All that jollity is, inevitably, followed by exhaustion. Himself had the good sense to take Monday off as well as Friday. I’m an absolutely chronic procrastinator about most things except getting out of bed and just getting the week started. So into work I go.
This week’s menu is fairly standard stuff but includes the midweek treat referred to below as Austrian Hash. This is in fact a delicious dish called gröstl (sp?) that we first acquainted ourselves with while on a ski-ing trip in Zell am See near Salzburg in Austria. While this dish is hardly gourmet, we were generally very surprised and impressed with the food in Austria. The price and quantity, no matter whereabouts on the mountain we were. A refreshing change from the cost of eating at altitude in Andorra and France, in our experience.
Nipper 1.0 turns 21 during the week but he had gone back to his Alps in Switzerland. 21! We celebrated during Himself’s party and then he took off with his friends for the real celebrations! We have agreed to pay for his ski gear hire as a gift so probably that is what got me thinking about gröstl!
I also made Apple and Celeriac soup for the first time. In fact it was the first time a celeriac had come into this house, I’d say. I think I heard a discussion about it on BBC Radio Ulster’s Gardener’s Corner because that’s my life now.
Anyway, I was pure delighted with myself as I had the brainwave of using my frozen stewed apple and this worked very well.
Sunday saw the beginning of the Christmas prep with the baking of the Christmas cakes for Abigail and for us. I actually bake one square cake now and split it between us. It all gets covered in
Meal Plan for Week of 11/11/2024 – 17/11/2024
Monday – 11/11/2024
DINNER
Oven-baked red pepper risotto
Tuesday – 12/11/2024
Bolognese from freezer
Wednesday – 13/11/2024
DINNER
Austrian hash This is a BBC version of a dish called Gröstl (I think!!) We first ate it in the Austrian Alps during our last ski trip. It is delicious but includes the kind of calories you need for a day of skiing. Absolute comfort food!
15-Minute Stir-fried Steak Tacos these are grand but quick and fussy eaters can choose what they include or not. Also recommend making your own tortillas or buying kids wraps. Those yellow hard shell ones that a certain company is trying to foist on an unsuspecting Irish nation for years are crap.
Sunday – 17/11/2024
Lasagne using batch cooked bolognese from freezer. What I love about a lasagne is that you can have all the washing up done before dinner while it’s baking. I need more recipes like this!
Christmas cake: get the fruit soaking up all the brandy and tea.
Rachel Allen’s Nutty Granola. We make a batch of this nearly every week with a pause sometimes in the depths of winter when people get porridge for breakfast. It is great fuel for us cyclists!
This week was all about preparation. Himself was celebrating a milestone birthday and had invited about 70 of his closest family members and friends to mark this momentous occasion with him.
Meal Plan for Week of 04/11/2024 – 10/11/2024
Monday – 04/11/2024
PREPARATION
The party is planned to start at 8pm so I am not planning to feed 70 people (or even the half that are likely to turn up) but as Himself has ordered a keg from Brew Crew definitely soakage will be required.
We don’t have enough plates or cutlery anyway for a party even a quarter that size.
I had decided therefore to begin the preparation on Monday with 2 delicious traditional Irish brown soda loaves from an ICA recipe that I picked up in a free booklet with The Irish Times many years ago. Always be checking those recipe booklets: I know that those recipes are often very well tested!
However after a week off the previous week and a boozy weekend away, I had a lot of catching up to do, got home later from work than planned and just wasn’t in the baking mood. So I postpone until Tuesday.
Curry from freezer – actually a delicious recipe for Slow Cooker Chicken Tikka Masala from Taming Twins. Though I would normally avoid recipes that use prepped curry paste due to all the added salt, she acknowledges that this recipe “sits firmly between the two camps of ‘a jar will do’ and ‘this dish takes many careful hours and rare ingredients to perfect’.” Deliciousness on a school night? Yes please!
Five-bean chilli – a quick and easy veggie option and then I get back on track with my party prep. Normally I have dinner with my parents on a Tuesday on my way home from work but Mum completely understands when I explain I am getting a headstart on the preparation. <sarcasm>She is also a very organised person. </sarcasm>
Preparation
Walnut and treacle brown bread
Serving Size:
12
Time:
1hr 50 mins
Difficulty:
Easy
Ingredients
350g wholemeal flour
50g plain flour
1 level teaspoon bread soda aka baking SODA aka bicarbonate of soda 1 pinch salt
50g porridge oats
2 large eggs
1 dessertspoon sunflower oil
500ml buttermilk
2 large dessertspoons treacle
75g chopped walnuts (optional)
Directions
Preheat the oven to 170oC/gas mark 3.
Grease and line a 900g loaf tin (this is a fairly standard size.)
Put the flours, sieved bread soda, salt and porridge oats into a large mixing bowl and mix them well.
In a separate bowl, beat the eggs together with the oil and add to the dry mixture. Next, mix in the buttermilk and mix until it reaches a ‘sloppy’ consistency.
Finally, add the treacle and chopped walnuts.
Pour into a 900g loaf tin and smooth the top of the bread with a wet spoon. Sprinkle some seeds or porridge oats on top of the bread and bake in the oven for one hour.
After the hour has lapsed, remove the bread from the tin and return to the oven to bake for a further 20 minutes.
Remove from the oven and allow the bread to cool down.
The baked bread freezes well so consider making more than one! Recipe Credit: Edward Hayden
Wednesday – 06/11/2024
PREPARATION
So I have decided to make these mini-quiches (more later on these.) Now obviously I know I can buy any kind of pastry but at €4.25 for 640g it also makes delicious sense to make 1kg for about the same price. Well about the same price because I had to stop in Spar to buy the butter and it cost nearly a fiver. Doh.
I’ve been making this rough puff pastry for a few years and if you follow the instructions you can too! With Christmas on the horizon, it makes DELICIOUS mince pies. Enjoy!
Chicken & chorizo stew from freezer again from Taming Twins. I’m not crazy about this because the chorizo doesn’t have the nice texture it gets when you fry it off (as seen in this delicious bean and chorizo stew from 2006). It’s what the writer calls a “dump” recipe, where you dump all the frozen ingredients from a freezer bag into your slow cooker meaning you can prep at the weekend and pull out in the morning, slow cook and go. The whole idea is one and done so I get it. What you gain in speed, you deffo lose in flavour.
As we were tucking in, there was a ring at the doorbell.
Okay now things were serious. We were in day-before-territory. We had to pick up the keg and glasses from BrewCrew and I wanted to do a trawl of a few charity shops to get some extra glassware. We also needed to get a few more snacky bits from the shops and also some non-Guinness drinks (beer and non-alcoholic beverages.) I had also decided we would offer everybody a Dark and Stormy cocktail when they arrived so I needed as much ginger beer as I could find (just enough) and dark rum. If you would like to try this yourself at home, I recommend Bundaberg Ginger beer, although Fever Tree is okay too, and Kraken Dark rum. Delicious.
We also are very fancy in these parts and have a Sheridan’s CHeesemonger in our local Dunnes so I picked up some nice cheese, crackers and other charcuterie.
But things didn’t go as planned. Even though we had both taken the day off, Himself got dragged back into work. I kinda hung around to see if he could get out of it so everything was knocked off schedule.
I did make it to Oxfam Home on Francis St. where I picked up a gaggle of glasses, some really cute dessert plates and a couple of serving platters. Not necessarily cheaper but at least reused! Everything into the dishwasher when I got home.
Ligurian Focaccia Himself made this, a tried and tested favourite here at home, to which he added roasted red peppers (jarred!) and blue cheese and another with serrano ham and black olives. Cut up into squares and served on a wooden board, this was a big hit.
While he had the oven on he also made a batch of Rachel Allen’s Nutty Granola again from Home Cooking. Not for the party but essential for breakfast!
Easy 5-Ingredient Mini Quiche Cups – another big hit but I was horrified to discover, as I yoinked it out to start baking, that my mini muffin tray was only 12 holes not 24. So I had to make six batches instead of the planned three. I used my Rough Puff from the fridge (very well rested!), cutting numerous circles with this mad device that I “borrowed” from my parents’ kitchen many years ago. Basically it has two metal half moons back to back on a spindle which has a handle attached. You roll it across your pastry and it creates numerous circles. Perfect for mass production like this. I rolled out all the discs and rested them while each batch was baking.
Grilled Chicken Caesar Lettuce Wraps these were also delicious. Not an obvious finger food but I liked the idea of including something a little healthier and green. Mostly I was getting them into their marinade.
Saturday – 09/11/2024
PREPARATION
All the Nippers pitched in prepping the house. The weather was forecast to be unseasonably balmy until 1am so we set up the bar in a gazebo on the patio which worked out perfectly.
We put the returned Nipper 1.0 to work chopping crudités and slicing limes (for the dark and stormys) and lemons.
We bought ice in the local Tesco which we used to fill our super camping coolbox and filled it up with soft drink, bottled beer, some white wine and prosecco. Big thanks to everyone who brought drinks too!
Of course, I had to bake and decorate a cake. Mum had agreed to bring her delicious coffee and walnut tray bake and I had planned to make cinchy but delicious toffee squares with a lemon drizzle icing. Himself loves these delicious banana nut brownies from Darina Allen’s cook book but as I was attempting to go cutlery and crockery free I knew they would be too squidgy. So instead I made two round cakes of this Banana Chocolate Cake and added chopped hazelnuts. I filled it with a praline ganache and decorated with a plain ganache (for fear it would look like an actual pile of shit.) It turned out very well and delicious.
I took zero photographs. I am definitely taking some of my learnings from this experience and will be applying them to my own future significant birthday celebrations…
Sunday – 10/11/2024
Dinner was supposed to be Lasagne with Bolognese from the freeezer but ended up being a mixemgatherem of whatever was leftover mainly chicken caesar salad on brown bread, crackers and cheese and Nipper 3.0’s Halloween haul. I was VERY tired. Forgive me.
September is closer to New Year in my mind. I have been invigorated by the summer sunshine or certainly the summer light but there is a change in the air. A few tiny leaves waft to the ground. It’s not warm in the morning. There is a tinge of golden appearing on the trees. The smells are damper, edged with decay.
I freaking LOVE Autumn. I am full of the joys of Autumn. I love the excessively bright days where skies seem crazy blue when contrasted to the oranges, yellows and browns of the trees. I love blackberry picking.
With all this joy I feel I should channel some energy back into my blog. Kicking it off with an easy one but I hope it will help you get organised for the first full week back at school. This week’s menu includes lots of comfort meals and also freezer meals. Hopefully it will make the transition easier while we get used to the new old routine.
A couple of the recipes this week are doubled (or sometimes even tripled!) so I can put extra dinners in the freezer. I immediately add these to dates in our AnyList app so I don’t forget about them. They are always scaled to feed 6: the sixth dinner usually being lunch for Himself the next day.
As a reminder we have three children aged 14, 12 and 8. Two in primary and one just started Junior Cert year.
I haven’t written up a weekly menu in ages. I got bored doing it and wondered if you all got bored reading them? (Comments below!) However I also started using a new app to write my weekly menus which made it difficult to copy and paste as I previously did. I am totally in love with this app, AnyList, and it has saved time and trouble a-plenty in our gaff. I have tried numerous grocery/ meal planning apps and this is the only one that has worked well for this household. The app is called AnyList and I’m sorry to report Androids that it is only available for iOS.
These are the reasons I love it:
Both of the adults in our household can see shared lists, add to them and striking things off. Fingers crossed they will bring out an Android app soon so we can include younger family members in the listmaking fun.
Also works beautifully on the iPad. And importantly for my battered old iPad, works really well without Wifi.
In a recent-ish update the ability to import or add recipes and organise them into a weekly calendar was added. This has made this app indispensable to me.
You can then scroll through the ingredients, marking which ones you want to add to your grocery list.
It then goes out and does the shopping for you.
Guess which of those reasons is total wishful thinking? Sigh.
So just over a week ago I posted my recipe for Campfire Cones. They didn’t get much of a look in on our holiday which we should still be enjoying. Thanks to the torrential rain in the North West of Ireland, we gave up and came home last Friday. We have one nice day on Keem Beach in Achill which is truly one of the most lovely beaches in Ireland. There are many lovely beaches in Ireland; it’s only a pity there aren’t as many lovely days…
So we are home and trying to maintain the holiday vibe. We’ve had family staying with us for the last couple of days which helped keep up the pretence and the fun factor. A trip to the market in Bushy Park on a fine sunny afternoon helped a lot. I would recommend a wander up there some Saturday: I had a most excellent coffee from the Saltpeter Coffee Truck, I shared a pizza with Nipper 2.0 and 3.0 and Nipper 1.0 and cousins had delicious burgers. There was also a Twink sighting but we were all too shy to talk to her. My sister in law also bought some Brie from the Little Milk Company which I am looking forward to trying out.
One meal taken care of, then I shopped for the following with the much appreciated help of my sister in law – I wish I could have a sister in law along to relieve the boredom of every shop.
I suppose one advantage to being at home is that we could go all out on recipes for holidays, no more one-pot wonders on the Trangia! However we knew we were going to get out and about so we needed some dishes that would be easy to put together. The only new one on the menu is the Chipotle Bean Chilli and it went down a treat with all.
Baked Sausages in a Spicy Tomato Sauce from Nessa’s Family Kitchen by Nessa Robbins. This is a great recipe when having a family with small kids to visit: there is something for everyone in it. Keep your eyes peeled for Nessa’s book – it’s a good family all rounder with some added home nurse tips.
Chicken Tikka from VinnieMeyler.com, spices by Green Saffron (highly recommended). Chicken curry when our French family are visiting has become a bit of a running joke. We accidentally served it to them two visits in a row, only realising when we got a strong sense of deja vu when someone objected to a particular aspect of the meal. As we had them for two meals this time we served this up for old time’s sake.
Chipotle Bean Chilli with Baked Eggs. This was added to the menu so I could have a go of my new chipotle paste which I picked up from Picado Mexican on South Richmond St. here in Dublin. I’ve been eyeing this shop up for some time, but always from the bus or car so I snatched a moment to pop in (when I was buying Tilda Basmati rice in bulk in a nearby Asian market!) I have since been adding the paste to lots of different sauces – it is delicious. I also picked up a pack of these corn tortillas which had a great flavour and the novelty of their smallness was appreciated by the kids.
Spaghetti Bolognese by Rachel Allen. I have started making this half and half beef and pork mince as per an option in her recipe. Not only is it more cost effective it adds an extra dimension to the flavour.
A rather grand title for a weekly menu blog post but I think anyone who knows me will agree that this week we certainly saw the full cycle of life. As the menu below covers we went to a christening on Saturday afternoon. The first rite of passage for our newest grandniece. No I’m not that old: Himself is the very youngest of seven. We had a delightful time, meeting all the niece’s in-laws and Nipper 3.0 made friends with EVERYONE! We sang, we ate (by jeebus did we eat!), we chatted and we went home happy.
We felt happy that we had represented Himself’s family well. Unfortunately, it was difficult for the others to make the journey and this is a family who’ll party at the drop of a hat. Himself’s mother, who has been unwell for some time, had become gradually worse over the previous few weeks . Bad news arrived in the small hours of the morning and the worst news was shared by one of his sisters just after 7am. So forgive me if this menu has holes or is less detailed than others.
So farewell Úna Meyler: you will be missed. You have left a wonderful legacy of music, laughter and good financial sense. What more could a woman ask for?
Saturday
Carrot and thyme and star anise soup – I heard a snippet of an interview on the radio where this recipe was mentioned so I had to try my own version. Glorious.
I also baked these choc chip “cupcakes” but I adapted the recipe to Irish measurements and tastes and will post again. I baked ham and cheese muffins for lunchboxes as well. Boy was I glad I did.
Christening
Sunday
Nipper 1.0’s tortilla feast – I can’t remember what we actually had…
Roast – what’s good value? Or maybe steak? – these were my instructions for the shopping. I bought a cut of pork (I can’t remember which) that I roasted most perfectly. So perfectly I nearly cried that Himself wasn’t there to join us. I was feeling pretty teary to be fair. Oh the crackling was devilish good.
Monday
I grabbed a beef stew, bolognese sauce, pear and ginger compote and crumble topping from the freezer before we headed “down Home” as Himself would say. There was, of course, stacks of beautiful food from neighbours and family in the house but it was only later when we landed at Himself’s brother’s place for the night that we felt like eating. This was delicious mixed with slow cooked rice and my sister in law’s signature garlic potatoes. I threw the compote and crumble in a pie dish and left it for dessert the following evening as we were all too whacked for anything else.
Tuesday
A sad day gladdened by one of Úna’s favourite things: warm sunshine. I know we ate when we got back to Dublin but I have no idea what we had.
Wednesday
Delicious sweet and sour pork from our Edmond’s cookery book, a present from a Kiwi friend that is another go-to basic recipe book.
Thursday
Ham and cheese muffins in the car en route to classes.
Stew – well the stew had gone south so I made mash which I used to top shepherd’s pie filling taken from the freezer the night before which we shared with my Dad who really had eaten already. Who can resist Shepherd’s pie? Big learning for me since school began again is that Thursday’s are freezer day as afterschool classes don’t finish til 5 so it can be 5.30 before we all get home, exhausted, to homework.
Friday
Pizza
To bake:
Ham & cheese muffins
Oaty cookies – these are a revelation which I will share with you shortly when I have converted the recipe to metric. I am now making at least one huge batch a week.
