Growing your own vegetables - why would you bother?

For the past few years we have been attempting to grown our own food with varying degrees of success.  The soil in the garden of the house we are living in at the moment isn't really up to much, so we had a very unproductive year when we first moved in here.  Last year we decided to put in raise beds and buy some top soil for them, improving the growing conditions in our garden considerably.  This worked out well and we had quite a productive year so I am excited to see how we get on this year. 

There are several reasons why we decided to grow some of our own vegetables.  Here are a few of them:-

1. Growing our own vegetables means that we know exactly where they have come from and the conditions they have been grown in.  We don't use any chemical fertilisers or pesticides. 
2. We have the freshest possible ingredients when we use those we grow ourselves for our meals as we pick them just before using them. 
3. Using vegetables that we have grown ourselves lowers our carbon footprint - we don't have far to travel to get them!  The vegetables in shops have also had to travel from where they were grown to the where they are being sold which adds to the carbon footprint of any veg that is bought in a shop.
4. If I grow the vegetables I use myself then it saves me money buying them.  Although there is a bit of a cost involved with growing your own, many of the items that are required are one off purchases, so you soon get to a point where you are saving money.  Plus, the cost of a pack of seeds is much less than the cost of the veg in the shops.
5. It's quite easy to grow your own vegetables, so there is no excuse not to!  With potatoes, you just put some seed potatoes in the ground, come back 11 - 14 weeks later (depending on the type) and you have potatoes ready to eat.

As well as posting about what is happening in my kitchen, I will also be posting about growing my own fruit and vegetables.  Although not technically part of the kitchen, my garden is being put to use to support the activities of my kitchen so I feel that it is relevant to my blog. 

You may think that you don't have much room in your garden for growing your own vegetables but it is possible to put some lettuce, spinach into a window box, or tomatoes or strawberries in hangings baskets, or grow some herbs or fruit bushes in pots...there are endless.  In fact, when I was in Woodies DIY on Friday picking up some kale seeds I noticed that they have a range of seeds specifically for growing in window boxes or in pots on patios.  Even if you only plant one thing, it will save you money as you will not have to buy this item, so it is worth having a go.

Crab linguine with chili and parsley

Tonight for dinner I made the crab linguine with chilli and parsley from the March 2011 issue of Goodfood magazine.

Unfortunately when I went to get the linguine from the cupboard I discovered that my husband had been using it instead of spaghetti so I had none left.  I did have some nice tagliatelle in that a friend brought back from a holiday in Italy, so decided to use this instead.

I made a bit of an error as well in that I misread the crab that was needed to make the recipe and only had 200g of white crab meat.  The recipe still turned out well, but I think if I had the brown crab meat it would have turned out a bit better.  If I make it again I will make sure to have the correct crab for the recipe. 
Last Saturday night when I made a meal that required parsley, I got the parsley ready in advance and forgot to add it to the pot at the appropriate time.  This week, I made sure that the parsley went in!

The squeeze of lemon is optional.  I decided to add it as I have lemons left over from the shopping last week.  I love the taste of lemon and parsley together and think they go particular well together with any seafood, but this is the first time I've tried them with the crab.  I actually ended up getting the lemon and squeezing a bit more lemon juice on it as I was eating it as I felt it needed a bit more.  It was really tasty with the extra lemon.  If I make it again I will be putting extra lemon in before serving.

It was really quick and easy to make - definitely one for a night when you need to get dinner ready in a hurry.

Cost - Again this is a bit of a hard one for me to put a definite figure on with regards to cost as some of the ingredients I have had in for a while - like the tagliatelle and wine.  The crab I got was on special offer.  I reckon the meal was less than €5 in total, but if the crab had not been on offer it would have been quite a bit more than this.

Another lesson!

So, as you can see I've been very good planning my meals and getting back on track last week with my shopping and everything only to be hindered with the break down of my Internet!  Last week I forgot to make a copy of my weekly planner or note down the recipes I needed in order to follow it, which meant I had to wing it through the week when it came to cooking!  When I finally got Internet access again I could see that I hadn't exactly stuck to my meal planner much (leaving me to question the ability of my memory now!!).  I think from now on I'll be writing my meal planner out and sticking it to the fridge in case we have another incident with our Internet access.

As a result of not sticking to my meal planner through the week I have some ingredients that I need to use this week so you may notice that I am using some of the same meals for my planner this week as I did last week.

Here is my meal planner for the next week:-
Saturday dinner -  Crab linguine with chilli and parsley
Sunday lunch - Crab and sweetcorn chowder
Sunday dinner -  Chicken breast with mushrooms and red wine sauce, broccoli and boiled potatoes
Monday dinner -  Mackerel, baked potatoes and salad
Tuesday dinner -  Herb and lemon pork chops (from freezer) with mash and vegetables
Wednesday dinner -  Mince and onions (from freezer), mash and vegetables
Thursday dinner - Wraps
Friday dinner -  Salmon, broccoli and mash

For lunches during the week we will have spring onion (scallion) soup, ham sandwiches and leek, potato and bacon soup.

I make the chicken breast with mushrooms and red wine sauce from memory now and couldn't remember where I came across the recipe - I should have known it was from the Goodfood magazine!  Thankfully I was able to find it to provide a link.

TIP  The herb and lemon chops have been prepared in advance and frozen before cooking so that all I need to do is to lift them out the night before, defrost them and cook them on Tuesday evening for dinner.  I decided to do the prep work in advance before freezing the chops for two reason - to save time when making the dinner during the week and to make sure that the parsley and lemon get used.

Lentils with chorizo and red wine - yummy!!

On Saturday evening, as planned, we had lentils with chorizo and red wine for dinner.  I have to say that it totally surpassed any expectations that I had.  My husband confessed to me after we had finished that when he saw it in the pan prior to being served he was a bit concerned about eating it, but that he loved it and would like to add it to our regular list of dinners.  Proof that looks can indeed be deceptive!! 
As per the recipe suggestion I served mine with plenty of crusty bread which we used to mop up the juices.  As the kids had gone to bed, we decided to finish the bottle of wine we used with the meal. 

I added more liquid than is stated in the recipe as I felt my lentils were not soft enough by the time the liquid had reduced.  I poured in a bit more water, but I think if I make it again I will simply add an extra 100mls of stock.  If it doesn't all reduce that won't be a problem as the juice is delicious mopped up with the bread.

I had no fresh thyme in so I didn't add it.  If I had thought at the time I would have added a little dried thyme, but I wasn't really thinking.

The other difference I made was totally accidental.  I had my parsley prepared in advance...and forgot to add it!  My husband went into the kitchen with the bowls when we had finished and shouted that he could really taste the parsley in the dish.  Cheeky git!!  Anyway, if you do not have any parsley then don't worry about it as I can assure you that the meal still tastes delicious.  Next time I will be adding parsley though as it is one of my favourite ingredients, which I guess just goes to show how tasty the dish was that I was so wrapped up in eating it that I hadn't noticed that I left the parsley out!

COST - it is hard for me to work out the cost of this one as I had the chorizo, garlic and lentils in.  I had to buy wine, onion, leek and the parsley which I accidentally omitted.  I think it is safe to say that the recipe is well under €5 though, but I think the cost depends a lot on the wine you buy.

The disorganisation continues...but not for long!

So my excuse for this past week?  Well, my husband took me to Paris for the weekend so all good intentions of sorting out a meal plan for the week promptly went out the window.  Good excuse really, but there will be no more trips anywhere if I don't get my act together and start planning my meals for the week and sticking to a shopping list again!
So, to refresh myself my shopping budget for the week is €130.  This is to include formula and nappies for the baby.  I recently stocked up on nappies and formula, so I shouldn't have to buy either of them for a while so hopefully I'll be under budget.  I've decided that any money that I 'save' from the budget each week will go into our savings account.  Hopefully it will start to accumulate quickly!!

So to kick myself back into kitchen control action, here is my meal planner for next week:-

Saturday lunch - sandwiches
Saturday dinner - Lentils with chorizo and red wine
Sunday lunch - Crab and sweetcorn chowder
Sunday dinner -  Herb and lemon pock chops, baby potatoes and green beans
Monday dinner - Crab linguine with chilli and parsley
Tuesday dinner - Oven-baked leek and bacon risotto
Wednesday dinner - Chicken wraps
Thursday dinner - Sausages with creamy lentils
Friday dinner - Mince and onions (from freezer) with mash potato

I have my shopping list done, ready for me to go and pick up the ingredients I need tomorrow night. 

Chaos in the kitchen!

Well, as you can see I haven't posted in quite a while.  We've had a bit of a chaotic time in the kitchen of late.  As a result of being ill and then being away my normal careful meal planning has gone out the window a bit!  It's fair to say that this has meant that I have ended up spending more money per meal than we have in previous weeks.  There was also more waste as a result of deciding what to have for dinner on a day by day basis and then buying what I needed in the shops without knowing what was in the fridge.  Doing this meant that I wasn't making use of the ingredients in my fridge and they ended up going off.

I think the lesson learnt here is that I need to organise my freezer a bit better so that I have more standby dinners that can be used when I am ill or away.  Although I had a few in there, they were used quite quickly.  The other thing I have decided that I need to do it get more vegetables in my freezer.  I have frozen vegetables that I have grown in the past, but these were all used well before the end of 2011, so I think in the future I will need to have in some frozen vegetables from the supermarket if I have none of my own in the freezer.