Reverse Meal Planning

ailz95

DH and I went vegan on 3rd February this year - typical of us that we didn't do it when Veganuary was on.  DH was already a veggie, but I was a low-carb carnivore.  We are carers for his 98 yr old mum, so we don't get out much anyway - 6 hrs a week while a carer sits in with her.  This lockdown has really just meant that after going to a farm shop we came home instead of going on somewhere for lunch.  The last 3 weeks we have been to the seaside so I made hummus for us and the carer.  A good tip with making hummus is to put bicarbonate of soda in the cooking water and take the skins off all the chickpeas, makes it much creamier.

DH is curry mad, so I usually batch cook some and freeze most.  At the farm shop we check which veg are local - or reasonably so, living in Kent, France is closer than Scotland sort of thing.  Then I find things to make with them.  I have a stock of tofu, beans, seitan - which DH doesn't eat because it's so like meat, he doesn't like vegan cheese either - too close but too far away from the real thing.  Last week I made a Hungarian Goulash with beetroot rather than meat and he pulled his face, but enjoyed it.

Being a somewhat idiot, I bought a dozen or so vegan cookbooks when we first went over and I get most of my recipes off the internet.

Suffolk_lass

We are still omnivores here - eating meat a few times and veg without really counting. It's great to see a few new people on the thread - welcome everyone. While I started it - it is very much "our thread" and there is some great wisdom and lots of good ideas. Top tip @ailz95 - using Bicarb to remove the chick pea skins.

We mostly rely on what is in the garden at the moment - with gooseberries, raspberries (summer fruiting) and redcurrants all ready and more coming, and more salad than a restaurant needs - as long as it is leaves or radishes. Just topping up tomatoes once more I estimate, before our own and the second early potatoes are ready.

Local eggs with potatoes and salad from the garden last night. Then homegrown and frozen raspberries with a tiny sprinkle of vanilla sugar and the end of a pot of cream. So yummy.

My new Chest Freezer is arriving this week (it will replace the upright one in DH's workshop and is going in the cartlodge). It is guaranteed to work in an outhouse and I no longer trust the old upright (not new to us) as I found soft bread in it and frozen milk that was curds and whey once defrosted. I suspect the range of temperatures is too much for it.

ajmoney

I am coming in here to lurk to get some ideas for you lovely people.  I have started a bit more reverse meal planning with my newly organised food inventory and am trying to use up some baking ingredients and many bottles of soy sauce (I am unsure why I have so many).

Suffolk_lass

I have started making my own stir fry sauce - instead of buying the sachets - I use broken up cashew nuts (cheaper on-line than buying the unsalted ones in the supermarket) with Soy sauce, a dash of tabasco and a good squirt of sweet chilli dipping sauce - I also cook in a mix of olive and sesame oil and use far too much garlic and chillies as we like the hit. Who knew dried egg noodles were so nice. Freshly cooked and added to my stir fry it really suits us.

ajmoney

Ooh, I make my own stir fry sauces, usually honey, lime and soy sauce. If I have sesame seeds I sometimes toast them and add or dried chilli flakes.

rtandon27

The OH does our stir fries & also concocts our own sauce  - he uses dark soy sauce, sesame oil, hoisin, ginger, garlic (sometimes chili) and a couple of drops of truffle oil we were gifted.

In fact stir fry is what we had for lunch today as groceries were not due to us until evening!  Most of what we ordered arrived  - a couple of logical substitutions but no coconut oil or frozen gyoza to be had! (not that either are essentials - lol)

Baileys_Babe

I have never thought about it but we make our own stir sauce as well, it will vary depending on our mood but will always contain garlic and ginger, with various spices and sauces oyster/soya/sweet chilli/hoi sin/fish sauce etc
Generally, our noodles are tossed in sesame oil and served on the side as dd prefers it that way.
We find stir-fries a good way to use up those little bits and bobs if we do include meat it is a tiny amount.

Bluegreen143

We have a massive glut of onions and carrots from the veg box (have changed the order going forward - the issue was having a soup pack added which we don’t really need). I made caramelised onion marmalade tonight which used up nine of them and made two gorgeous big jars. Tastes divine, I’ve not made it for years.

Really struggling to get baking bits still from the supermarket - in desperate need of soft brown sugar and icing sugar. We only have flour because I bulk bought from Shipton Mills but now my white bread flour is starting to look a bit low again (well not really low but the rate I use it, I’ll be lucky if it does me a month). Can’t get the sugar with our Tesco order so I’m going to brave Lidl tomorrow to try and get some.

ajmoney

Bluegreen143 said:

Really struggling to get baking bits still from the supermarket - in desperate need of soft brown sugar and icing sugar. We only have flour because I bulk bought from Shipton Mills but now my white bread flour is starting to look a bit low again (well not really low but the rate I use it, I’ll be lucky if it does me a month). Can’t get the sugar with our Tesco order so I’m going to brave Lidl tomorrow to try and get some.

Do you have an lid! near you?  My local one has had brown sugar and icing sugar all the way through.  I managed to get yeast and bread flour for the first time yesterday. I have never made bread before but have found a couple of recipes I want to try, I have no idea how it will turn out but I am looking to giving it a go.

Suffolk_lass

@ajmoney my go-to bread recipe when I started was the Nigella Lawson basic white loaf - I use a dough hook on a stand mixer. I add all sorts to mine now (wheatgerm, nuts, seeds, sourdough starter) but as a first time loaf it's a great straightforward recipe.

I posted it back in 2012 and it is in the recipe index of the monthly grocery challenge but I see Nigella has not got it online - this is copied from my 2012 post:

Basic white loaf recipe
I make bread without a bread machine but using the dough hook on my mixer. The basic white loaf is
500g strong white flour with
a sachet (7g) dried yeast. I stir this before adding
a level tablespoon of flake salt and
300ml warm water (if you save the water you cook potatoes in it is even better as it stops the bread going stale).
Mix it with a spoon until it looks claggy (you'll know it when you see it) and then add
1oz butter and stick it on low speed with the dough hook for ten minutes.

Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead it (like Si King from Hairy Bikers does) for a minute or two - makes you feel virtuous!
Then wash out the mixer bowl with hot water and use olive oil to rub the inside and put the ball of dough in and turn it up the other way so coated in oil. Put a shower cap on (the bowl, not you) and leave it for an hour-hour and a half (or overnight in the fridge).
The ambient temperature will determine how quickly it rises.

The dough will double in size. Don't leave it too long after this. Tip it onto the floured surface to "knock it back" (deflate it) and knead for barely a minute. I then do the olive oil thing to a baking sheet and then sprinkle that with flour and form the dough into an oval. I cover it with a clean T-towel for 30-40 minutes and heat the oven to 180c in that time. The loaf will double in size. At that point I cut three diagonal slashes in the top (my bakers' mark!) and sprinkle the top with semolina. I put it in the oven for 20 minutes and then rotate it front to back for another fifteen minutes. Then I turn it upside down for five minutes and it should sound hollow when you tap it. Then put it on a cooling rack for at least ten minutes.

I use the same basic recipe for rolls (cut the dough into 6 on the sheet) and it will make two 1lb small loaves or one 2lb large loaf if you want to use a tin. Sometimes I put flour on top, sometimes poppy or sesame seeds. I've also brushed the rolls with beaten egg before the last rise to make the seeds stick. If you prefer your bread extra crusty you could put a roasting tin half full of water on the floor of the oven before you heat it up and the loaf will cook in the steam. I do this to slow my range in the winter but I don't bother in the microwave/grill/fan oven in the summer or there is no room for the bread to rise.