Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Organised Mummy

This week, I decided to get organised and create a menu for the week as I was fed up of scratching my head every day thinking what to cook for lunch & dinner.

So armed with my reliable recipes from the BLW site and a few other places, I created the weeks menu and this is what we have had so far. (I've posted the recipes at the bottom of the post.)

Mon - Brekfast:Apple & cinnamon hot cross bun with 2 pieces of nectarine
Lunch: Cheese, carrot & spring onion pitta pocket followed by a few raisins
Dinner: Chicken stir fry and 1/2 conference pear for dessert
Tues - Breakfast: 1/2 weetabix and small bit of banana
Lunch: Savoury Muffins followed by 1 bit of nectarine
Dinner: Vegetable chilli and rice and banana yoghurt for dessert
Weds - Breakfast: 1/2 Blueberry bran muffin
Lunch: Jacket potato with cheese and sweetcorn fritter followed by dried apricot & mango
Dinner: Cheese & spinach quesadilla and strawberry yoghurt (with Plum 4 grain porridge in)

So, Monday & Tuesday's menu went down well.

While I was in M&S last week I noticed they had an offer on their hot cross buns and as they are a firm fave in our house I took M&S up on their offer of buy one get one half price and bought 1 pack of regular and 1 pack of apple & cinnamon to give them a try, and oo they were yummy! TP (as always) loves his pitta pockets and I thought I would try something different by adding the spring onion which was a rgaing succes! The noodles, again are something he loves - I'm not sure whether he prefers to eat them or swing them around his arm the most though!

Tueday was another day for trying new things on the menu and I made my 1st attempt at savoury muffins, well I followed the cheese & onion recipe and added a few bits to suit us. So I used half red & half regular onions and added a tiny bit of bacon. Yes, I know bacon has alot of salt BUT TP doesn't really eat that much salt - mostly in bread & cheese and it was a tiny bit to add some flavour, I also threw some carrot in there too because you can never eat too many carrots. :D Disaster struck when I took my silicone muffin tin from the oven and it bent (as they do!) and I dropped the muffins, so had to start again and cook another batch! Anyway, they came out lovely and tasted so nice they were almost like dumplings that are really crispy on the outside and so soft and melting in the middle - I will definately be making these again! The veg chilli was nice but I think next time I will add more chilli powder as it was a bit mild, and I know TP can stand more heat. Oh, I overcooked the rice so it was nice and soft to mix in with the chilli.

Recipes:

Savoury Muffins - makes 6

Ingredients
5 oz plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 large egg
4fl oz milk
2oz cheese - grated
1/2 small red onion
1/2 small regular onion
1/2 strip bacon
1 carrot - grated

Method
Preheat the oven to gas mark 6 and line a muffin tun with 6 muffin cases
Fry the onion (until soft) and bacon - I used a griddle
Sift the flour and baking powder together and put into a bowl
Beat the egg in a jug and add the milk, whisk together
Fold into the flour (don't over-fold as we want to keep the air in)
Add cheese, onion, bacon and carrot (again, with minimum folding!)
Pour the mixture into the muffin cases and bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.
Leave to cool (if you can wait that long!).


Vegetable Chilli - makes enough for 1 baby & 1 Mummy

Ingredients
1/2 onion
1/2 pepper
1/2 courgette
couple of mushrooms
1 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp smoked paprika (optional)
1 small tin of kidney beans
1 small tin of tomatoes
water (the amount depends on how thick you like your chilli)

Method
Dice the two halves of onion and fry in olive oil on medium heat until soft and add the chilli powder & smoked paprika if using and continue frying for a minute or 2
Slice or chop the vegetables and add to the pan and cook for a coule of minutes
Add the kidney beans, tomatoes and stir together the add the water to desired thickness
Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 -30 minutes

If you make it too spicy for the baby, you can stir some sour cream or mashed avocado into the chilli to cool it a bit.

Serve with over-cooked long grain rice or put into wraps for burritos!

1 comment:

Kat - Housewife Confidential said...

Wow - totally organised! I'm impressed :0)