) so I suspect we will have cold brisket and salad with mash or half each of the last big (baking) potatoes. Yesterday I put the piece of defrosted brisket in a small covered casserole with about 1cm of water and just bunged it in the plate warming oven for the day. Honestly, it cuts like butter. So tender and perfect for thin slices; yesterday with roast potatoes and steamed veg, and today for supper. I might mince the remains to mix with raw steak mince and other herbs, shallots and bits for posh HM burgers, or pad it out with bread and onion to have with mash, cabbage and baked beans, like the mince my Mum used to make

Cherryfudge

I'm just coming out of lurkdom to say: @JingsMyBucket, thank you for posting the recipe! I had a read through to test my French and apart from the words for 'whisk' and 'scrape', I got it (there's a 'translate' button to check with). I had to do a bit of extra searching as the computer translated it as cream cheese, but the site has an English version that translates it as fromage frais. 

I have a French yogurt cake recipe, also known as '1234 cake' which makes good use of excess yogurt, but I like the look of this one - I'll save it for when I've got through my current glut of yogurt.

@Suffolk_lass, how lovely to have that recipe in your mother's writing - and you have kept it far neater than I'd have managed. I read it with interest as I have a similar but not identical recipe. I found mine on the inside of a box of eggs when I lived in London in the 1980s, and I've used it ever since, but I remember my mum saying she thought mine might be a version of one she remembered (she lived in London till the fifties, but the recipe is very rich for the rationing years, so I don't know when she'd had it). Now I'm thinking her memory was possibly of a recipe more like yours as yours doesn't have milk. Thanks for the connection with that time!

Suffolk_lass

@Cherryfudge That is so lovely. (And feel free to chip in and join in, if you wish). I will ask my Mum where she got hers and see if she can remember (she is 95 now). She no longer cooks so much but she enjoys her old recipes when others produce them! She lived in Greater London (as did I) through the post war year (her) and throughout the 60s (my childhood), and I remember it from then.

All my handwritten recipes were in my School Housecraft exercise book (c1969) until it became precarious and I transferred them to a now-bulging A5 plastic packet

Cherryfudge

Suffolk_lass said:

@Cherryfudge That is so lovely. (And feel free to chip in and join in, if you wish). I will ask my Mum where she got hers and see if she can remember (she is 95 now)...

Thank you for the welcome, @Suffolk_lass. Your Mum and mine were nearly contemporary: my mum was born 1928 in, I think, Holborn and later lived in Enfield before getting married and moving up north in the late 50s. She's no longer with us but a lot of memories are.

Please give my regards to your Mum in honour of those times and shared experiences, though I doubt they ever met.

joedenise

Our evening meals have all moved on a day as we didn't fancy anything cooked Friday evening so we just had cheese and crackers with pickles.

So the planned butter chicken we had on Saturday, Saturday's lamb tagine became last night's dinner so it will the roast chicken dinner we were supposed to have yesterday!  DH is going to spatchcock the chicken and cook it on the BBQ.  Will also add a tray of potatoes, a carrot or two and some peppers to have with it.  I'll only then need to cook some green veg and make gravy.