Money, time and energy saving tips encompassed in a cottage pie

Hmmm, pot roast.  We had a pot roast for tea tonight and the joy with pot roasts and stews is slow cookers are fantastically energy efficient:

http://www.energysavingcommunity.co.uk/five-small-energy-changes-bring-big-results.html

But unless you're one pot cooking, you need some accompaniments and I was craving a jacket potato.  So, my oven was going to be on for an hour which isn't much good for my electricity usage so I either bite the bullet and have one in the microwave (sorry, might save money but they taste minging) or I use the oven heat effectively.  After all, it costs the almost the same to heat an oven full as a half empty oven.  So I put some extra jacket potatoes in and a dish with my easy tomato sauce recipe:

http://mamacook.blogspot.com/2011/01/short-nursing-strikes-and-easy-sauce.html

Normally I would only freeze the sauce in big pots for my husband and I but this time I finally remembered to freeze it in smaller pots so I could easily heat some up for my son.  I have a feeling there's a tomato sauce based couscous recipe in me somewhere which I might have a go at.

I can't in all honesty though share the pot roast recipe because it's not mine but it's not that tricky and similar recipes are out there on the internet.  The best meat to use is beef brisket but unfortunately whatever I do it falls apart into not very pretty but very tasty shreds when I try to carve but these meaty shards when leftover are awesome for making cottage pie.  I don't mince the leftovers, I chop them finely then mix with leftover gravy.  Now cunningly I take my leftover jacket potatoes, scoop them out and mash through my bargain Ikea potato ricer (I'm rubbish at mashed potato but trust me, a ricer makes it foolproof) and then put the potato on top of my meat / gravy mixture, cool then refrigerate, add grated cheese on top before baking for around half an hour.  Ok, that means the oven is on again but it's not for quite as long and it does mean every bit of my joint was used, (including the gravy) and that my friends can't be bad.  Also if you think you don't like cottage pie, give it a go.  It is the best tasting cottage pie you will ever have!

Cauliflower Cheese and Tiredness

Hmm.  Perhaps he's not ready.  Night 1 wasn't too bad, we got him to 5:15am before we fed him but last night was a bit of disaster.  From 3:45 to 4:45 he cried on and off.  It's heartrending and goes against what feels natural.  I know rationally he probably doesn't need night feeds anymore but he does want them.  In the end I fed him at 4:45 and then he slept till 6, fed again then slept till 6:45 which is the latest he's got up for about a month.  We tried giving him water to get him to calm down but he was not fooled.


I think I've resolved to aim for 4am feeding as the earliest time (previously it was 3:15) and then take it in small steps from there.  Perhaps we were trying too much of a big jump.


Anyway, weekends are often the time I get a chance to cook him some meals for the freezer.  Yesterday I had a cauliflower that needed eating and plenty of full fat milk.  I did um and ah about putting such a simple recipe on here but I do make my white sauce in a slightly strange (and easy) way so I thought I would include it.


Makes around 4-5 portions for my baby, would make more for smaller ones.

1 head of cauliflower broken into florets (can use broccoli as well)
Full fat milk, I didn't measure it but it was probably 1/2 - 3/4 of a pint
Cornflour (about 2-3 dsp)
Grated mature or extra mature cheddar (he's now onto vintage farmhouse!)
Unsalted butter

Method

Boil the cauliflower for 5-7 minutes until soft enough for your little one.  Drain.  Heat the milk in the microwave for around 2 mins until boiling or nearly boiling.  Mix the cornflour with some cold milk or water to make a paste, then pour into the milk stirring constantly, it should start to thicken immediately (if it doesn't, it will need longer microwaving afterwards).  Add the cheese and about half an ounce of butter and mix.  Microwave again for around 30 seconds; keep an eye on it as it can boil over.  If it's not thickened give it a bit longer.  If it still doesn't thicken, add a bit more cornflour paste.  Taste to make sure it doesn't taste floury (in which case it will need cooking a bit more).

Puree the vegetables and cheese sauce for little babies or you could use a food processor for older babies like mine so it's still a bit textured.

For babies 10 months plus, you could either leave the florets whole or cut into small (pea or bean sized) chunks before boiling and don't puree at all.  Then feed to your baby either by spooning or allowing them to feed themselves (or a combination of the two which seems to be the norm in this household.)


You could use a similar recipe for any mix of vegetables but green vegetables work particularly well and a mix is good, e.g. broccoli, green beans, peas, spinach (effectively a vegetable gratin) and it can be a way to get babies to accept new and stronger vegetable tastes if they're already keen on the cheesy sauce.

Baby chicken casserole

Makes about 5 portions for my nearly 9 month old.


I came up with this while looking for a recipe to use some chicken pieces.  It's not hugely flavoursome, I might add some garlic next time but it was his first time with celery and bay so it was mellow and pleasant without being a knockout.  It would probably be good for fussy ones as an introduction to meat.

Oil or unsalted butter
A chicken breast, cut into pieces
1 small onion, chopped small
2 carrots, chopped small
1 celery stick, chopped small
1 potato peeled and chopped into inch cubes (approx)
Butternut squash, approx 100g in half inch cubes
Thyme, a few sprigs
Bay leaf
Salt free chicken stock cube

Fry the chicken, onion, celery stick and carrots in the oil or butter.  Add the thyme, stock cube and boiling water, add the bay leaf, potato and squash.  Bring to the boil then simmer for approx 15-20 mins (or until the vegetables and chicken are cooked).  I took out the potatoes and mashed them separately to give a coarser texture and pureed the rest (remembering to take out the bay leaf after my pork and garlic experience!)

He seemed to like it.  You could add a bit of parsley in at the end for a bit more interest and flavour.

Talking about herbs, I grow a lot of herbs myself.  I think it's the one thing really worth doing to save money and add bags of flavour into your cooking.  My rosemary however, is looking a bit worse for wear after this winter, however, surprisingly my thyme and parsley (both mediterranean herbs) are looking lush and green.  Actually I have to confess to a bit of a thyme obsession and I currently have two well established plants in my garden; a golden thyme and a silver thyme.  Some thymes have obviously different flavours (lemon thyme for example) but I find even the others give slightly different notes.  I love thyme it goes on my roast chicken, in stuffing, in stocks, in pasta sauces, in stews.  It's such a versatile herb.


If you don't have the space for plants, do look at woody herbs in the shops and rather than buy fresh every time you need it, they freeze brilliantly.  When I say woody herbs, I mean things like rosemary and thyme. It doesn't take much space though.  I grow mint in a pot (because otherwise it takes over the garden) which, although it dies back every winter, soon perks up again in summer.

Breastfeeding

Some weeks it feels like I've gone all week without a break.  Well this is my first real break this week (it's Friday, yawn) and I thought I'd dump out of my brain something I was thinking about last night in bed.

My son and I have had a sometime fraught relationship with breastfeeding from day 1.  I always wanted to breastfeed since I found out I was pregnant; probably because I was in the (now unusual) situation of being a child born in the 70's who was breastfed.  I'm sure the fact that breastfeeding rates are so low now is because the grandmothers of todays kids didn't commonly breastfeed.  There are lots of reasons for that but from what I can tell, it's mainly because mothers were told not to breastfeed more often than every 4 hours and babies were taken away from their mothers for long periods in maternity wards, neither of which will help milk production in the first days.

Anyway, our relationship has always been fraught because he's never fed like the books say he should (5 mins has always been a good feed for my little man and he likes to be fed often; both of which are "wrong" according to Gina Ford, Babywhisperer and any other number of child rearing books.)  So I spent several months trying to solve our "problem" before realising it was only a problem in my head as my son was unable to read the books and know what he should be doing and the frequency of his day feedings seemed to have no bearing on the night feeds even when I hit the hellishness of 4-6 months.

The next problem I had was well meaning people from those I know to those who are meant to support.  Here, I found myself stuck between two camps.  I found the breastfeeding supporters all "right on" cloth bummed baby wearing cosleeping types (nothing wrong with that but it's a bit much to aspire to for me) and other people who just thought I was making life hard for myself by breastfeeding and letting my son rule me (which at times felt like they were talking sense.)  At 4-6 months as we were going through hell and my son was demanding feeds hourly during the day sometimes and up to 6 times at night, the well meaning types were telling me to take up formula, the breastfeeding advocates were saying "it's a growth spurt, go with it" (to which I replied "really?  For 8 weeks?").  In the end I listened to myself and what I needed (as formula was looking more appealing by the day) so we did a bit of sleep training.  I couldn't bring myself to do controlled crying so we did PUPD and got down to 1 feed in about 3 weeks.

So why all this reflection?  Well I decided last night that he's nearly 9 months old now, has always gained weight well and normally feeds around 3/4am so we should give it a go and see if he can make it through the night.  Part of me feels a bit of loss that this is what I'm aiming for now which has surprised me.  I think it's brought it home to me that as I'm returning to work in May I will be cutting back to the morning and pre bedtime feed in 3 months and then stopping completely as around a year has always been what I've thought I could give.  Despite all the hard work, that does feel difficult.

What will I miss?  There is a sense of closeness, especially on that pre bedtime feed (which I think was why I got so upset when he started refusing it for a while).  The fact I know I'm not the perfect mother but I'm giving him something which will help him and well, it is perfect for him, even if I'm not.

What won't I miss?  The looks.  I wish I was more confident at feeding in public and I have got more confident but now he's 8 months and although he's average sized, people think he's older than he is and so the staring and looks have got worse.  I think people seem to get really uncomfortable at the sight of me breastfeeding a baby who's much longer than my lap now.  I keep saying to myself that I have to keep doing it as part of the battle to normalise seeing babies over 6 months old breastfed or else it will always be a problem to people and frankly I refuse to be hidden away but it's hard.

Though I look like my hair has been combed with a hedge most days so people could be staring because I look a mess!

Pork and Vegetables - a lesson in flavour for babies!

makes 5 portions big enough for my 8 month old

Ok, I’d got into a rut.  Nearly all of the sauces I was making for my son contained milk or cream cheese.  I needed a new recipe.

I had an idea at 3am (while feeding him when I do my best thinking) for a pork dish with apples, although I decided against the apples in the end (as I put sweet potatoes in I thought it might be too sweet), this is what I came up with.

1 pork chop, cut into pieces (any bone removed)

½ oz unsalted butter

5 or so mushrooms, sliced thickly

¼ of a chicken stock cube (low salt) made up to 125ml

1 clove of garlic, peeled

2 sprigs thyme

1 small potato, peeled and chopped

¼ swede, peeled and chopped

½ sweet potato peeled and chopped

Fry the pork in the butter until nicely browned (remember that’s where the flavour is) adding the garlic clove and thyme towards the end.  Add in the stock and mushrooms and cook until the pork and mushrooms are cooked (about 10 mins or so).

Cook the potato, swede and sweet potato (the normal potato takes around 5 mins longer in my experience than the other veg so I add them in after the potato has been boiling for 5 mins).

Remove the garlic and thyme from the pork.  Puree the pork and mushrooms with the stock and mash the veg mixing the two together.  Mashing the veg starts to get your little one used to lumpier textures.

Now this was all great but just after hitting the “go” button on my liquidiser I realised I’d not removed the garlic.  I tasted it, it tasted nice actually, I’d certainly have eaten it but the garlic was in your face rather than subtle.  I thought “what the hey” and tried him on it anyway and my little gourmand wolfed it down!  I might use half a clove next time if I’m intending to leave it in as now both of us have garlic breath but it’s a salutary lesson that you should not make baby food too bland.

Tips on saving money on food and waste prevention

On £123 a week it's a tough ask to make and eat decent food and sometimes I just didn't manage it, especially in the early days.

Having worked in food for years, there is a part of me that cannot abide waste and a part that is fanatical about food safety so in this spirit, I thought I'd share something I've been doing to ensure I don't waste foods like yoghurt by opening it then throwing it away.

Now this might sound stupid but after having a baby my memory is shot to pieces.  I suspect it's the sleep deprivation but all I do is use a permanent pen and write on the pack when it was opened.  It means I no longer have any doubts on the food safety side and also I suspect I often threw away open packs of food as I'd forgotten when I'd opened them.

My other food safety tip is buy a fridge thermometer.  Many domestic fridges are at 10 degrees or more when the ideal temperature is around 4 or 5 (certainly less than 8).  If your fridge is cold (not too cold so you freeze your lettuce) you're much less likely to get food spoiling before the use by date.

My last organisational tip is frankly supermarket shopping is a pain with a baby and I can't see it getting easier any time soon.  Sure people say to do online shopping but I found it would take me just as long and I'd then not get a break as I'd do it during his naps and putting the shopping away was no easier; especially if they "ran out of bags" (which seemed to happen with alarming regularity).

Anyway, so there's no substitute for being quick around the supermarket.  Write a list; this helps avoid overspending and also if you know the layout it can speed you up; no nipping back for that thing you forgot.  Then when you get to the checkout, put the items on in this order; frozen, chilled, veg, shelf stable.  Pack the items in that order in separate bags then when you get to your boot, put the frozen and chilled stuff on one side (I put them on the right), veg in the middle and shelf stable on the left.  Then, if you get home and your little one is upset you can prioritise putting away the frozen and chilled with them on your hip knowing the veg will be ok for a few hours if you need to leave it and the rest can wait till bedtime if needs be.  Also if your baby is breastfed and crying for food as you go round, I have found the changing rooms are useful places for a quick feed if you're not confident feeding in public.

Sleep

We've had a fraught relationship, us, our little one and his sleep.  He regularly wakes for one breastfeed a night nowadays and we're gradually trying to get him down to one.  We were going to leave it longer but we had three nights in a row where he seemed to be waking later and later for that feed so we decided that if he woke earlier, we'd push him back still.

Last night of course was the first night we decided to do this and he woke an hour earlier than he had in three days.  Disappointing.

What's more frustrating though is the well meaning relatives who tell you that he doesn't need feeding at night after 6 months old (he's 8 months now) and shouldn't I have him on a bottle by now anyway?

Urgh.

Anyway, he's currently napping after having lamb tagine with cous cous for lunch (no chilli, don't worry).  Sorry, I can't remember the recipe (it was a frozen portion) but I know I adapted it from an adult one.  Dried apricots, cinnamon, garlic and sweet potatoes were involved somewhere.  It seemed to go down better than I remember it the first time we made it.  Cous cous is something I will have to revisit I think...

A chicken does 3 meals...

Last night we had some of the leftover chicken with a South Indian curry (inauthentic I'm sure but it was tasty).  Today, I'm maximising my efficiency by sticking the bones in the slow cooker with some water to make stock (slow cooker stock is excellent btw).  Later on I'll add veg, leftover meat and stuffing and thicken slightly to make soup and have with the bread that's currently in the breadmaker.

Even though it's the slow cooker and breadmaker doing most of the work for me, there's something incredibly rewarding about making your own soup and bread.  Seeing as the free range chicken cost me £4 (gotta love that reduced shelf) to have 3 good meals out of it for two people is brilliant.  If we weren't such greedy people I'm sure we could have had more.

I'm not going to get all evangelist about free range.  Frankly I would love to afford it all the time but I can't not on £123 a week but irrespective of how the chicken was raised (or any other meat for that matter) it is respectful (and important financially and environmentally) to use it as much as you can, get as many meals as you can and not waste it

In a stew; a slow cooker is your friend

Ok, this isn't quite a recipe, more a guideline.  That's the joy with savoury food, especially with slow cookers, accurate measuring is pretty much pointless unless it's pastry and you can adapt things to what you have in the fridge.


This winter my slow cooker has been working harder than ever.  The joy with slow cooking is you can put things on to cook when your baby is napping and like magic it's ready once you're ready to eat and generally things don't spoil (if the meat overcooks it just falls apart a bit but tastes great still.)


So this is a stew which my baby regularly has a bit from blended up and we have later on when he's in bed (with adaptions.)

Stewing beef (or lamb, venison, mixed game etc)  Note that stewing meat should look sinewy but that melts down into  a lovely sauce so don't fear.
Oil
Unsalted butter
Onions
Root veg of your choice (carrots are good but you could use parsnips, swede, sweet potato or a mix)
Low salt stock cube (e.g. Kallo very low salt or Heinz baby low salt) or home made beef stock made without salt
mushrooms if desired


Fry the meat in some oil until brown.  Nothing to do with "sealing" the meat but it causes a "Maillard reaction" which makes all of those lovely brown tasty meaty flavours.   Put in the slow cooker.  Soften the veg (chopped of course) in the butter, stick it in the slow cooker.  Make up the stock to 2x strength (although this will increase the salt a little remember slow cookers have very little evaporation) pour into the cooker but don't cover the ingredients, the veg will cook down.  Add in some herbs chopped or tied into a bouquet garni.  Parsley, bay and thyme are good for beef.


Cook for around 6-8 hours on low.  Mushrooms can be browned in more butter and added 30 mins before the end of cooking.  Puree for babies with some freshly cooked green veg if liked.  Add a further normal stock cube and a tbsp of grain mustard for adults.  Thicken the gravy by turning the slow cooker to high until it's bubbling and mixing a dsp cornflour with 2 dsp water until smooth then mixing in to the sauce stirring a couple of times.


This is a good recipe for both babies and mums, both of whom tend to have low iron levels.  It freezes well and leftovers can easily be made into a tasty pie.

Roasting a chicken and the joy of temperature monitoring

Crikey, even for me that's a boring sounding title!  Well as I said yesterday, I'm always on the lookout for dishes which can be put in the oven with little attention for over an hour so they can go in before my son's bath and be ready when I've finished feeding him leaving me to feel like a super organised Mummy with still a hint of the domestic goddess about her rather than a Slummy Mummy who rarely gets the chance to have a bath herself (the latter is unfortunately closer to the truth.)

Anyway, I'm not going to wax on about how to cook a chicken, if you buy a chicken from a supermarket (sorry but how many Mums of babies have the time to go to the butchers?  I certainly don't), there are cooking instructions on there, although I often find it takes 5-10 minutes less time.  I will explain how I can confidently assert this in a bit.

I do use a bit of food technology when cooking chicken or turkey.  I roast mine on a rack over a tray of water.  This has two benefits; first a bit of steam gets into the oven which helps keep the meat moist without ruining the crispy skin.  I find if I roast a chicken in a tray or dish directly touching the meat, the skin around the base is floppy and unappetising anyway.  Another benefit is my fan oven can get heat all around the bird which I'm sure helps reduce the cooking time a little.  The third positive is the juices (which you will want for your gravy) don't then burn in the tray making them unusable or if you did use them your gravy would be bitter.

My last bit of food technology I use in the kitchen is temperature monitoring.  I would not be without my temperature probe for cooking large poultry joints.  I find that without it I am far too worried about food poisoning and end up overcooking the chicken.  What's important though is what temperature to aim for.  Now several cookery books will give several different answers for this; they're not wrong.  In fact there are several temperatures which are equivalent as long as the time is also accounted for.  What on earth do I mean?  Well hold a chicken at 72 degrees for 1 minute 5 seconds and yes, that chicken will be cooked, likewise, hold that chicken at 85 degrees for 1 second and it will also be cooked.  The higher the temperature attained, the shorter the time you need to hold it at that temperature for.  This is how top chefs get away with cooking food sous vide (aka boil in a bag!) at fairly low temperatures without it being unsafe.

In practice this means when probing your chicken (no puns please) you need to hold the probe in the thickest part of the meat and make sure the temperature you're reading is held for the time I've indicated below.  If it only just creeps to 72 then stays there for 1 second before falling back, you can't be sure that bird is cooked.

72 degrees 1 minute 5 seconds
75 degrees 26 seconds
80 degrees 5 seconds
85 degrees 1 second

So if you know you're an impatient sort, aim for 85 degrees knowing you won't have to wait long to confirm the temperature has been held.  Generally I know I can wait, I aim for 80 but accept 75 if it's been held for half a minute.
This is why most cookery books err to the side of caution and advise higher temperatures, however, I think the inconsistency between the advice makes it more confusing for the home cook.

Obviously it's up to you guys to check your meat is cooked properly and any sign of pink on poultry such as chicken or turkey is a sign you should not be eating it.  Use some common sense!