Frugal Lunches

Now that I am doing supply teaching I never know from one day to the next if I will be working. My first assignment came with a telephone call one morning at 8:50am to ask if I could do a days work beginning as soon as possible! Luckily it was at the local primary school and I managed to be in the classroom teaching by ten past nine!

This does produce a challenge for lunch times mind you and I have started to make sure that there is something in the fridge that I can just grab and go. Dave takes a packed lunch to work each day, although he will get a bit bored if it's sandwiches everyday so I try to be a little bit creative. It's not only the desire to provide something different that motivates me however, have you seen the cost of cut meats lately? On top of that, I have never liked to waste food and in my current situation I need to watch every penny.

Despite what I said above, today's lunch for Dave was sandwiches. Having bought a small free range chicken from Lidl yesterday I cut off the legs and roasted them for today's lunches, took off the breast fillets for tomorrow's evening meal (not sure what it will be yet, but it will use said chicken breasts!) cut off the wings to collect in a bag in the freezer until I have enough for salt & pepper chicken wings and popped the leftover carcass into the freezer to make into stock at some future date. The chicken cost £3.68 - it would have cost me more than that for the two breast fillets alone! So Dave had chicken and mayo sarnies and there was chicken leftover in a bowl in the fridge in case I got "the call" to work. As it happened the call never came, no work today, so  a "scrape of the fridge" seemed in order to use up or freeze any bits and pieces left lurking there. 

 We had home made mince pie for dinner the other day and there was a fair size chunk of shortcrust pastry in there as well as some left over dough from the home made tortillas from yesterday's evening meal of Quesadillas. I rolled out and cooked four more flour tortillas and once cooled popped them in the freezer for another day. After that I decided on pasties for tomorrow's lunches. Having wasted spent some time earlier perusing one or two blogs, I had decided I just had to try this for lunch so the chicken that was scheduled to go in my lunchtime sarnie was now a "leftover" which I needed to incorporate into my pasties. 

Hmmm ... what to add?

I diced a couple of potatoes and carrots added a few frozen peas and boiled them together for 5 minutes whilst frying off a diced onion and a pepper that had seen better days with a little garlic and ginger. I added the drained veg (keeping back the cooking water) and lobbed in a bit of garam masala, a pinch of dried chillies and a dash of turmeric (all very scientific - not!). Gave it all a stir and added a few splashes of the cooking water and a couple of teaspoons of tomato puree. Another stir later I added some chopped (frozen) coriander, then tasted and seasoned with salt and pepper. The chicken was stirred in and then I left the whole lot to cool before making pasties.

 

My pasties generally have a rather "rustic" look to them, but that's how I like them- to me part of the appeal of homemade food is that it looks homemade and not like some sterile tasteless mass produced offering.

The last tiny bit of pastry made a titchy pasty for sampling purposes!

Purely in the interests of quality control you understand - it passed!

There was a bit of the filling leftover, probably enough for another two pasties, and that has been popped in a little tub in the freezer to contribute to a future lunchtime pasty.

I just have to leave you with a picture of my lunchtime sandwich ...

...fried egg and chorizo.

The inspiration was from The Quince Tree Blog . Thank you Sue, it was amazing, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven!

Making the most of flowers.

I love it when someone gives me the gift of cut flowers.

They brighten up the house in a way that nothing else can and each time I look at a gift of flowers on display it warms my heart.

The down side is that all too soon cut flowers will begin to fade - but there is a way to hold onto them and continue to appreciate and love their delicate beauty.

On my final day at work I was given a gorgeous bouquet of flowers. (Sorry, I didn't get around to taking pictures.) 

Now they lasted well - almost two weeks in fact, but by Thursday of last week they were looking undeniably tired.

My first task was to save those that still had some life in them. There were some red carnations and some white chrysanths that still looked quite perky, so were cut down and rearranged into a couple of small jugs.

These are still going, albeit they are just starting to look a little jaded around the edges and may have to be "recycled" tomorrow, but an extra whole week of pleasure has been gained.

Now, you may be wondering how on earth I recycle jaded blooms. 

For some time now I have always removed the petals from any flowers once they are beyond display. Indeed the petals from the part of the aforementioned bouquet that could not be salvaged were duly removed and placed in a plastic tub.

The said tub is placed on top of my central heating boiler, an airing cupboard or anywhere else dry and warm would work just as well. When the petals have dried I place them in bowls around the house and scent them with essential oils - free "pot pouri".

This is the bowl of dried petals that lives in my sitting room. I love the delicate faded colours of the dried petals.

And this is the bowl of faded red rose petals in my bedroom. 

The bowl incidentally was a charity shop buy - only 50p! I keep a look out for nice bowls and containers to pop my petals into. 

Eventually the petals will become too faded and dusty to display, but if you save and dry your flowers regularly you will always have replacements.

Final tip: once dried, if you don't need to use them immediately just seal them in a paper bag and store in a dark, dry cupboard - I have found that they seem to keep indefinitely like this without further fading.

 

Rather Delicious Rabbit Pie - is this as frugal as it gets?

You don't get more frugal than free!

While I had to pay for most of the ingredients in this pie the rabbit itself was donated by my youngest daughter's boyfriend.

Whenever I am faced with a wild rabbit to cook I make this pie and it is always well received.

There is no guarantee of age or tenderness with a wild rabbit so I always begin the day before I want the pie and cook the rabbit in the slow cooker.

I added a few ingredients to enhance the flavour of the stock as it will be used in the sauce for the pie.

• The washed top and bottom of an onion skin and all - no point in wasting a full onion when it is only for flavouring and will be discarded, so I use the trimmings from an onion used in another recipe. (If you want to be really frugal you can save these in the freezer for just such a purpose - I don't but maybe I should!)
• A washed and unpeeled carrot well past it's best. - Again it's not going to be eaten and so dosen't need to be pristine. If I have been preparing carrots for another dish I have sometimes used the washed peelings and trimmings to flavour the stock.
• Some herbs - I used a couple of sprigs of rosemary from the plant in my front garden, a tiny few sprigs of thyme that were barely clinging to life again from said garden, a dried bayleaf and some parsley from the freezer. I buy any whoopsied bags of herbs from the supermarket especially if they are reduced right down to 10p. Pop them in the freezer, just as they are and crumble bits off the frozen herb as needed.

The rabbit was left simmering all day in the slow cooker and then allowed to cool overnight.

Next day remove the rabbit and pick off all the lovely meat, being careful to leave any bones behind. Strain the stock and then use both meat and stock in the rabbit pie, recipe below.

Rather Delicious Rabbit Pie

Cooked rabbit - prepared as above.
1/2 pint of reserved rabbit stock.
1/2 pint milk.
1 heaped tablespoon flour
1 oz butter (NOT margarine please. -  It is just not the same!)
2 hard boiled eggs.
2 teaspoons whole grain mustard.
Salt and pepper.
Ready made (All butter) puff pastry.

Place the rabbit in your pie dish. Quarter the eggs and arrange them among the chunks of rabbit. Mix the stock and milk together. *Heat the butter in a saucepan and add the flour - combine them quickly and ensuring that you stir constantly cook over a medium heat for 30 seconds or so. Take off the heat and add the stock/milk gradually. At first add only a little at a time and beat the mixture furiously after each addition. Once about 1/4 of the liquid has been added you can usually add the rest all at once. If your sauce looks a little lumpy at any stage just use a balloon whisk and beat furiously and it should all be ok. Return the pan to the heat and bring to the boil stirring constantly. Once boiled and thickened remove the sauce and add the mustard,  and salt and pepper to taste. Pour over the rabbit and eggs. Roll out the pastry and use to top the pie. I tend to brush the top of my pastry with milk - too stingy to use an egg. I also like to score a fancy pattern in the top, but that is only because I like the look of it. Bake in a hot oven until the pastry is well risen and golden.

*If you are a little nervous about using the "roux" method to make your sauce bung the flour, butter and cold milk/stock into a saucepan and bring to the boil whilst stirring constantly. You will still get a lovely smooth sauce, I just feel that using the classic method results in a slightly creamier sauce, but I may be wrong!

I served ours with roasties, carrots and purple sprouting broccoli - Yum!!