Half a Sheep! or a side of lamb

We had very little meat left this week. The freezer was empty. So I planned for lamb stew (see Thursday's menu plan) and headed to High Country Meats. I like this store - no frills, minimal packaging, lowish prices.
I ended up buying a side of lamb - for $5/kg, it looked like a pretty good deal. It wasn't as big as I thought, easy enough to fit in our freezer, but I was a bit unsure as to what sort of cuts were actually in there. I ended up with:
- a 1.5kg roast
- 4 dinner-sized packages of lamb chops
- 2 shanks which will make a good stew
- 4 or 5 spare ribs, I think.
- a 1.5 kg bit of lamb breast, which just looks like a whole lot of skinny ribs in one piece and not much meat.
I know I should be able to roll the lamb breast and stuff it - but I don't know how to get the bones out. Instead, I'm turning it into stock. So that makes at least 8 meals for the two of us, plus stock, and the leftovers from the roast. That will keep me busy for a while!

Pancake Day - a traditional Leftover Tuesday

Last Tuesday was Shrove Tuesday - otherwise known as Pancake Day or Fat Tuesday'. It has long been a great day for left overs - people made pancakes to use up all the rich ingredients they couldn't eat during Lent. Lent is the period between Ash Wednesday and Easter, where in many Christian traditions some form of fasting takes place. Any excuse for pancakes, I say.

In our house, it was a great excuse to use up some left overs in the freezer, and a good excuse to join Leftover Tuesday, hosted by Rachel at Rachel's Bite. The leftovers in question were some cooked chicken (from my last batch of stock) and some homemade cream of mushroom soup. I thought we were the only weirdo's in the world who would make such a thing. I don't think I'd ever eaten mushroom by itself before, though it featured often in my first cooking adventures (things like tuna casserole). And it only ever arrived in a can. But Ryan saw a recipe in Donna Hay one day, so we made it. And I've recently discovered we aren't the only ones - tiger fish at Teczcape has a great recipe too.

But back to Tuesday. I made up a generic crepe recipe (there's a couple on www.taste.com.au if you don't have one), and while it was sitting I threw an onion and some garlic in a pan. When it was all nicely translucent, I added the mushroom soup and the chicken, and let it simmer until it looked like dinner. I took it off the heat and stirred through some baby spinach.

Looked appetizing, didn't it? It smelt much better. Ryan made the crepes - he's much better at flipping things than me. I rolled the chicken mix up in the crepes, then heated them through in the oven, with some grated cheese on top. The final product looked pretty good.

Crepes are great like that, you can wrap up just about anything, and they make it so much more interesting. And they don't taste too bad either...

What's in your freezer?

I mentioned last week that I was cleaning out my freezer. It's not a huge freezer, just two shelves worth at the the top of our fridge. But I use it a lot. All meat I buy gets portioned and frozen, and all left overs get frozen in lunch-size containers. At any given time I have the food for 4 or 5 meals in my freezer - not the 'simply re-heat' kind, but easy enough for a week night. Ryan also likes buying the discount bread rolls when we do evening grocery shops, and they go straight in the freezer as well.
So here's the inventory from last week (which has already changed quite a bit):
Home-made chicken stock
Home-made vegetable stock
2 bags of marinaded chicken wings
Puff pastry
peas
2 pieces of casserole steak
pork ribs
1 Chicken leg fillet, and 1 huge chicken breast
1C cooked chicken
1 bread roll
1 bag of Ryan's latest muffins
2 containers of bean soup
1 container of dhal
1 container of home-made mushroom soup
Home-made curry paste.

This week I'll let you know what sort of meals those ice-blocks became.

Balck and White Bean Soup

A few weeks ago, the blog party hosted by Dispensing Happiness was all about black & white. I had meant to participate, I even found a recipe, but due to a lack of black beans, I didn't quite make the deadline. However, I'm just in time to take part in Veggie Ventures' February Focus: Soup's On.

It turns out that black beans are a bit hard to locate in Canberra. The didn't have them at Coles or Woolworths - not canned or dry. I eventually located dry turtle beans at the health food shop. And I'm so glad I did! This soup is funky to look at (even dinner party standard, if you like a gimmick), very frugal, very healthy and tastes great. I apologise for my rotten photographic skills, which don't do the soup justice. I am slack so I skipped the salsa in the taste.com.au recipe. But Ryan and I had fun trying to pour the soup into the bowl.

The stock I used was fairly dark in colour - I think the soup would have had more contrast if I'd used a lighter stock. As well as contrasting colours, the flavour of each soup was markedly different, making for a very engaging soup experience.
As an added bonus, the soup froze really well, so I got to have it for lunch all last week.

Roasted Pumpkin and Garlic Soup

This recipe is modified a bit from one found in a Donna Hay magazine. Simple, vegetarian, very low fat and freezes well.

1 Butternut pumpkin, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 brown onion
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
4 Tablespoons Honey
1 sprig of Rosemary, leaves chopped finely
Salt & Pepper
1L Vegetable Stock

Combine all ingredients except the stock on a baking tray. Bake in a moderate oven until the pumpkin is cooked through. Place cooked ingredients in a big pot with the stock, and use a hand blender to blend to desired consistency.

The original recipe called for 850g of pumpkin, but I generally use a lot more. This time, I used about 2kg, which makes quite a thick soup. It was enough for two dinner sized serves, two lunch-sized serves, and a litre of soup left for our present for Special-K.

Cooking for others - big bold plans!

January brings me three big cooking challenges - ones where I'm not going to be able to eat all the leftovers on toast and pretend it never happened.
Challenge Number 1.
One of my very first Canberra friends (who we shall call Special-K) is about to have her very first baby. As a present, Ryan and I want to fill her freezer with easy-to-nuke, ready-to-go meals. One complicating factor is that Special-K is vegetarian, so some of my favourite freezer meals won't work.
Challenge Number 2.
Another Canberra friend is having her 'Goodbye 29' Party. Otherwise known as a '20-10 Birthday' or the 9th anniversary of her 21st. She is having a party, and together we will do all the catering. A fingerfood dinner for 30 people can't be that hard, can it? That's not until February 20, but we think it's better to start planning soon.
Challenge Number 3.
The scales weren't very kind to me, post Christmas. I weighed 64kg on New Years Eve, and the maximum healthy weight for my height is 56kg. I've signed up with CalorieKing to track how much I'm eating. They have suggested a diet of 1200 calories a day. I'm not sure if I can do that, especially on a budget, but I'll let you know how I go.