Adaptable meal planning to include a birthday

It's son & heir's 13th birthday on Halloween - the 31st October.  Yes, he's a Halloween baby - and we brought him home from the hospital on Guy Fawkes' Night.  There's two dates I'll never forget!

As a consequence, this week's meal planning is going to have to be adaptable in the extreme owing to the rate at which our plans have changed.  So far, I think we're onto Plan E or F - all of which might change, depending on when his friends are available.

However, we have a plan at the moment - and I'm hoping it'll hold!

Here's how it's looking :

Tues : Posh Porks, carrots, tenderstem broccoli & white rice

Weds : Leek & Bacon Bake, celeriac mash, carrots & peas

Thurs : Minced Beef & Onion Pie, carrots, swede & green beans

Fri : Chicken & Cheesy Dumpling casserole

Sat : Toad in the hole, chips & baked beans

Sun : Roast Chicken, chipolatas, roast potatoes & parsnips, carrots, broccoli,

Sage & Onion Stuffing, bread sauce & Yorkshire puddings

Mon : Coronation Chicken Wraps with chips.

Tonight's Posh Porks (which you may recall was scheduled for last week, but never made it) may very well be under threat already, as we forgot to take the pork out of the freezer this morning.  So we may opt for Fish & Chips tonight and move it on to tomorrow.  However, all that is actually okay as it is good to have a dinner "in hand" so to speak (and a relatively easy dinner too) just in case plans change.

However, let's assume that plans don't change, the pork defrosts in time and the plan continues, with Wednesday offering a reprise of another dish I first cooked before I was writing Rhubarb & Ginger.  It involves cutting the leeks into little logs and laying them into a baking dish.  Add bacon, creme fraiche, breadcrumbs and cheese and bake.  I can remember that we all very much enjoyed this the last time around, so see no reason why it shouldn't go down well again.

I was planning on using up the other half of the celeriac (a good source of Vit. K) with some mashing potatoes for celeriac mash and pairing it with some carrots (for Vit. A and beta-carotene) and peas (Vit. C).  Simple, but very nice with it - and has the added benefit of getting lots of lovely vegetables into a reluctant teenager.  If only he knew how good for him all these lovely vegetables were - and began to look at them in a different light - it would make my meal planning a whole different affair!

Artist's impression : Beef & Onion Pie

Thursday brings a new venture for hubby.  He's going to have a go at making rough puff pastry - and converting it into a Minced Beef & Onion Pie.  He's never made a pie from scratch before, so we'll both be interested in the results!  We're pairing his pie with the ever-popular carrot, some swede and green beans.  Goodness, but the boys won't be getting scurvy this week!

Friday's casserole is a recipe I discovered when I was learning more about the lovely Tenderstem Broccoli and was browsing the website dedicated to it.   You can find the original recipe here - and plenty more!

I like the sound of the casserole part with its chicken, shallots, bacon & carrots.  The boys like the sound of the herby cheddar dumplings.  We all love Tenderstem Broccoli, so sounds like a deal, to me!

My last effort - let's hope it's better than this!

Now we're getting into delicate territory from the Plan's point of view, come Saturday.  Son & heir plus a pal, are supposed to be spending the day at a local tourist attraction.  Because of his new-found age and responsibility (yes, I am crossing my fingers as I say that) he's going to be allowed to go without parental accompaniment.  Needless to say, we'll be on the end of the telephone ready to bail him out should anything untoward occur, so of necessity, Saturday's dinner needs to be simple.

So maybe hubby's first go at making Toad in the Hole isn't such a great idea for that night?  *chuckle*  Pray for calm seas and a following wind - we'll get through it somehow.

Sunday is demonstrating all the tell-tale signs of a day in which the parents of the birthday boy are going to be needing to de-stress.  Probably in an armchair with regular applications of coffee, tea and as we go through to the evening, a light alcoholic beverage.  So I'm gong to be making a no-holds-barred, full blown, going for it kind of roast dinner.  I must need my head examining, but I'm told that the key to successful production is in the preparation, so I'll be doing all I can before kick-off is announced.

At last, on Monday (and the day upon which poor old birthday boy has to return to school) the long-awaited birthday will dawn.  He's already said that he doesn't want to receive any birthday presents until he returns home from school, but we'll see how long that resolve lasts!

I did ask him what he wanted for dinner on his birthday and didn't get much response.  As a result, we're having my interpretation of his favourite dinner of the moment - Coronation Chicken Wraps.   I know, in the past, he's said that he could eat these until he was sick - and we'll prevent him from getting that far - but hopefully, they'll be well received.  Add to that a huge slice of chocolate birthday cake (ssssshhhh! Don't tell!) and - fingers crossed - we're sorted for the week.

Oh!  One quick note before I go - last night's Full English Breakfast (eaten at dinnertime) was divine.  Top marks to hubby for a superb dinner - and yes, I did make it through the lot.  Just.

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More of a porky week, this week : Meal planning w/b 17 Oct 11

My favourite style of potatoes

From last week's lamby week, to this week's porky week - in one fell swoop.

As has become traditional, let's finish off last week by telling you how I got on with the idea of the Lamb with Boulangere style potatoes.


Well, it was all going so well until it went into the oven.  The lamb mince, onion and carrots tasted good - full of different flavours but in a somewhat thicker sauce than I had anticipated, but I hoped it would do well enough.  Hubby likes to have a "sauce" rather than a "broth" on his plate, you see.

I painted each layer of mandolin-cut potatoes with melted butter into which I'd added a sprinkling of chopped rosemary, so all should have been well there.

Brussels sprouts!  ~mouth waters~

The trouble was, after 2½ hrs of cooking, the carrots were tender, the potatoes were cooked through - but all the lovely flavours had left home.

I'm really not sure where they went.  For all I know, they could be hiding at the back of the cooker, just waiting until the next time I make a meringue, when they will leap out and savoury it up.

No, all joking aside, I was disappointed.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the sauce was to blame, as it had nigh-on disappeared and I suspect had taken all the flavour with it.  I jolly well knew that sauce was too thick!  Serves me right for not letting it down with some water.  But there we are, 'tis done now.

Because I'm not happy with the recipe, I'll not be passing it on.  I may well have another go one day (and make sure the sauce is right, this time) so I'll blog it if it succeeds that time.

Mind you, those little brussels sprouts were divine.  From the bottom of our garden, they were little baby sproutlings of ultimate deliciousness.  Look at their happy smiling faces!  How can you resist?

So, shaking off the unsuccessful Monday, let's have a look at what the remainder of the week has in store :

Tues : Pasta alla Amatriciana

Weds : Slow cooked pork & celeriac with crusty bread (or toasts)

Thurs : Cheese, onion & potato pie, baked beans & hash browns

Fri : Pasta bolognese with doughballs

Sat : Beef Rendang & Sag Aloo with rice

Sun : "Posh Porks", with carrots, tenderstem broccoli & rice

Mon : Full English breakfast.

So, who is thinking "some of that sounds familiar"?

Well, after last week went so severely to worms, there are two meals included in this week's list that didn't make it onto last week's dining table - and because a) I'd bought everything for one (Pasta alla Amatriciana) and b) I'd promised son & heir we'd have it (Full English breakfast), I was committed.

Being Tuesday, we've just had the Pasta alla Amatriciana for dinner and it was marvellous.  I have been using Tarantella tomatoes in preference to any other kind of tinned tomatoes just lately and have now found some Tarantella tomato puree.  The flavour is a cut above other tomatoes, they don't cook up to be so acidic, plus the colour is beautiful.  So the colour you see in the photograph is absolutely the colour that the dish turned out to be.  Utterly fab!

Mind you, I very nearly killed the entire dish through SUCH a schoolboy error - but I won't embarrass myself right now - I'll save that for later when I blog the recipe for you.

Celeriac - the ugly duckling of veg.

I found the Slow cook Pork & Celeriac recipe on the BBC Good Food website and was intrigued by the combination of flavours.  I thought it sounded completely lovely and so perfect for these colder days we're having.

I was going to serve it with crusty bread for mopping up all the lovely flavours in the sauce/gravy, however, I notice in this month's BBC Good Food Magazine there's a natty little idea for anchovy toasts to accompany a beef stew.  Now I'm not suggesting making anchovy versions, but I'm definitely pondering on some kind of toast!

Thursday's Cheese, Onion & Potato Pie is very definitely "one for the boys".

Hubby astounded me the other day by announcing that he "loves Cheese & Potato Pie".  Say what?  This, from the man who abhors every incarnation of potato except the chip and crisp?

Well okay then!  I found a likely-sounding recipe on BBC Good Food (always my first port of call for reliable recipes) and we'll be having it with "man food", i.e. baked beans and hash browns.

Having made the males in my life happy, (well, one can but hope!), I get a night off when hubby cooks us a pasta bolognese.  Once again he'll be using the Tarantella tomatoes - and he does make a pretty darned good bolognese.  It will make son & heir happy, as any dinner that involves meat + carbohydrate, minus discernible vegetables but + cheese, is dinner nirvana for him right now.

My ever-faithful slow cooker

Saturday's Beef Rendang I'm very much looking forward to cooking.  It's a recipe by Atul Kochhar which I found on the UK TV Good Food website.  I will be cooking it in the slow cooker, as the recipe demands a good 2 hrs cooking in the oven, otherwise.

Thanks to the success of the Keema Mutter and Vegetable Curry, I've got a bit of confidence in supplying two Indian dishes (and a rice) at any one time.  So, owing to the fact that I'm using the slow cooker and will have time to spare, I decided to take advantage of what seemed like a cracking recipe for Sag Aloo (from the My Dish website).  I'll be able to make the Sag Aloo while the rice is cooking.

I'm quietly excited about this one, as they both sound completely delicious.  Fingers crossed!

Before I started writing Rhubarb & Ginger, I used to keep a note of yummy recipes by blogging them on my personal blog, Timewasting.  So the other day, I decided to go through them and pick out the ones which were particularly nice, to do again and blog them onto Rhubarb & Ginger.

The first of these is a lovely recipe that now goes by the name of "Posh Porks".  Well, it's all because it uses pork and my internet nickname has long been PoshPaws.  See?

It's basically a "pork in mushroom cream sauce", served with seasonal vegetables and rice.  It was one of the first recipes that I devised completely, without any adaptation of another recipe - so I am quietly proud of it.  I think it will be interesting to cook it again, in the light of the experience I've gained since then.  I can feel (already) the urge to include some white wine in that sauce ...

Which brings us back to the Full English Breakfast, a meal of bacon, sausage, egg (but not for hubby), mushrooms (but not for son & heir), black pudding, baked beans (but not for me), tomato (but not for either chap) and fried bread (definitely not for me - I'll have toast!).

Looking at that list of likes, dislikes and dietary requirements, I'm jolly glad I'm not cooking it!

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Two days into the new week : meal planning w/b 11.10.11

Yes, I know, I should have done this blog post by now.  Oh, but you do nag!  *chuckle*

Don't ask me what I've been doing in the meantime, but I seem to have been sat at the computer without anything useful coming of it, except I have collected quite a few new recipes and ideas for menu planning in future.  I consider this to be a good thing.

This week's meal plan is quite a good'un, I reckon.  It seems to be dominated by bacon in several instances, but three out of seven isn't all bad.

So let's have a look at what I'm planning :

Tues : Pizza for son & heir, Sweet & Sour Pork with rice for us

Wed : Spicy Chicken & Bacon pasties with salad

Thurs : Meatballs and pasta

Fri : Chicken Piccata with mashed potatoes, carrots & broccoli

Sat : Pasta Alla Amatriciana

Sun : Lamb & boulangere potatoes with carrots & garden veg

Mon : Full English Breakfast.

That all sounds really nice, I reckon.  I'm looking forward to all of it!

It's now Thursday as I'm writing this, so we've already had the Sweet & Sour Pork and my goodness what a triumph it was!  Accolades have to be given to the Adora's Box blog which is where the recipe came from.  The next time I make it (and there will be a next time) I shall make sure to include son & heir in, as I'm sure he'd enjoy it.  The flavours are gentle and rounded, not at all rough or acidic as they so often are with sweet and sour recipes.  He particularly hates vinegar-like flavours, and although this recipe contains a tablespoonful of vinegar, you'd be hard pressed to know.

Anyway, it deserves a blog post of its own, so watch out for it!

Last night was the Spicy Chicken & Bacon Pasties and apart from a complete lack of being able to pleat a pasty - my skill at doing so totally deserted me - they were really successful.  This one came from a BBC Good Food "40 Chicken recipes" booklet and you can find the recipe on the BBC Good Food website.

I will be blogging about these separately, too - and will include my recipe for them, as I tinkered about with it quite a lot!

Tonight was to have been Meatballs & Pasta, produced by hubby, but we had one of those "forgetting to take it out of the freezer" moments and so the meatballs are off.  We'll have to stop at Sainsbury's and pick up a bag of salad and some fish in breadcrumbs, I reckon.

Apparently, this is what it will look like!

Tomorrow's recipe, Chicken Piccata, is one from Foodista.  However, the author is anonymous, so I can't give him or her the credit they deserve.  Anyway, it's an interesting recipe where you pan fry the flattened out chicken breasts that have been dunked in seasoned flour with lemon zest.  Then you make a sauce which involves wine, lemon juice and capers.  I'm hugely interested to know how this will turn out, so watch the blog and I'll tell you!

Saturday's Pasta Alla Amatriciana is a bit of an experiment.  I used to have an Amatriciana recipe that son & heir and I really liked, but that didn't agree with hubby and gave him terrible indigestion.  I eventually had to bin that recipe, having tried all ways to make it okay for him to eat, without success.

This one, however, is prepared completely differently and with different ingredients (in some instances) and with no chilli.  Again, I'm intrigued by it.  It comes from Chow.com and is attributed to a Chef called Robert Sietsema.  For all that I can't replicate a lot of his ingredients as they are die-hard Italian, I'll do my best to get good ingredients locally for this and we'll see how I fare!

Sunday sees a repetition of the Lamb & boulangere potatoes that got bounced from last week.  I'm determined to do this recipe as it keeps on making my mouth water!  I'm hoping that some more of the garden vegetables will be ready to use by then.  In fact, looking down the garden from the window here, I can see a Romanescu Cauliflower peeking out the top of some leaves - so we should be okay there!

Now I do think that perhaps we should skip lightly over Monday and not talk about it too much.  *blush*  Why am I so embarrassed?  Well, it's a full English Breakfast for dinner - and I'm supposed to be losing weight!  However, it's a request from son & heir who doesn't often request particular meals - and we'd all been feeling the lack of black pudding in our diets, for ages.  A large part of the meat (bacon & sausage) will be grilled and if I don't have any fried bread and opt for a poached egg instead of fried, I reckon I should be able to get by without doing too much damage!  Ah well, it only happens once in a blue moon.

I also have a conundrum to conjur with, this week.  I have been given a huge bag of apples, which are demanding to be done something creative with.  Having had a long and intense ponder, I'm currently thinking along the lines of an apple cake.  Not so much sponge, as a more robust mix such as the Marmalade cake used.  Also, not sliced apples laid on the top, more chunks of apple throughout the cake - much as you would find cherries in a cherry cake.  Maybe some caramel aspect in there too.  I dunno - I'm still working it out.  However, rest assured that you'll hear about it quick sharp if it works out well - and with rather less speed if it's a complete disaster.

So - lots to look forward to!

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