Sunday 14 January 2018

Sunday

Good morning.  Yesterday's mince roasting worked and I have raved about it on a separate post!

Today's plans:
B:  porridge with fruit and natural yogurt
L:  toast and marmite
D:  cottage pie, carrots; yogurt
Ss:  apple and orange

A few (maybe more than a few) nibblies have crept in over the last two days and, as a consequence, I'm getting a few gallbladder twinges (serves me right) so today I want to be much more disciplined with myself again.  There's no way I want another flare up and it's as good as a second conscience!!!

Nothing from the freezer today.

The frugal factor:
All the usual - porridge, toast, etc
The cottage pie is all home made so, while it won't be super-frugal, it will be much better than a shop bought one and it will taste loads better too.

The batch of mince I did yesterday did for three yesterday, three for today and there will be some leftover, probably enough for another one portion, plus some lovely meaty gravy.  If I ever have any good gravy left over, I always freeze it in a little pot to use another time.
This batch of mince used 250g minced beef which isn't a lot, but I bulked it out with onion, carrot, red pepper, mushroom, orange lentils, oats and peas plus chopped tomatoes and a whole range of herbs/spices/etc that I had to hand.  I generally use the taste, add, taste method!

Happy frugaling to us all today!

6 comments:

  1. I've just done the roasting the mince thing and it worked a treat, although obviously I can't speak for the flavour ... but it went down a treat with Alan. One shepherds pie for today and one in the freezer and ditto with two shepherdess pies for me.

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  2. Nice one! I've just cooked the mash and made the cottage pie for later on. It looks luvverly! Perfect with some carrots on the side.
    J x

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  3. I'll be making a cottage pie later this week so I'm going to try out the method of roasting the mince in the oven first. It certainly works for boosting the taste of veg so should be great for meat.
    I've just discovered your blog and will work my way through your posts but I don't see any info about yourself - is there a post where we find a bit more about you and perhaps what has motivated you?
    Thank you

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  4. Hi Margie, welcome. Lovely to meet you.
    I'll have a think about where there's info and I do have another blog, Diary of a (retired) teacher, which is more everyday stuff going beck a number of years now, although the first posts were deleted a while ago.

    I agree with you - roasting veg does enhance the flavour. Roasted tomato soup is wonderful, for example. I have some fairly boring tomatoes I got from Aldi in my fridge and I intend to roast them to get a bit more ooomph out of them.
    Looking forward to chatting more
    J x

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  5. I have lapsed and not been reading for nearly a week! (too busy cooking in an almost frugal way i think!) is the Tom Kerridge programme a new/current one? I do like a nice foodie weight loss programme (especially if it's sensible and tasty food). Also, how do you bulk out with oats? I do add lentils to things, but haven't tried oats and am unsure what to do. TIA

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    1. Yes, this week is the third episode. You can catch it on iPlayer and it's called Lose Weight for Good.
      As for the oats in my mince mixtures, I just add a handful of the oats you make porridge with. ALl the supermarkets have bags of them and they're not too expensive - go for supermarket's own, they are fine.
      J x

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