I cannot stress enough how important menu plannning is to me... to know exactly what we are eating and what I have to prepare, to organise for the week is vital.
Many of our meals contain dried pulses so I have to soak and cook them, and as we are e just lighting the range at mid afternoon now, I have to work out tonights dinner, plus tomorrows lunch, and cook bread etc ... so planning it is important. Batch cooking and baking not only is frugal with your money but it frees up time do do other things...
I bake three loves of soda bread every other day (one extra as we have our french helper Valeri)
At the same time I make a large pan of soup that will feed us all two days, I cook the dried pulses at the same time too. then the following day, I have all day to wrk on other stuff outside.
Our menu this week looks like this...
Sat. Lunch - Big soup. Chorizo, potato, onion, garlic, french beans, and a good handful of soup pasta... served with soada bread. Dinner is a mix of last nights leftovers, (cabbage & potato) cooked with a little cubed belly pork, onions garlic and dried beans, into a kind of Migas.
Sun. Soup / bread.
Roast Pork, potatoes, cabbage, and squash, and Valeri has promished to make Crepes.. as we have friends coming to dinner.
Mon. Cabbage soup /Bread , Dinner will be Soya Spag Bol, (I'll make a giant batch of soya )
Tues. Scrambled egg /bread. Dinner, Soya Lasagne
Weds. Homemade beans on bread. Dinner will be the last batch of the soya with cumin and beans added with potatoes and dumplings as savoury mince...
Thurs. Soup /bread Dinner is Pork (frozen leftovers from Sunday dinner) &veg rissotto.
Fri. Tortilla - Dinner Im hoping will be Pork and chestnut stew, if the chestnuts which look almost ready have been picked by then.
I'll try to come in to blog early next week to post some of the recipes Ive mentioned here. Almost everything will come from my storecupboard or the freezer, I'm trying to only buy milk and the odd thing at the moment..
Frugal living in the Portuguese countryside,Eco-tourism, Agri tourism, recipes,family life, self sufficency, eco living, vegetable growing, tips and self help ideas for country living.
