Meal Planning Monday Week 23

On Friday and Saturday temperature is expected to be around 21 but showers are forecast. I have some barbecue food in the freezer that needs to be defrosted before it can be eaten which is why it's annoying that we haven't had a good enough weather forecast for a couple of weeks for me to know we are definitely going to eat out! So I will defrost something and then either switch around the menu or cook it in the oven if we have to!

My weight loss has been really helped by eating spiralized vegetable stir-fries I think. I don't normally like repetitive meals but with only a few weeks to go until I get married, if it's working I'm going to stick to it! I think there's something about the fact that it takes longer to eat that you feel more full.

Monday
Dinner - working late, will probably have to grab something from Tesco on the way home

Tuesday - my fiancé's mum's birthday - we are having a takeaway at her house

Wednesday - spiralized veg stir fry with some chicken or salmon

Thursday - spiralized veg stir fry with some chicken or salmon

Friday - We will either barbecue today or tomorrow. I didn't make this mackerel with ginger, chilli and lime. on the plan from last week as we didn't barbecue so I'd like to have this, plus some chorizo chicken kebabs and he will want burgers no doubt

Saturday
Lunch - bacon sandwich for him, quinoa risotto for me
Dinner - turkey breast steak for me and chicken breast for him following this piri piri recipe which I planned to make last week but didn't; I can do it with potato wedges.
I also bought all the ingredients for the 'choc berry mud' from I Quit Sugar and didn't make it last week so will aim to do it this weekend.

Sunday
Lunch - with my parents for my mum's birthday
Dinner - probably home late so something from the freezer, depending on what we had for lunch

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Alpaca Cookies and Alpaca Adventure, Dorset



 

I wouldn't say I'm alpaca-mad... I just have an alpaca cuddly toy, an alpaca hat, a scarf made from alpaca wool, alpaca writing paper, stickers and post-it notes, and a bag that says "alpaca bag" (geddit?). Oh and some alpaca cookie cutters.

 

So it perhaps wasn't surprising that when my friends and my sister came to organise my hen night that they decided alpacas should be involved! There's a place very close to my wedding venue called Alpaca Adventure, run by the very hard-working Wendy (and I think her husband) who has a full time day job as well as running a farm with over 30 alpaca plus sheep, hens and a pig. She takes the alpacas to competitions and has won several rosettes for effectively 'best in class' and sells the wool to a mill which uses it to make clothing.

 

She also does alpaca walking, which means you can basically go and walk an alpaca round a field on a lead. It sounds a bit random, and perhaps it is, but it's great fun!

 

First we fed some lambs, then we petted the pig, then got introduced to our alpacas - mine was a gorgeous guy called Teddy Edward. They each wore a bridal and we basically went for a walk for about 45 minutes around a field, leading our alpacas who were very sweet and docile, if occasionally trying to stop and munch some grass or sniff each other's bums.

 

 

Look at this dude!

This is what alpaca walking looks like

It's also pretty inexpensive and only cost £10 each - not bad given I imagine it costs a lot to keep the animals! The only thing I would say is that if you are booking this as a surprise for someone's birthday or hen night, make sure you tell Wendy that it's a secret - I'd actually met her at an event and she let the cat (alpaca?) out of the bag that I was coming here for my hen night even though I wasn't supposed to know!

After my hen night I wrote my friends some little thank you notes as it seemed a good excuse to use my alpaca writing paper! My fiancé got me this for Christmas - he knows me so well :-)

I also thought it was a good opportunity to use the alpaca cookie cutters he got me at the same time!

Here are my cutters:

I used a basic sugar cookies recipe and rolled out the dough and cut out the shapes

Ready to go in the oven

And here they are. These could easily be llamas and I think they could pass for giraffes too, but if you look at the necks, I think you can see the fatness that suggests the big fluffy wool of an alpaca.

I made up some royal icing as I wanted to recreate the thick wool of the alpacas, but I got the quantities slightly wrong and the icing wouldn't set enough and even though I piped it in dots, they all ran together. Still, you get the idea! I gave these to two of my bridesmaids when they came up the weekend after the hen night for their dress fittings as a nice reminder of the hen night!

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Low Carb Fish Pie with Cauliflower Mash

My low sugar diet also means low carb, as the starch and glucose in potatoes raises your blood sugar, so I've been looking for some good alternatives. I like cauliflower and wondered if I could make a fish pie and put mashed cauli on top, and found a few recipes online doing just that.

I followed this recipe for the cauliflower puree but I couldn't get mine smooth enough; I think if I had cooked the cauli for longer so it was softer that might have been better. I wouldn't have thought to add cheese and cream into it as well; it was quite nice, though to be honest I would have preferred mashed potato!

For the fish pie, I cooked a mixture of fish - I think I had white fish, salmon and smoked mackerel, and added some chopped leaks and made a white sauce.

I put it in a pie dish, spread the cauliflower mash over the top and popped it in the oven to brown.

Here you can see the fish and the topping. This felt like a very virtuous recipe and is good if you're cutting down on potatoes and miss having fish pie - but I have to say I would only eat it as "diet food", whereas a lot of the low cal/fat/sugar recipes I make are nice enough to eat whether you are on a diet or not.

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M&M chocolate birthday cake

 

When I made my fiancé this chocolate birthday cake from the Outsider Tart cookery book the quantities given were so large that it made three big layers. I didn't need the cake to be that big so I put one of the layers in the freezer, and used it a few weeks later when I wanted a cake to take into work.

The cake broke a little while it was defrosting but otherwise was absolutely fine - this is a really good cake that includes Coca-Cola in the mixture!

 

I made some chocolate buttercream which I spread on the top and around the side of the cake. It does look a bit messy at the moment, but that won't matter!

To decorate this cake I decided to use up some things I had in the cupboard. I wanted to use things up and I also didn't have much time - we'd gotten back from a weekend away in Wiltshire and I only had the evening to do it before work the next day, and as we'd been away all weekend I had a lot of other things I needed to do!
I had some white chocolate fingers left over from this anti-gravity Easter cake but not quite enough to go around the whole cake, and I couldn't find any more white ones in the supermarket. So I decided to alternate with some milk chocolate fingers which I thought actually made a nice pattern and looked really good.

I also had some M&Ms and larger peanut M&Ms I wanted to use up as they had been hanging around for a while. As they were different types I decided to use some chocolate fingers to mark out sections on top of the cake, but actually the colours all blend together and I probably didn't need to do this.

Finally I tied a ribbon around the cake, which helped to keep the chocolate fingers upright. I was really pleased with this given it was a last minute job using up cake and chocolate I already had in the house!

F is for fingers - chocolate fingers - so I'm sharing this cake with Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker.

As I used up things I already had in the house this was a very cost-efficient cake so I'm sharing it with Credit Crunch Munch, hosted by Michelle at Utterly Scrummy on behalf of Helen and Camilla.

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Quick Make: 60th Birthday Card

I suddenly realised it was a male relative's 60th birthday and I hadn't done any card making for a while, but I wanted to send him a handmade card. I turned to my box of pre-printed patterned card blanks and chose one I thought would work as a base, and added a happy birthday banner. I can't read what the sentiment in the silver square at the top is and I can't remember - something along the lines of 'enjoy your day' I think! I also had some number stickers and stars which I stuck in the various circles on the printed card. Not my best card but I still think a handmade card is more meaningful than just grabbing one off the shelf in a shop - though sometimes you can find the perfect card for someone that suits them to a T in the shops!

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Restaurant review: Debenhams Oxford Street

I took my mum shopping for her outfit to wear to my wedding and decided to make personal shopper appointments in Debenhams and John Lewis on Oxford Street. They bring you different clothes to try on and know what style would suit your body shape. It was a pretty exhausting day as my mum must have tried on at least 15 outfits, but eventually found one she really liked.

As I knew it would be a busy day we didn’t want to take too long over lunch and I had a look to see whether Debenhams had a café. They have four!

We stopped for coffee before we started shopping and went to the W1 Bistro on the lower level; it is a very smart café that looks more like a wine bar, with a mixture of types of seating and a small food menu with things like toasted sandwiches, but we only wanted a drink.

Later, we found ourselves on the 5^th floor near the “family restaurant serving British classics” so decided to have lunch here. Most of the dishes on offer are what I would call “main meals” – fish and chips, pizza etc. They had a range of sandwiches and also a small range of ‘snack sized’ hot food choices, so my mum and I both decided to have a jacket potato with prawns. The potato was nice and fluffy with a generous helping of prawns, though the side salad had no dressing which would have been nice. I always find when I have jacket potatoes in cafes or restaurants that they are much smaller than I would have at home – I always search out the largest potato I can find in the supermarket! So I was hungry again before the end of the day but I expect that was partly because dress shopping when you want something very specific is hard work!

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Meal Planning Monday Week 21

Do any of you have ice cream makers? I've wanted one for a while but never had the space - you have to put the whole bowl from the machine into your freezer, and in the past I had quite a small freezer. Now I have a huge American-style fridge-freezer, but it's always full of food! But my fiancé gave me an ice cream maker for Christmas and I haven't used it at all yet - I usually only want ice cream in the summer and to be honest with wedding planning I haven't had the time to figure out how to use new kitchen gadgets. But I'm definitely planning to use the ice cream maker after the wedding next month so I need to start using up food in the freezer so I have space!

Monday

My fiancé has a day off

Lunch: I'll have a chicken salad, which I have been having most days! I'll buy him something nice to have for his lunch

Dinner: He can have chicken goujons and chips and I'll have sweet chilli breaded prawns, also in the freezer. I'd love to have them with chips but am trying not to eat potatoes particularly in the evenings so think I will make it into a stir-fry with spiralized veg.

Tuesday

Lunch: salad

Dinner: will be home late as I have a meeting that runs an hour past my usual finish time, so I want something quick to cook. The forecast is that today will be the hottest day all week (and there will be showers every day from tomorrow) so if my lovely fiancé would like to barbecue so it's ready for when I get home I will suggest he has sausages and I have fish. I quite like the look of this mackerel with ginger, chilli and lime. If the weather isn't so good or I'm really late and he wants to eat before I get home, there are pizzas in the freezer and I can have the rest of my stir fry with Quorn chicken-style pieces from the freezer.

Weds

Lunch: salad

Dinner: just me – my fiancé at his mum’s? I'll have butternut squash stew from the freezer or the rest of my stir-fry.

Thursday

Lunch: with a work colleague before he goes on three months of shared parental leave

Dinner: turkey breast steak for me and chicken breast for him following this piri piri recipe

Friday

I have a day off

Lunch: as I treat, I might have... not salad! But I'm taking my cat to the vet in the morning and won't be home in time to spend a lot of time cooking lunch. I think I'll have a piece of salmon, with cauliflower cheese from the freezer.

Dinner: I've got some cubed beef in the freezer which my fiancé isn't a huge fan of but he does like curry (as long as he gets a big naan bread!) so I'll do a Thai green beef curry in the slow cooker, using this recipe. I might go easy on the rice, or not have any at all (and certainly won't have a naan).
I haven't made a dessert in a while so I think I will try the 'choc berry mud' from I Quit Sugar.

Saturday

Lunch: I've got a wedding dress fitting in the morning so nothing that will take too long to cook. Maybe just beans on toast - and I can have macaroni cheese. Providing I remember to buy sliced bread as it isn't something we actually have in the house that often!

Dinner: at a friend’s BBQ. I will take some food with us. If time I'd also like to bake something as I haven't been making a lot of cakes lately! I quite fancy making the Eton Mess cupcakes from the Hummingbird book.

Sunday

Lunch: something quick as I have a doctor's appointment and we won't be home until at least 1.30. Might actually do brunch before we go of sausage, bacon, scrambled eggs. And when we get back, crumpets that are in the freezer.

Dinner: I'll have the tequila marinated chicken wings I was going to do if my bridesmaids were staying overnight, which they didn't, as the wings are taking up a lot of freezer space; my fiancé doesn't like wings so he can have the same flavours on chicken breast, with potato wedges/salad.

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