Monday, June 11, 2007

Weekend round up (Days Nine and Ten)

I forgot to do a daily round up yesterday or Saturday (although, lucky you, you got to see real life photographic evidence of what I ate for most of the day on Saturday!) so here's a double dose to celebrate the long weekend:

Saturday 9th June (Day Nine)

Breakfast: Cup of tea, Apple drop biscuits with cinnamon honey yoghurt and plunger coffee

Lunch: Home made fish burger: toasted wholemeal roll, tartare sauce, salmon pattie, the last of the bag of spinach (which lasted happily 3 days past it's best before date), tomato and cucumber. Almonds.

Afternoon tea: Crackers and the last of the hummus

Dinner: Bendy celery and carrot bake from the freezer, left over from Day Two.

Sunday 10th June (Day 10)

Breakfast: Cup of tea, Apple drop biscuits with rhubarb and strawberry jam.

Morning tea: Crackers with cheese and sliced tomato

Lunch: (From the freezer) Penne pasta with zucchini, mushrooms & sun dried tomatoes

Afternoon tea: Hazelnuts

Dinner (for Four):

Entree: (supplied by J&M) Carrot and celery sticks, garlic crispy bites, red chili dip, sweet chili and ginger cream cheese pour-over. Main course: (blog action shot requested by S. She also requested a more interesting name than "S" but we're still working on that last bit!) Potato topped casserole made with black eyed beans. Green beans as a side dish. Dessert: Tarawera chocolate sponge cake.

It was originally supposed to be a chocolate version of this with cream courtesy of S but there was a whoopsie as I took it out of the tin. My first thought was to magic it into a trifle but I had no custard and when I looked up the recipe in the trusty Edmonds cookbook it said I needed custard powder, which I didn't have. Pah!

So I just crumbled chunks into pudding bowls, nuked the jam til it was runny and poured it and the cream over the top. Tasted just as good, especially with tea and a dark Lindor ball chaser (another contribution from Sally)


Finished this weekend:

* Bag of baby spinach. (Replaceable, with changes.)
* Hummus. (Think I'll have a crack at making my own, even though I have no tahini...)
* Hazelnuts (I'm not even sure where these came from!)
* Tinned tomatoes (I've got fresh. I think they'll do. I also have one can of tomatoes with basil and garlic as a back up)
* Frozen corn (let me think about that...)

Gained this weekend:

* 1 bottle white wine
* Half a container of thickened cream
* Eight Dark Lindor balls

Bought this weekend:

* Butter. $1.15.

Total spent since June 1: $37.01

And in the blog world,
Just another Frugal Pixie has just announced she's started a Living on Less challenge until August 3rd.

This is a little older but I found it interesting reading based on my experienced this past ten days: Maggie Alderson discusses how a reformed shopaholic found peace without purchases (although she's spending again now - but three months is an impressive feat!)

3 comments :

Taphophile said...

Doing well, TSS. I'll be doing Cook from the Cupboard from 17 June to 26 July.

Frank Sviatko said...

You don't need custard powder to make custard. You need eggs, milk (cream if you want it richer), sugar and vanilla. If you want to go easy on the eggs, use a bit of cornflour for thickening.
Whisk the eggs and milk together, add sugar and vanilla and heat at a medium heat stirring regularly. If you're using cornflour mix it with a bit of cold milk and add slowly to the mixture at the end of the cooking process, stirring until the mix is the consistency you want.
At its purest, it's sweet scrambled eggs, but not lumpy.

AMCSviatko said...

Hi Dad

Actually worked that out after flicking through The Destitute Gourmet and finding a recipe there. Like Duh! of course the Edmonds' Cookbook will say to use custard powder - they sell the stuff so they're hardly going to give away the fact you don't need it are they? :-)