My Favourite Things.....

 When my sister and I were little we used to look forward to particular meals and treats. She is left with a life long love of jelly and fish fingers - I just love food!

We were talking a while back about these favourites and the memories associated with them - cheese and potato pie, dad getting the mouli out to mince up left over meat for rissoles, pastry cooked on a plate, sponge cakes with sickly spoon licking. 

We'd never really realised that these events all tended to happen towards the end of each month until mum pointed it out. She went on to explain why she could be so sure about the timing - it was all to do with need.

As we got close to the end of month, apparently, things would get a bit tight and so she would bake and make pastry as fillers to bulk up our diets and the other meals were the cheapest going and used every scrap of leftovers as there wasn't the money to waste.

She was somewhat amazed during our conversation to find that these belt tightening measures had been seen by us as treats and that they still form the major part of our list of favourite foods!

So here's a selection of bites that seem to follow on nicely from that...

Month 4 - Bite 21

A list is needed of all those 'fillers' using the most basic of ingredients so that I can draw on it to add in a nice cheap 'treat' on a regular basis. Many of these will be non-meat based like the cheese and potato pie which keeps the price down and can have some other more recent additions like the pasta bake which I tend to do each week using minimal ingredients.

Month 4 - Bite 22

Back to basics next. I've got a range of store cupboard regulars to hand so the next research/list needs to be the meals I can conjure up with few added ingredients. Pancakes and pasta have got to be in there. In fact stuffed pancakes or tortillas it will be tonight - I've got some odds and ends of vegetables just crying out for roasting with coriander and cumin!

Month 4 - Bite 23

One meal we generally always had on Sundays evenings was salad. Dad would get it all cut up and put in dishes for us to help ourselves and the meal was always accompanied by much banter and singing along to the radio show 'Sing Something Simple'. Once again we'd been unaware of how the menu was chosen and why it was presented in this way.

Leftovers from lunch were served up and we all took whatever we wanted from the array of sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, grated cheese, boiled potatoes and sometimes sliced hard boiled eggs. Now I know that everything looks a lot more when it's served in communal serving dishes and is cut into smaller slices or grated. The salad we had seemed to go further like that - two tomatoes looks much more when thinly sliced and a mountain of grated cheese or thinly batoned carrots certainly fills the plate more that larger pieces.

My task now is to unearth the grater and mouli so that I can start to present our meals to emphasise how much we've got rather than using individual portions that make us think we need much more in the way of ingredients!

And finally I need to bring my nan into the picture.

Month 4 - Bite 24

We often went to nan and grandad's  - especially if mum and dad had to go out to Scouting meetings or it was at a time when both were working and we needed child care after school. Nan was the master of the oven. Meals round there were thick, warming casseroles and creamy rice puddings. 

She used to say that if she was putting the oven on for part of the meal it was wasteful not to use it to the max. Her meals were planned so that as much of the meal was cooked in one go or followed one dish after another to make full use of the oven, even after if was switched off.

My final list for now then has to be the meals where I can combine a number of elements in one place to save on energy use. So things like roast potatoes and parsnips cooked in the same oven as chicken. Or vegetables all cooked in one saucepan just added at different times. 

Or even making sure that I'm using the hob economically. I used to cook spaghetti and rice by bringing it to the boil, cooking it for part of the time and then turning the gas off, putting on the lid and then leaving it to finish cooking in the residual heat.  I wonder why I stopped?