This week I thought I'd take a closer look at the processes I'm using when it comes to planning meals at the moment. Usually (before the zombie apocalypse, as we've come to think of it) I plan our meals out on a Friday, before I shop for the week ahead. At the moment though we're not doing a single weekly shop, so it's suiting us better to plan just a few days ahead at a time.
The cornerstone of this week's meals was the large pork shoulder joint I cooked for Sunday lunch - slow roasted very gently until it pretty much fell apart, it also yielded plenty of juices, some of which went to make gravy to go with the roast dinner - the rest was popped into the fridge and earmarked for adding to a risotto with some more of the meat for Tuesday night. Another chunk of the joint was shredded, and added to wraps with salad and home made coleslaw for an easy lunch on Monday - the salad leaves were bought a few days ago so needed planning for use nice and early in the week to get it before it was past its best. The final portion of the pork was popped into the freezer for a future meal, while the rest of the salad was earmarked for lunchtime rolls through the week.
While in the freezer, I was reminded that we had the remainder of a pack of meatballs in there which had been there for a while, so as we had peppers, mushrooms and several onions, spaghetti and meatballs made the plan for Wednesday night - allowing that we had sufficient fruit for a few days also, this set me to wondering whether I could stretch out our next trip to the shops until as far ahead as Thursday evening - with there being queues just about everywhere at the moment we've discovered that locally to us the best time to shop does seem to be early evening, so this would be ideal.
Thursday night was - as is frequently the case - down to checking to see what needed using. In the fridge, the last mushrooms, a green pepper going very slightly wrinkly, the last parsnip in the bag, and one of the bargain yellow stickered beetroot. In the larder, a couple of red onions, and a reasonable sized sweet potato. All chopped into roughly even sized pieces, and drizzled with a couple of tablespoons of the oil saved from a jar of preserved garlic cloves, salt, pepper and popped into a hot oven to roast. The freezer also netted some "need to use up" items - the final two potato cakes from a pack, plus some Stornoway Black Pudding that has been there a while and we are now trying to eat our way through - so those were the accompaniments. Not a classic dish by anyone's standards, but super tasty, packed with flavour, and making use not only of what we had - but also avoiding the risk of things going to waste. At the moment more than ever that seems really important - so many people are working so hard to ensure that food gets to the stores at the moment - the very least we can do is to ensure that we use every last scrap of it.
We did indeed shop yesterday evening as planned too - a top up on our levels of fruit and some storecupboard items that we were running low on. As usual I cast an eye over the yellow stickered items in store as well - and some excellent bargains - some mini cheesey fishcakes and a couple of packs of thickly sliced chicken have gone straight to the freezer, and a pack of mushrooms which are good for a few days yet for 25p might make an attempt at a mushroom bhaji tonight. A heavily reduced free range chicken went straight into the oven and that will now form the basis for next week's meals - very likely starting with a chicken curry tonight! Yum!
Robyn.
No comments:
Post a Comment