Garden soup

As mentioned in my previous post, I have been quite busy in my garden over the past few months planting and maintaining veg.  The first things that I planted this year were spinach, watercress and rocket seeds.  I sowed them straight into a prepared bed in May

Hello again!

As you can see I have been absent for quite a while again.  It’s been very busy here in the Craftycook household with me adjusting to being at home with the kids.  Just when I was getting into a routine the summer holidays sneaked up on me and I had to adjust the routine again!

We are still planning our menus and doing our shopping lists

Tomato, lentil and lime soup - yummy!!

For lunch today we had tomato, lentil and lime soup.  The recipe is from the April 2012 issue of Olive magazine.  I found the recipe on the Good Food website by searching for lime soup.  There were a few lime left in my fruit bowl (they are starting to look a bit sad so I wanted to use them up) so I decided to see if there was a recipe that would allow me to use one of them for lunch.

One thing that I liked about this recipe (other than the fact that the soup was delicious) is that it uses both the zest and the juice of the lime, so there is no waste.  The recipe is easy to follow and quick to make.  I had a little bit more soup than what was needed to serve two people, so I have a portion left over for lunch tomorrow (there may well be a fight over who gets to take it to work!) as well as being able to feed two adults and a child lunch. 

I didn't give it to my son as I used a stock cube to make the vegetable stock.  To make the soup suitable for giving to a baby you need either make your own vegetable stock from scratch, omitting salt or use a low salt variety of stock cube (for example, Boots sell low salt stock cubes suitable for weaning in the baby food section of their shops).

Alterations
I made a few small alterations to the recipe.  I couldn't find my cumin seeds so I decided to use a little ground cumin instead of spending ages looking for the seeds.  I didn't have a large carrot, but had four small ones which I used instead.  Also, while the soup was simmering, the volume of the liquid decreased quite a bit, so I added some boiled water from the kettle to the pot. 

Cost
The onion for the soup cost 20 cent, the carrots were about 30 cent, the can of chopped tomatoes were 45 cent (from Lidl), the lime was 25 cent and I have allowed another 50 cent for the stock cube, ground cumin and puy lentils.  That makes the total cost of the soup €1.70 for three adult portions and a child's portion.  I think this would easily feed a family of four if the children are quite young.  If they are a bit older you might want to double to ingredients and have any leftovers you might have for lunch the next day.

If I had successfully grown my own carrots and onions this year (as I did last year) then the cost of the soup would have been €1.20 which is extremely cheap for lunch for the family.

Menu planner 8/7/2012 to 13/7/2012

I've been a little slow at getting my menu plan for this week up - sorry about that.  Anyway, I have finally got round to posting it.  This is week two of my July challenge, so I am attempting to keep the cost of the shopping down by using leftovers from the freezer and other items I have in already.  Another way that I will be able to keep costs down this week is by using some veg that my father-in-law grew and gave to me and by using some eggs that my brother-in-law gave to me.

We were at a Christening on Saturday so my menu plan for this week only runs from Sunday 8th July to Friday 13th July.  It is as follows:

Sunday dinner - Leftover better-than-baked-beans and oven chips
Monday dinner - Letfover sweet and sour pork and rice
Tuesday dinner - Salmon, broccoli and new potatoes
Wednesday dinner - Summer chicken and basil stew
Thursday dinner - Leftover summer chicken and basil stew
Friday dinner - Fish, chips, peas and sweetcorn

For lunches we will be having soup, sandwiches and leftovers if there are any.

Patatas bravas with chorizo

Last night I made the patatas bravas with chorizo from the May 2010 issue of the Good food magazine.  According to the recipe it serves 6 as an appetiser, but I made it for dinner instead, adjusting the volume of ingredients so that I made enough for two adults, one child and a baby.

The recipe was easy to follow and make, but I had to steam the potatoes for longer than the suggested 10 minutes as they were still rock hard after the 10 minutes had passed.  Next time I will cut the potatoes smaller in the hope that they steam quicker.  Another thing that I will change for next time is the type of potatoes that I use.  We had roosters in the house, so I used these but they were too floury and feel apart in the pan a bit.  I think that waxy potatoes might have held together a bit better.

To save time when I make this recipe in the future I will probably steam the potatoes the day before and keep them in the fridge until I am ready to use them.

For the baby I mashed some of the potatoes and stirred in some of the tomato sauce and onion.  He loved it.

Alterations
Instead of using 250g of small cooking chorizo I used three large cooking chorizo from Marks and Spencers and cut them into chunks.  I substituted the red chilli in the recipe for some dried crushed chillis instead and as there was no cayenne pepper in the house I didn't add it to the dish.  As the recipe was only for two adults and one child I used less potatoes than the suggested 1kg.

Cost
The chorizo sausages that I used cost €1.25.  I have estimated that the potatoes I used were €1.50, the onion was 20 cent, the can of chopped tomatoes was 67 cent and I have allowed 30 cent for the garlic, olive oil and spices.  That makes the total cost €3.92 which is quite reasonable for dinner for the family.

If I used potatoes from the garden the cost of the meal would be reduced further, making it an even cheaper recipe to make.

Salmon with basil veg

Last week I made a version of the spring salmon with minty veg recipe from the Goodfood website for dinner one of the nights.  Mine was more like spring salmon with basil veg though as I had leftover basil in the fridge and decided to use it, as per the suggestion at the bottom of the recipe.

With regards to the veg, I used a mix of fresh and frozen veg.  I used broccoli, green beans and frozen peas.  This meant that I had a little bit of prep to do for the broccoli, but I was able to do this while the potatoes were boiling so it didn't really take any extra time.

Cooking the salmon in the microwave worked really well.  I have used the microwave to cook fish before and I've found that you have to be very careful when doing it as it is easy to overcook it and make it rubbery.  However, with this recipe the salmon stayed really moist owing to the that it was covered with the dressing.  I stopped the microwave after 3 and a half minutes to check it and then gave it another 15 seconds and it was done.  If you've not used a microwave before to cook fish then it might be a good idea to check the salmon periodically while it is cooking to make sure it doesn't overcook.

Tip
I made extra salmon, potatoes and veg and chopped it up and froze it in portions for the baby for during the week.  He devoured his portion and ate some green beans as finger food as well.  If I am doing a dinner that is suitable for him I have started making extra to freeze for him rather than making food specially for him now.  When I defrost a portion and heat it up for him I will add a bit of boiled water to it as it can be quite dry when it comes out of the freezer.  I find this is a handy way of getting water into him as well as he can be a bit reluctant to drink it some days.

Cost
The salmon was €6 for three fillets (I used Donegal catch frozen fillets which are skinned), the basil was 40 cent, the lemon was 25 cent, the frozen peas were 30 cent, the broccoli was 40 cent, the green beans were €1.50 and the potatoes I used were 99 cent.  This means the total cost of the meal that I made was €9.84.  For this I feed two adults, two kids and got 8 portions for the freezer for the baby. 

This is one of the more expensive meals that I have made, but given that I got so many portions of dinner for the baby out of it as well I think it works out as quite good value when you consider the cost of jars of baby food.  If I had used all frozen veg then the cost could have been lowered a bit.  Also, when my potatoes and green beans are eventually ready in the garden, and if I planted some herbs, I could lower the cost further.

Looks like it may be a good one!

Sitting here looking out the window I can see that it looks like it is going to be a good day.  If the weather is good I am going to do some gardening.  I still have quite a bit to do to get some bits of the garden ready for planting.  As well as this, I still have quite a few seeds that I need to sow indoors so that I have some plants to plant out in a month or two.  So, I have plenty to do in the garden to keep me busy.

How do I decide what to plant?
I thought it might be a good idea to explain how I have decided which vegetables to grow.  Although I have a big garden and plenty of space to grow all sorts of vegetables, I want to make sure I get the most out of my growing space.  For that reason I made a list of the vegetables that we eat the most in our house.  I then put a star beside the items that are the most expensive, put a star beside those that are easy to grow and put a star beside those that take up the least space in the garden.  Any vegetables with two or three stars beside them I will definitely grow.  Those with one or no stars I'll think a bit more about whether or not to grow them - mostly this will boil down to space.

For example, I will definitely be growing green beans because we eat a lot of green beans in our house, they are expensive and easy to grow.  They do take up more space than some other items, but one plant will give a lot of beans.  Green beans are also good as they are relatively easy to freeze and store for use later in the year.  Also, beans are nitrogen fixing plants which means that they put nitrogen back into the soil when they are growing.  For this reason it is good to grow them in beds that I will be putting kale, spinach etc into the following year as these vegetables require a lot of nitrogen to grow.  So growing green beans has additional benefits as well as saving money!

This year I am planning on growing - kale, green beans, sugar snap peas, lettuce (various types), broccoli, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumber, onions - red and white, green beans, beetroot, parsnip, spinach, strawberries, blueberries, scallions (spring onions), radishes and one courgette plant.

A change of plans..and a cake.

The weather was quite good today so instead of the planned chicken with mushrooms and red wine sauce we ended up having a barbeque. 

As well as having an impromptu barbeque, my daughter and I made the Chocolate brownie cake from the March 2007 issue of Goodfood magazine.  It was really easy to make and didn't take too long in the oven.  However, when I was lifting it out of the oven it was very wobbly.  After searching the Internet I decided that perhaps that was the way it was supposed to be.  I left it to cool while we ate our dinner and then served it with ice cream.  It was very heavy and stodgy.  The outside was quite crisp while the inside was very gooey.  The cake had risen about the edges of the cake tin in the oven (despite me using a 22 cm tin instead of the specified 20 cm tin) but after cooling it had sunk right back down to the bottom of the tin.  I am not really a fan of heavy chocolate cakes or desserts in general so I doubt I will make this again.  Even my daughter wasn't fussed on it.

As well as having a barbeque and making a cake, we also got a bit of planting done today.  We have 6 strawberry plants in the garden already that we planted last year, but I bought a few runners to plant up when my daughter was disappointed by the lack of strawberries from the 6 plants last year.  She helped me to put 8 runners in pots.  I'll leave them in the pots for a few weeks before planting them out. 

We also got two beds ready for sowing potatoes.  In total I planted 5 types of potatoes.  I have put my early potatoes - Duke of York's - in a bed that I will ultimately be putting my beans in.  They will be gone by the time I am planting out my beans.  The other potatoes we planted were Maris Pipers, King Edwards, Charlotte and Kerr's pinks.  Our first potatoes will be ready in 11 weeks - in the middle of June.  From then on, anytime I am making dinner that requires potatoes I will use some from the garden, saving a little money on my food shopping bill.

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.

Salmon, green beans and baby potatoes

Tonight we had a dinner mostly from the freezer.  It went down really well and cleared a bit of space in our freezer.  It also allowed me to use up the last of the green beans I had grown in the garden and frozen last year.  To be honest, the beans were not at their best as they were frozen in the middle of September.

The baby potatoes were on offer in Dunnes and bought for 49 cent, the Salmon was bought when it was on offer and around €4.  As the green beans were homegrown this dinner was quite cheap.