Eating

Every week I do a meal plan. Sometimes we stick faithfully to it, sometimes not. I usually shop for vegetables and fruit on Saturdays then plan our meals around the fresh produce we've bought, then I do the supermarket shopping on Sunday or Monday. I thought I'd post our meal plan this week since if you're anything like me you always ask other people what they're having for dinner as a way of coming up with ideas. I just accidently typed meat plan, and we do seem to be having a bit of meat this week - sometimes we do, sometimes we don't have any, when we do our meat portions tend to be small. Last night's dinner was roast brussel sprouts with fried apple and almonds, served with steamed brown rice (not entirely veggo, there was a rasher of bacon in it). When we were living in Northcote we ate a lot of fresh fish - it was my 2006 resolution to have fish twice a week - easy to do with a fantastic fish market just up the road. It's harder to do that now because we don't have anyone close by selling nice fish and I'm a bit suss on fish from the supermarket, so we eat a lot of tinned tuna. In fact so much, I'm over it, so we're having a rest from it this week. Lunch is usually leftovers or an omelette (or leftovers in an omelette) or hummous (Fred's new favourite) and things to stick into it or a snack plate of rice crackers, cheese, fruit and veg or the good old sanger (I like hummous and radish sandwiches at the moment. Radishes, remember them? Yum) or these great foccaccias we buy from the market that are more like a little pizza with red onion, cheese and dill - we freeze them, defrost them in the microwave and finish them off in the sandwich maker.

This is our evening meal plan this week (could come in any order, we usually decide on the day):

Roast meat and veggies - beetroot, parsnip, dutch carrots, potatoes, whatever else we've got. Meat will depend on what looks nice, preferably with bones so we can make some stock for this week's soup

Spaghetti Carbonara (there's some lovely swiss browns around at the moment, and really, who doesn't love bacon?)

Potato and leek soup with home made garlic bread. The bread's already made by Martin and in the freezer, made from a gorgeous baguette bought from the local market. My girls will always eat soup, so we have it once or twice a week.

Some kind of spinach, mushroom, feta, and possibly bacon pastry thing (Martin's new latest thing)

White bean and sausage casserole with polenta (some kind of weird made up cassoulet type thing - haven't really thought this through, but I fancy something very hearty now autumn is here...if I can't find sausages I like the look of, I'll probably make it with lamb mince)

Beef schnitzels with slow cooked red cabbage and pear (we had this exact dish last week and the girls loved it, so I thought I'd try to replicate it - the shredded red cabbage and pear is cooked together, covered, with a bit of brown sugar and water for an hour or so, and then you take the lid off, add a big chunk of butter and a splash of vinegar - I used white balsamic - and reduce it all down. There was no bitterness left and the girls both loved it, plus, you know, it was pink. 1/4 cabbage and two pears fed all of us; none of us are really big eaters.

The last meal is never planned and is generally some kind of cupboard/leftover/fish & chips and champy at Kate's place deal.

Speaking of Kate, her new book Always Mackenzie is out. Buy it, read it, love it. It's gorgeous.

p.s. As I wrote this, two King Parrots have been rather boldly insisting we feed them. Martin scattered a little seed the other day and since then we've had a number of birds decide they own our asses. Which is a bit contrary to advice we've been given by the next door neighbour about feeding birds regularly - apparently it disrupts migratory patterns. Plus we end up with hoardes of bogan cockies trashing our garden. It's hard to resist those lovely parrots though.