Menu 05-03-12

Some people give me a strange look when I mention that I make a weekly menu plan. Did I say some? I meant all. It's a habit which is born out of necessity, rather than a desire to be insanely over-organised. I work 9 hours a day. Combined with daily yoga practice and my commute I'm out of the house for 12 hours per day minimum, so when I get home I don't have the time or energy to ponder what I'm going to make for dinner or go to the supermarket. What I need is a piece of paper which tells me what I'm going to eat, and the ingredients in my cupboard and fridge to make it right away. Did I mention? I get really grumpy when I'm hungry, which R can testify!

So, every week I look online for new meal ideas and recipes (Tastespotting is my favourite site for this). By Friday I have a bunch of recipes to try. I organise them into a menu (as below) then make a shopping list with every ingredient I'm going to need. I then go one step further (this is where it gets crazy, be warned) and organise the shopping list into the order of the supermarket - fruit and vege first, then meat, dairy, and dried foods at the end. It makes our supermarket trip go smoothly and as quickly as possible, and we're not constantly doubling back to get something we forgot, or getting lured into the junk food aisle by mistake.

Lunches Monday-Tuesday
Gruyère, red pepper and spinach quiche
Fruit salad
Brownie*

Lunches Thursday-Friday
Chick-pea and lentil salad with sun-dried tomato vinaigrette
Banana and chocolate chip muffin (home-baked)*
Fresh berries

Dinner Saturday
Caribbean chicken and rice (freeze left overs for emergency meals!)

Dinner Sunday-Monday
Baked penne with eggplant, zuccini and tomato

Dinner Tuesday-Wednesday

Marinated tofu with vegetable stir-fry and noodles

Dinner Thursday - out

Dinner Friday
Home-made burgers with hand cut spicy potato wedges (no recipe - I just make it up as I go along!)

Desserts

Banana split with vanilla ice-cream and warm Mars bar sauce (melt a chopped-up Mars bar in a small pot with a splash of milk... that's it!)

*A note on the baked goods. Every time I do any baking I make a large batch - 24 or so biscuits, slices or muffins. I leave a few out for the coming week and freeze the rest for lunches. This way one batch of baking can easily last for three weeks worth of lunches.

How to make an apron out of a tea-towel

Lunch Box - Couscous alla Panzanella

This is the first of many (I hope!) Lunch Box posts. Taking our lunch into work is a big part of saving money for me and my boyfriend. We estimate that we save about £20-£40 per week by making our own lunches. Each lunch costs less than £2, and best of all you know exactly what's in your food.

I started getting serious about lunch making (yes, I did actually just write that sentence) about a year and a half ago when I changed jobs. My new office a) didn't have a microwave and b) was surrounded by expensive restaurants and a dodgy sandwich shop and not much else. I did a lot of online research (read: Googling) for lunch ideas (because who wants to eat the same boring sandwich every day?) and found some great sites and products. Now that I have my Easy Lunchboxes I create a three-part lunch for me and my man (his workmates have stopped teasing him now) from Monday - Thursday. On Friday we go crazy and BUY our lunch. Well, you have to have some luxuries!

To make things easier (because who wants to spend their lives making lunches?) I make two days lunch at once. So on Sunday I will fill up 4 lunch boxes for me and the man to feed us on Monday and Tuesday. Then on Tuesday evening I will fill up the 4 lunch boxes again for lunches on Wednesday and Thursday. I try to make our lunches predominantly vegetarian (although this has slipped a little lately) and of course they are cold. My usual menu is: a large complex-carbohydrate based salad (like couscous, quinoa or brown rice), fruit (seasonal fresh or canned) and a home-made baked treat (like a muffin or biscuit).

Here is today's box:

Salad: Couscous alla Panzanella
Fruit: Orange segments
Treat: Home-made afghan

Recipe: Coucous alla Panzanella

I tried this recipe for the first time yesterday and I just know I'm going to make it again and again because it's so easy! It's a no-cook recipe - you just throw all the ingredients together, put  it in the fridge for a few hours and let the cous cous soak up all the tomato juice so it's plump and fluffy when you tuck in the next day. Perfect for lunch boxes.

Adapted from David Rocco

2 cups couscous
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 red onion, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
1 yellow pepper, chopped
20 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 400g tin of canned plum tomatoes with juices, chopped

1 cup of water
juice of one fresh lemon
bunch of basil leaves, torn
salt and pepper to season

Place olive oil, lemon juice, plum tomatoes and water in a large mixing bowl. Add cous cous and mix thoroughly. Add red onions, red and yellow peppers, cherry tomatoes and fresh torn basil to the bowl. Mix well. Let sit in the refrigerator for a few hours for all the flavours to combine.

Yield: 4 servings