Blackberry and Crumble are the dogs, not a comment on baking. These are, as we always tell people, great names for dogs until you have to stand in a field shouting them, and then you just sound like a bit of a wally...

Welcome to my thoughts, ponderings and crafty adventures.

Tuesday 25 June 2013

what's for tea?

What are you having for tea tonight? Do other people find deciding what to feed themselves and other people so excruciating?

I love cooking, baking, pottering about in the kitchen, I love nothing more than having a big group of people round the kitchen table but the day to day decisions about what to eat... meh.

We eat well in this house and good food is important, we don't go out all that much, we don't smoke or drink (not really, although previous Gin posts may present a different picture) but we do like to eat nice food when we are at home. We generally eat the same 7 or 8 things on rotation and IT IS SO BORING. Most of the time it needs to be quick, easy and nutritious because we have been out at work, we are late back, we have to go out again... but even bearing this in mind we are stuck in a culinary rut.

I try and be really organised so that we only need to shop once a week, buying ingredients to make all the meals that we will eat over the next 7 days,  but this doesn't half take the spontaneity out of food.

We are lucky in that Bob is an adventurous sort of a chap and will eat pretty much anything we put in front of him (although, if asked his favourite food is Heinz macaroni cheese, cold), so I don't need to worry about hiding veg in sauces or making something separate for him but still - meh.

This weeks menu of salmon satay wraps, breakfast for dinner (somehow along the way we have acquired a tradition of having a fry up for our anniversary tea), falafal, pasta and sauce, jacket potatoes and salad, really good fish finger sandwiches*, seems ok on the surface, until I stop and think that really we have eaten the same thing on rotation for about three weeks. I'd like to challenge myself to make something different for tea every night for a month but the thought exhausts me, and some nights I'd rather just have cornflakes.

Somehow I think food is easier in the winter - chuck something in the slow cooker, leave it and then its warm and comforting at tea time. Its the slightly frantic half hour in the warmer (ha, for warmer read just not snowing) months when I'm trying to get something on every ones plates when we are all tired and hungry that makes food lose its sparkle.

I have an array of cookbooks and the Internet at my disposal and I can cook. I get how to put ingredients together and have the resources available to me - both in terms of equipment and ingredients but even so - meh.

I'd like to give my food budget to someone else, just for a week and get them to buy the ingredients and decide what we eat - I'd happily cook it, I just don't want to make the decision about what...

Seriously, let me know in the comments what you are having for tea, or even what you wish you were having for tea.

*if i say so myself, our fish finger sandwiches are something of a culinary triumph. Crusty bread, peas, a layer of mash to stop the peas from falling out...

21 comments:

  1. I am with you one hundred per cent. In fact, one of the reasons that I am looking forward to our impending holiday staying with grandparents so much is because for those short weeks I won't have to think about what we're having for supper. It's such a bore.
    Some people here have cooks, but then you still need to tell them what to cook which is the dull part.
    I think that some of the Good Housekeeping type magazines have a week's worth of family meals complete with a shopping list. When we finally move back to the UK I'm going to give that a go, just to shake things up a bit.
    So, our family food for tonight is leftover lamb tagine from a dinner party we had last night and leftover stir fry beef from a very good Annabel Karmel recipe (I'm a big fan - the recipes are simple, always taste good and can be served to all the family) that I made yesterday using...leftover roast beef from a previous Sunday roast (it had been frozen).
    I use leftovers a lot.....

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    1. Next week we shall have lamb tagine one night and a beef stir fry another... 2 meals decided, 5 to go... I love leftovers. There is a place near us where you can go and use their kitchen, they do the washing up and you make meals to take away. It seems like a ridiculously indulgent middle class thing to go and do but am seriously tempted!

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  2. Oh my I could have written this post. I hate deciding what to make for tea, I hate shopping, I hate making lists, I hate putting it in the cupboards and most of all I hate asking my hubby and son what they want for tea and getting the whatever you want to cook reply. If you find a solution let me know, I'd eat fish finger sandwiches, jacket potatoes and beans on toast every night if I could ~ Sarah x

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  3. I think if I lived alone, my idea of a varied diet would be cornflakes one night and rice crispies the next...

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  4. You sound like me and my girlfriend :)
    We love cooking, but usually by the time we start on tea are so starving whatever will go on toast or with instant mash sounds perfect!
    We did try a new recipe the other day, walnut balls. It made a mountain of them, and I didn't like them, I think the walnut oil was too bitter. Even corn relish didn't improve them. But then I tried one the next day from the fridge and they were gorgeous :)
    Every now and again we try to plan around ingredients, like rice and veg, pizza and frittata for mushrooms, pepper and onions...chop the ingredients just once and make two or three meals :)

    I like the way you write :)

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    1. Thank you Zedster... I've nipped over to your blog for a look. I like your felting, never tried it myself but I'd like to have ago (the craft market in hebden bridge is a busy one - worth persevering to get a table).

      Just out of interest, how did you find the blog?

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    2. Thanks :)
      I never did get a reply from them in Hebden Bridge, I'll try again when I'm not so busy.
      I saw your blog listed as one being followed by Liz Seville http://lizseville.wordpress.com/

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    3. I thought you might have a connection with lizzie because of the felt... I love the smallness of the world sometimes!

      Re the tea, I work in Lancashire and live in Yorkshire and the Yorkshire tea tastes great in both places - tempted by your aldi suggestion - cheap tea, cheap gin. Wonderful!

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  5. Ok, this is where I come across all Stepford, so bear with me and remember I'm a nice person really.

    I plan ahead. I used to do a month in advance, but that's too much even for me these days (plus actually I never know what I'm doing that far in advance any more). But I plan a week ahead. I get the recipe books out (I also rip out interesting recipes from magazines and keep them in a file) and see what I fancy. There's normally at least one or two new things in there. I don't particularly enjoy doing it, but I do it because the alternative of having that awful decision to make every night is, as you know, worse... I write the meal plan on the fridge so I don't forget. I then shop for them, cook them and eat them.

    I then rub out the meal plan and three weeks later when we say "oh, we had that really delicious thing a while back" we can never remember what it is.

    It's also led to some interesting supper party fails - of the trying something new that turns out to be horrid variety. But mostly it works.

    The children, of course, eat the same three things day in day out...Normally with a side order of whinge.

    Tonight, since you ask, supper was cold leftover spag bol (leftover in the sense of on M's plate because I'd fed him too much) and macarons that I made too many of for the teachers' presents, but B's in London so I've got three days off... Tomorrow's going to be boiled egg and asparagus (properly decadent, that).

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  6. I can cope with the planning ahead but "macarons that I'd made too many of..." I may have to reconsider our (virtual) friendship...

    I do the planning ahead, sticking it on the fridge, cooking it, eating it business, just in need of inspiration... Maybe I need a new magazine subscription.

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  7. You're just going to have to get those recipe books out then aren't you?! (and apologies for not reading properly the first time).

    But seriously I recommend, if you haven't got it, Nigel Slater's diaries (the first is better than the second) because then all you have to do is turn to the appropriate date and eat what Nigel's having (or do it a month later to allow for the difference in weather but still...)

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    1. I love nige, I will spend some proper time with the book... after reading my post HWMBO(I) is taking over responsibility a night a week and he and bob are choosing 2 meals a week each. Watch this space! x

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  8. It was so weird reading your post because you sound exactly like me. I find cooking incredibly boring unless I try new recipes frequently. This week some of the meals we had were quiche and a green salad, chicken curry over rice, spaghetti, and quick and spicy tomato soup - recipe by Giada De Laurentiis, with crusty bread.

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    1. Thankyou... Next week then, lamb tagine, beef stirfry, quiche, chicken curry, spaghetti. Looking forward to it already x

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  9. Hello! Just stumbled onto your blog all the way from new zealand. Here we have a new service called My Food Bag. www.myfoodbag.co.nz They choose the meals, they do the shopping. They deliver. You just cook. It's absolutely amazing. I have four children and meal planning and food shopping was the bane of my life. Now we are eating amazing food for no more cost and much less effort. Not that this this helps you. Unless you were looking for a business idea??!!! Great blog. I'll be back.

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    1. Hi Cath, thank you for stopping by... How did you find me, just out of interest?
      One of my followers, Joy is In Australia ans I think of her as my antipodean correspondent... Now I have two of you!
      Loving the sound of my food bag. Genius x

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    2. You commented on the reluctant launderer.

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  10. Yes, same problem in our house. We eat the same rotation of meals often, but I find that if I take the time to plan six or seven meals when I'm writing a shopping list and then buy the ingredients I'm much more inclined to cook nice things rather than the same old pasta pesto we eat so frequently! I do like the sound of your posh fish finger sandwich though... x

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    1. The fish finger sandwich is brilliant - sometimes we have it with rocket in and that's really posh!

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  11. This one's too difficult to comment on! I change all the time, and since my digestive system has been troublesome for quite a while now I'd be happy with very simple fair but Hubby really enjoys his tucker AND meat. So when it comes time to decide what's for dinner I do my best to please him and I either go along with it or adjust for myself. I used to be organised and make up the menu before shopping each week but that seems to have changed over the years!
    I don't know yet what we're having tonight - but I'd like the faeries to come in and do it all for me - AND serve it up - why not!
    Have a great weekend!
    Joy x

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    1. There you are joy - I'd not heard from you, I was worried!
      I have a plan, things are going to get more interesting round here (just on the food front) x

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