Sunday, May 04, 2008

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.

6 comments:

  1. I love seeing a flock of cockies, preferably near someone else's house. :) Magnificent birds, but they don't make the best neighbours. We have rosellas, grass parrots and honey eaters to compete with the pigeons and indian mynahs.

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  2. Mum has a flock of choughs which live up at her place, have been there for years, do you remember they were there at Asha's 3rd birthday party? She lugs a huge bag of seed up there every second day and feeds the rabbits, native pigeons, chuffs, ducks, echidnas, you name it. Not what you're supposed to do I guess but makes for a fascinating outlook out of her huge lounge room windows, there are always animals of some kind to watch drinking in the dam and munching on the seed in the dust that used to be her lawn.
    ps: sorry those deleted posts were me

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  3. All I remember from Asha's party was the food (I think I ate all of it) and people staring at me with barely veiled horror. I was already a week overdue. And Fred and Ella playing with the balloons. I do remember the drive too, through Warrandyte and Kangaroo Ground and thinking how much we'd love to live out this way. ANd now we do that drive every time we visit Martin's family.

    I do love the cockies Ariane - they're so beautiful and SO arrogant, it's great to watch them loving themselves. They are just so stunning in flight, you cna see they really love being able to fly. We had two crimson rosellas, two lorikeets and the king parrots yesterday, and a very curious kookaburra. Plus a cockatoo that looked like it had lost a fight with a very angry whipper snipper. He has his whip snipped but good.

    And I waved my magic wand and the deleted posts were never seen again.

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  4. I love other people's meal plans. Your;s sounds yummy. I wish my family would love cabbage and beetroot. They won't though. I've tried. Sigh.
    Martin's new thing sounds yumbo

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  5. I'm glad I'm not the only one that does a meal plan and doesn't necessarily always stick to it. I've changed my approach because of this. Now I aim to meal plan four meals for the week and just wing the rest. Sometimes some of my 'pantry/freezer' meals still carry over to the next week though. I'm finding less wastage with four meals planned rather than say six (as we have takeaway one night a week..naughty I know).

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  6. Love the sound of your cabbage/pear cook up, I think we'll try that. Thanks for sharing your food!

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