Weekend cooking

Thrifty dining does rather eat into your time (pun intended). Weekends, always too short in any case, seem to be taken up with planning, shopping, peeling, chopping and storing things for later in the week. Although I would love to cook on a more 'ad-hoc' basis, having a demanding day job and a ridiculously long commute means I have to be a little more prepared. So far this weekend, I have planned the week's menu (taking into account 'fast' days for the 5:2 diet I'm currently trying), made the usual elaborate Saturday night curry (storing leftover dhal for a meal later in the week), made a batch of Californian oat cakes (a kind of healthy muffin filled with fibre) to feed the human 'mouse' that shares the house and provide a more nutritious snack to have with morning coffee, made a veg filled beef stew (to provide dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow), stewed a couple of cooking apples who had seen better days with the last dregs from a bottle of maple syrup and plenty of cinnamon (to have with natural yoghurt on the train for breakfast) and made a Japanese black sesame paste to serve with soba noodles and tofu on Monday night. As well as two lots of washing and a ever growing pile of ironing, plus at least three knitting commissions on the go, I think I'll be leaving any housework for later in the week.....again.

I normally have two or three cookbooks acting as 'favourites' each week and ambitious plans to cook a number of recipes from each. These are usually supplemented by any number of magazine articles, pages torn from daily papers found on the train or leaflets picked up whilst 'window' shopping various deli's on my way to and from work. You could say that I'm thinking about food pretty much all the time. Even on my 5:2 fast days I'm thinking about my evening meal (a lot) or perusing the menus listed outside restaurants and imaging what I'd order. I'm always up for trying new things and currently there are at least three things that I'm desperate to make - elderflower champagne/liquor, Indian lentil cake 'ondhwa' and beetroot cured salmon, that have not made the week's menu due to time and cost. However, the week's food plan does still contain plenty of new ideas from various sources and reads as follows -

Monday
Breakfast - natural yoghurt and stewed apples with cinnamon and maple syrup
Lunch - leftover stew from Sunday and a hunk of bread
Dinner - millet and brown rice soba noodles with black sesame paste, tofu and spring onions

Tuesday (5:2 fast day)
Breakfast - low fat cottage cheese and summer fruits
Dinner - leftover mung dhal (from Saturday) with brown rice

Wednesday
Breakfast - natural yoghurt, flax seeds and fruit
Lunch - avocado with mustard seeds and curry spices with homemade 'crisps' (from leftover chapatti from Saturday)
Dinner - green lentil, sweet potato and farro soup with a hunk of bread

Thursday (5:2 fast day)
Breakfast - low fat cottage cheese and melon
Dinner - Red veg goulash with salad

Friday
Breakfast - natural yoghurt, flax seeds and fruit
Lunch - leftover goulash and salad
Dinner - home cooked fish, chips and peas