The dreaded bog off offer. Buy one get one free

Melon were on a Buy one get one free offer in Tesco, they were quite large and were not a bad price even if it was just for one.
I have heard that thousands of tons of food is thrown away every year because the supermarkets do offers like this, and they are creating this wicked waste, increasing their profits, without a care for the wasted food, or its effect on the environment. Possibly true, but we have a responsibility, if we buy food, use it. Food is a precious resource, and as so many people do not have enough to eat, we should be extra careful to treat the food we have with respect, and not waste it.
There are opportunities, if one has a glut of any produce whether it is from buying special offers at the supermarket, your garden growing lots of produce, or just buying in bulk to save money.
One idea is to share your good fortune with other people, have people round to dinner, or give away stuff to a neighbour.
Find ways to preserve what you have, freezing is what I use most at the moment, as it is quick, and it is amazing what you can freeze successfully. We should not forget the old tried and tested methods of preserving food, Jams, marmalades, jellies, and chutneys are all really easy, and the recipes can be manipulated to suit your own taste. Bottled fruit keeps for at least a year, and salting vegetables like runner beans, is another way to preserve food. Salting is my least favourite as I use very little salt in my cooking, and so salt preserved food even when well washed tastes pretty nasty to me, but I dare say it would not taste so salty if you are used to eating more salt than I do.
Another Idea is to find different ways to eat the same produce. This is where trawling through recipe books for inspiration really helps. And it can work using an ingredient you have available to replace one you don’t have, be brave it is all food and you can sometimes find you have invented a new dish. My big problem is remembering what it was I used when it was a successes.
So you have two Melons. Here are a few ways to use them up. I am not sure any of the following would work with water melon, but are fine with a firm fleshed melon like, honey dew or cantaloupe,
The simplest starter, slice and sprinkle with a little sea salt and serve. Or slice and serve with black forest ham, Prosciutto or similar. And another unusual recipe that is suitable as a starter is, diced melon with a little finely chopped onion, walnuts, raisins and French dressing.To use for desert try adding some stem ginger in syrup, or just using a bit in a fruit salad.It also can be the main ingredient in a pimms salad, melon balls, strawberries and cucumber with a dash of pimms.

Well it is Wednesday already so must catch up on my blog. Luckily I have kept a record of all breakfast, lunch and dinner so no problems remembering this time.
Monday being a bank holiday we treated it as a Sunday and had a roast for dinner.
But to start with breakfast, nothing exciting just shredded wheat. But for lunch as Steve was out for the day I thought I would look for inspiration in the cookery books and treat myself to something new.
As I have mentioned in the past I use cookery books more for inspiration than for slavishly following any recipe, So the best cook books have inspirational pictures, and one of my favourites is Nigella Lawson’s, Nigella Bites. This was where I found the ultimate naughty sandwich. She calls it trashy food, something for occasional indulgence. It was a banana and peanut butter sandwich, fried in butter! How bad is that? Even then I did not manage to be as bad as the recipe, as that asked for white bread and I did not have any, so it was made with nice soft wholemeal bread instead. Promise will try harder and get white bread for the next time. It was good, well done Nigella. It was according to her, Elvis Presley’s favourite sandwich.
Dinner was also inspired by Nigella Bites cook book, Slow roasted leg of Lamb, I did not have any pomegranate so that was left out this time, I have used it before and it is a good and easy recipe, so can highly recommend it. I can honestly say I can recommend the whole book as it is definitely one of my most used. Must tell you about some of the others that I use frequently. But that is for another blog.
Anyhow back to Monday dinner, with the lamb all the usual vegetables. But to start with, Cantaloupe melon with black forest ham.
Tuesday was a simple day for food, for breakfast shredded wheat, lunch cheese on toast, and Dinner cold lamb and salad.

Sunday

Shredded wheat for breakfast, just one with hot water a quarter of a teaspoon of sugar and a dash of milk just enough to keep me going for the first part of the day, Walk the dogs and feed the horses. One of the horses is still stabled at night so I have to muck out and fill a hay net ready for the evening. The rest of the horses are not stabled so just need a change of rug, hay, feed and field clearing. If anyone is interested I plan to start another blog dedicated to all things horsy in my day.
For lunch it had to be toast, as the last of the bread was not as fresh as it could have been. but as I refuse to waste anything if I can help it, toasting the bread makes it quite edible. As we had not had any oily fish for quite a few days I had the toast spread with sardines in tomato sauce, followed by yet another hot cross bun.
Dinner. I had planned to start with a salad, but then remembered that I had bought two cantaloupe melons and as one of them is now ripe that served as a starter, just sprinkled with a little sea salt. For the main dinner we had boiled rice, pork with ginger, red pepper spring onion, and fennel. Served with stir fried vegetables, green pepper, onions garlic, ginger, mushrooms, carrots and cauliflower.
Well plenty of vegetables today if a bit light on the fruit. Also had a few peanuts and a gin and tonic.

Saturday

Well I don’t think I did any better yesterday, either from a healthy eating point of view, or from a reducing weight sort of diet.
Breakfast time we had mandarin oranges and grapefruit, both tinned, that was the healthy bit, then as it was Good Friday hot cross buns.
Steve was not impressed as he had wanted a traditional English breakfast. Well he could have cooked one and had it waiting for me on my return from horse feeding and dog walking. Hint Hint.
So, for lunch we had traditional English breakfast. Using what I had in the way of ingredients. Scrambled eggs, bacon, tinned tomatoes and toast.
Took the horse and pony out, I rode the horse and lead the pony, and Steve walked the dogs. By the time we had put them all to bed and seen to another two horses, we were running rather late. Steve suggested picking up fish and chips on the way home. I did not need too much persuasion. Just to help make sure we ate our quota of fresh fruit I made a salad of apple, banana, pear, and Satsuma, and had a multi vitamin and mineral pill just to help.
Ate chocolate and peanuts. Bad.

Good Friday

Yesterday was not the best day in the way of inspirational eating or the best in good nutrition, but never mind how would I ever feel righteous and smug if on good days, if I did it right all the time.
Breakfast was orange juice followed by porridge that had been made mainly with water so that was a fairly low fat start to the day. Good.
Lunch was very late, I spent too long on this computer, I think computers eat time.
For lunch we had fish sticks salad and bread and butter. Maybe overall the day was not that bad from a nutritional point of view after all.
In the afternoon Steve and I did an emergency dash to rescue a pony that was larking about on the top of an enormous dung heap and endangering himself, it was a bit of a pain as it meant I missed riding my horse. After that we still had to exercise the dogs, and then we went shopping. After that we arrived home quite late. So the bad bit of the day was crashing out in front of the telly and eating two huge pizzas and drinking beer. (Just the one).

Monday

Saturday breakfast Hubby made it, one of his favourites, bagels with smoked salmon trimmings and cream cheese, served with a big mug of coffee and a glass of grapefruit juice.
Lunch we are finishing up leftovers again, using up the roasted vegetables from the other night, warmed up in a can of tomato soup, it becomes a really substantial lunch served with a chunk of bread.
Just before going to put horses to bed, we had a cup of tea with one of the fruit cakes from my baking frenzy the other night.
Dinner time we were both a bit fed up and could not think what we wanted to eat for dinner, so did a raid on the supermarket looking for bargains and inspiration. No real bargains available, just one French stick, and a few bits of cheese, so with that as a start the dinner was, French stick and anything we could find in the fridge. It often seems to be the best meals as there is always some salad, and I don’t have to cook. Ice cream cone for pud.

Thursday

The blog today is a bit different as I missed yesterdays. I decided on Tuesday that I have gained too much weight, and it is high time I cut down, I do not think that dieting is a good thing as it really a does not seem to work. My proof is, have you ever met a fat person that has not been on a diet? They all have, therefore, if they are fat and have dieted, dieting must make you fat. It is a good theory, and it’s all mine.
I think the reason for my weight gain is over the last year my workload has changed, the work is not so heavy, which is good as I was getting strain problems like a frozen shoulder and joint pain. My doctor said unhelpful things like “‘at your age, you should be taking things easier”. Well my days are still quite full, but I now take time to eat sitting down, and eat the same size meals that I did before which is as much as I can eat before I fall asleep.
So my idea for reducing weight would normally be work harder, it always worked in the past and I can lose a stone in weight in a matter of a month, but I have no desire to damage my now dodgy joints, So cutting consumption will have to be the way.
I will also cut out anything that I will not really miss, like butter on my toast, chocolate, and nuts, I will miss them but it won’t be too tough.
I started yesterday by giving up second breakfast. I ate a sandwich of one slice of wholemeal bread, with marmite grated carrot and just a little bit of mayonnaise; I must wean myself off mayonnaise. It did take more time to get out of the house but I saved time by not coming home for second breakfast.
Lunch was one sandwich of pâté tomato mixed leaves and cucumber. Hubby then gave me a piece of fruit cake. Well it is only day one; don’t want too much shock to system.
For dinner a starter of orange and watercress salad, followed by vegetable curry, with rice and lentils with naan bread.
Evening snack was an orange.
Not a great start.

Monday

For first breakfast I just had a glass of juice and grabbed one of the fruit buns that I made the other day, they were ok though did not rise as I would have expected, but I do not see how that can be because I used a goose egg, instead of chicken eggs. I will blame my cranky oven. Second breakfast was porridge.
Lunch was something I don’t do very often, readymade meals. Unless it is one I made earlier. It was a frozen donna kebab from Lidl, they take 2min 20 seconds are quite tasty, the chili sauce is good, and being from Lidl they are cheap. I served it with salad.
Dinner time I find I am running out of salad things and no roast yesterday, so it can not be the traditional Monday dinner of cold meat chips and salad.
After a rummage in the fridge the resulting dinner was A Waldorf salad, the last of the corned beef, amazing how far a small tin of corned beef can stretch. Chips, peas and sweet corn, with an ice cream cone for pud

Wednesday

Back to banana and orange juice for breakfast, have to eat the bananas up before they get too ripe, strange how different ripe and unripe bananas can taste. Is there anything really palatable that can be done with a really ripe banana?
Second breakfast was shredded wheat again.
Lunch was salad and fish sticks with salad cream and soya and linseed bread.
Son and heir came to dinner, I needed inspiration so went to the book shelf and did a sort of lucky dip, as the first book off the shelf was an Indian cook book, that was it decided, curry. I don’t necessarily use a recipe for cooking anything. I just use cook books for ideas. I don’t always have the ingredients anyway, so often have to think of a substitute. Amazingly good dinners have been created this way, but are unlikely to be recreated. Eating dinner in this house can be quite an adventure, not for the faint hearted, but as yet, my cooking has not ended in any poisonings.
Any way back to this curry dinner, left over breast of lamb, with celery, onion, pepper and cauliflower, in a curry sauce from Lidl, very cheap and quite as good as any other readymade curry sauce. The rice was a bit more effort than plain old rice, but worth it, basmati rice with lentils, celery, onion, garlic, vegetable juice, garam masala, cumin and turmeric.

Monday

Monday morning and I feel fed up because no one is reading my Blog.
I understand that the only way for the search engines to push my blog to the top of the list is for the key words to appear frequently. I tried that the other day when discussing the merits of the banana. Obviously no one has any interest in the humble banana, but surely someone must be wondering what to eat for dinner? Or are all the people who do techie things like blogging, just go down to the take away, or eat frozen ready meals and drink coffee or coke.
On the plus side of writing this blog, it is making me think before I eat, as I will have to admit to anything bad and unhealthy on line in front of the millions of people who are not reading this.
So for breakfast number 1 a banana, no juice just water. Then later breakfast number 2 porridge, it is made from oats, if you feed horses lots of oats they get loads of energy, so I am hoping they will do the same for me. and they are really cheap.
Lunch was salad and fish sticks; I used not to like fish sticks, but since discovering they are great dipped in salad cream, also something I was not very fond of, but it turns out to be a good combination. Did not forget the carbohydrate this time, had soya and linseed bread.Dinner, yes dinner, dinner, dinner. Please someone look for the word dinner and read me. Any way for Monday evening’s dinner we had more salad cold roasted vegetables and cold stuffed breast of lamb that had been cooked the day before with the Sheppard’s pie. I try to put the oven on no more than twice a week and when I do I always fill it. At least I am doing a bit for global warming.

Saturday

Whatever it was I ate yesterday it did nothing for my memory. I am having a problem remembering so I can use that as an excuse for forgetting all the naughty things I ate.

Breakfast banana and juice to keep me going for the first bit, then home to find lovely hubby has prepared bacon scrambled eggs tomatoes mushrooms and toast, anything I do not have to cook is good.

Things got better, at lunch time as I was busy with yesterdays blog, hubby prepared lunch, cheese on toast with onion and Worcester sauce.

Having had a two meal break I felt must make an effort to do something creative, so using as inspiration a dish I had tried in a local restaurant. I construct a dish of butternut squash, cranberries, and brie cheese, topped with bread crumbs and more brie. It was a good job the salad of lettuce, celery, cucumber, tomatoes, beetroot and olives with olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing was nice, as the squash dish definitely needs work. But as squash are quite expensive it can wait for another day of inspiration.

Now for the naughty bit I ate chocolate, I wonder which is worse for me the chocolate, or the crisps that I ate the evening before.

We ended the day by going outside to see and photograph the lunar eclipse. That was amazing.

Inspiration

Yesterdays meals weren't very inspired, I was too busy setting up this blog.
Breakfast was the remains of the pancake mixture with crispy bacon and mapel syrup, very tasty, though not slimming, or very healthy.
Corned beef and Branston Pickle sandwiches for lunch, on wholemeal bread without butter, to make them slightly more healthy.
Dinner was going to be something tasty based upon Jamie Oliver's book Jamie's" Italy, but we ran out of time so had pizza instead. Well they are italian and we ate a lot of salad with them.
Moderation is the key. It's alright to have chips and pizza, just don't eat them every meal.