Tonight's dinner is actually already sorted, we are having chickpea ragu with pasta and roast lamb.
Not a lot to ponder there really.
We also have games tonight, so I am currently baking up a chocolate and caramel cake which I plan to top with choc and caramel icing and toffee shards. Sounds fancy (I hope) but is actually really simple.
The back story:
Husband and I are trialling out a very (for us) tight budget for food and luxuries. We have been very used to living as a 2 person family with 2 incomes. We are now a 3 person family with 1.
So I am experimenting with budget cooking.
This has been hard for me as I love food, I love trying new recipes and experimenting with cool ingredients- often difficult on a shoestring. I have often heard wealth described as choice and poverty as a lack of choice. I think there is a lot to that, on a lower budget I was feeling that I had less choice (now, I realise this is totally #firstworldproblems but that is the world I live in) but I have tried to embrace the budget, and am actually quite enjoying it. There is a much greater need for creativity and I need to plan meals in advance rather than spur of the moment.
This is what this week has looked like so far.
Monday night: baked chicken risotto
Tuesday: lamb and feta couscous with bread
Wednesday: lamb and feta pizza with garlic bread
Thursday: chickpea ragu with lamb and pasta
On Tuesday, during baby nap times, I cooked a small lamb rolled roast and made some bread. I feel fantastically like this makes me sound like a suer-mum. I'm not. I used a bread maker to get the dough sorted and the roasting of the lamb involved putting it in the oven with some garlic and rosemary. I had always thought making bread would be way too hard and time consuming, but it honestly wasn't. I shoved all the ingredients in the bread maker and set that to "dough" cycle and then when it was ready I punched it down into 2 rectangles and baked. Easy.
I got husband to pick up a pack of feta and a small red onion on his way home from work. I chopped these into 3rds and have used them for Tue/Wed/Thu dinners.
I am lucky enough to have some fresh herbs in my "garden" so I have been able to throw parsley, mint, rosemary and thyme into things to change up the flavour.
I am pretty pleased with the effort. This has been my first week budget cooking and whilst I am fairly sure we are lacking in our 5+ a day, we have spent under $100 (nz) even though we bought cat food. I also need to admit that quite a chunk of the budget was taken up by me buying a 1kg bag of coffee beans. Priorities!
