Category: Food

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Food planning and recipe ideas

Walking around the grocery store this morning it still puzzles me how amongst all those people I’m one of the very few wandering around with a list, crossing off items as we buy them. This week was a small shop so with a list we scooted around the shop smartly and got out of there. Shopping lists have definitely changed the way we buy groceries – it’s much more efficient and relaxed and way quicker!! 

 

Our food planner is just drawn up on a piece of reused paper stuck with a magnet to the freezer door but if you want something a bit flasher you can download planning posters from http://www.healthyfood.co.nz. They also have a recipe search engine. Enter up to three ingredients and match up to a recipe. I haven’t used it yet but it looks like it might be a useful link when you want to try something a bit different to your normal recipes.

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Breakfast Club gossip

I get to work at about 7:05 a. m. along with a few other colleagues. We have breakfast together to start the day off well – porridge every morning. It’s meant to be an extremely good way to start the day due to the low GI index of porridge which means I don’t usually need to eat again until lunchtime except maybe a piece of fruit.

 

I hadn’t meant to write about pigs again but this morning at the breakfast club talk turned to Jaimie Oliver’s programme on bacon – I hadn’t seen it. The people I was with said they had to turn it off. It was purely by chance that I had written about pig welfare in my blog last night. So I mentioned to my colleagues that what they had seen on the programme re British pig farming might actually be worse in some pig production farms in NZ. I told them about the article I had seen regarding a case of a farmer breaching the less than adequate standards that we already have – they were horrified to think that this could happen here. This article “Small sow stalls found even smaller!” SAFE LovePigs Campaign : Latest news was the one last month that made me stop purchasing pork. If even minimal regulation standards can’t be adhered to and enforced then I would rather opt out of eating pork altogether. So if you are out and about and chatting to people let them know that NZ is not leading the world in animal welfare and that we the consumers have the power to change things.  

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Battery Hens

As usual the weekend Dominion Post paper (Dominion Post, 23/02/2009) provided some interesting reading material (as well as my rubbish bin liner for the week). In amongst an article on raising chickens in your garden was a little paragraph inset quoting Agriculture Minister David Carter. According to the article David has stated that he has no plans to change the regulations covering battery farming in NZ and that the issue will be driven by consumer demand.

 

It got me wondering. I’ve bought free range eggs for as long as I’ve been of the age to do my own grocery shopping but how many others are also purchasing free range? How long will hens have to wait for reasonable animal welfare standards if NZ waits for the consumer? According to the NZ healthy food guide magazine sales of free range eggs now account for 11% of all the eggs we buy in supermarkets (Feb 2009, p. 10). I don’t think the battery caged hens in NZ will be expecting liberty any day soon somehow with that small figure. So why is NZ so far behind other countries? Sainsbury’s announced this year that it will now only sell free range eggs and other big supermarkets in England will be similarly following suit (Supermarket to go free-range only – World – NZ Herald News).

Why is animal welfare such a low priority in New Zealand? Lots of good questions regarding animal welfare and farming can be sent to David if you have the time – postage to parliament is free.

If you’re interested in making life for ex- battery hens a bit more comfortable check this link out New life for battery farm hens | Otago Daily Times Online

 

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Sunday morning routines

Well it’s 9am and time to go wake a sleeping husband. So far this morning………

 

  • A full load of towels is out on the line blowing in the wind. Another load is on the way. We deliberately haven’t put a drier in this house so we don’t get tempted although there is room for it if we were to sell the house.
  • The dishwasher is humming away on eco setting after an hour of baking has helped fill it up to full load. The dishwasher goes on during the day/evening now so that I can stop the dishwasher when it gets to dry mode and just open the door to let the dishes air dry – saves about 15 minutes of power with my machine cycle.
  • Chocolate slice is setting in the fridge and a batch of pikelets has been made and packaged away in the freezer. I’ve been really impressed with how pikelets freeze, they come out exactly the same as they go in. Today was the first time I managed to put a whole batch in the freezer without being tempted!
  • Crumble has been made (5 minute job) and put in the freezer ready to use for desserts the next few weeks. Crumble doesn’t really freeze – it just stays in the same state and can be put straight onto the top of canned/stewed fruit. Definitely worth making. Really easy for kids to make.
  • The fridge has been checked out for things about to reach their expiry date so they can be used up. The cream is almost there so pasta has been put on the food planner for tonight and steak taken out to thaw.  I’ll have to hunt out my jelly/cream mousse recipe to use up the rest of the cream. I read the other day that you can freeze milk which I have to admit I never thought of in terms of using up milk but I’m looking forward to trying when I need to. At the same I’ve filled up the extra spaces in the fridge with water bottles to make the fridge operate more efficiently and it means that we always have water for emergency situations.
  • The spending for the week has been entered in our finance spreadsheet on the computer. I use this so we can keep an eye on where spending is going in order to make better informed decisions. The food bill items get entered also so we can keep track of when food prices are good value.
  • The bills for the next week have all been sorted and paid electronically so I don’t lose out on prompt payment discounts.
  • The cats have been fed and their can washed for recycling. Steel can recycling from the last few weeks has been packaged up ready to go out on rubbish day. Aluminium cans have gone in the garage to be taken to the recycler for cash when the amount has built up enough.   

Not that hubby will probably notice any of this!  But it all makes for an easier week for me as my job is pretty full on and it all helps keep costs down in various areas so I don’t mind getting up a little early to get it all done.

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Takeaway update

Well we lasted 51 days takeaway free! We would have lasted longer but we were in Wellington the other day and passed our favourite restaurant/takeaway – Satay Village. My mother-in-law, who is still recovering from a stroke, had mentioned the other day that she hadn’t eaten their food in such a long time. We ate the takeaways at her place, so technically our house is still a takeaway free zone, but I still felt I had to admit it J. However, once in 2 months is still pretty good compared to what we used to eat. We got fresh home grown lettuce and tomatoes out of it in return for bringing the takeaways as well as some extra plastic containers so it wasn’t all bad, plus my mother-in-law was in seventh heaven eating their calemari dish and their chicken wings ……..mmmmmmmm. And if you have to break your takeaway streak then it might as well be with lovely food such as at Satay Village.  

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Banana Cake

The banana cake was still lovely after not making if for the last year nine years or so. It came out exactly how I remembered it. It does use up quite large quantities of ingredients but in my opinion it is a lovely cake. The recipe comes from the St. Bernard’s College, Lower Hutt cook book. I think from memory the book was published over 20 years ago. Sometimes fundraising school cookbooks have the best recipes as they are family favourites that have been well and truly tested.

 

 

2 1/2 cups flour

1 2/3 cup sugar

1 ¼ teaspoons baking soda dissolved in 2/3 cup milk

¾ cup melted butter

3 mashed bananas

2 eggs

 

Put ingredients together, lastly eggs and melted butter. Beat all 2 minutes. Bake ¾ – 1 hour 180oC.

 

I have always made this in a ring tin (well greased) and it comes out lovely and high and moist with a crunchy top crust. Not sure how it will turn out in other types of tins.

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Recession and Baking

Reading the cooking section in the Dominion Post last weekend (7/02/2009) I was interested to read a comment by Ruth Petty (NZ  cook) that in her opinion the resurgence in home baking due to the recession is probably not money driven as it takes quite a bit of finance to have a well stocked pantry of ingredients. Instead she attributed the resurgence to people ‘seeking quality and comfort to circumvent the bad news’ while also ‘embracing their heritage’. 

 

The article made me reflect on my cooking over the last couple of months. Why am I doing more baking? It’s definitely not because I want to be comforted about bad news! I’m a realist – face it and get on with it the best way you can,

 

I guess one reason is that raw ingredients sit happily in the cupboard or the fridge, don’t go off for quite a while and can be used to make a variety of different products which makes the weekly menu more interesting. If you buy a cake you’re stuck with eating the cake and that’s all you’re getting for the week.  

 

If I buy a packet of biscuits from the shop they are sort of sitting there in the cupboard, beckoning, saying ‘eat me’. If I buy ingredients the biscuits have to be made first which delays the eating and some weeks may not get made at all. This helps the waistline as well as the wallet.

 

In many cases baking is cheaper than buying – it all depends on what you bake. Ruth Petty’s Plum Crumble Cupcakes have 17 ingredients – there is no way I am going to bake something that expensive when I can make something much simpler and cheaper. Costed carefully there are lots of baking recipes that are cheaper than buying (and are not wrapped in plastic).

 

With the recession I am tending to do activities that cost less so I am at home more.  Baking is becoming once again more of a hobby – you get to create while also producing food for the family so it’s a win-win hobby. My first early morning task today was a batch of pikelets which are now packaged in reused plastic containers in the freezer ready for the week. Tomorrow night will be banana cake baking as I can see a few bananas that need to be saved before it’s too late. I haven’t used my favourite banana cake recipe for about 10 years but I’ll publish the recipe tomorrow if the cake is still as yummy as I remember.

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Takeaway free zone update

Wow that happened quickly – January has gone and along with it the first week of February. Nothing like going back to work to slow your blogging down. However having set up good routines over the holidays it has been fairly easy to keep going with my personal consumer challenges even when exhausted at the end of a working day.

It is shopping day today and I am browsing over our fridge and cupboards making our list. 37 days takeaway free!! I am probably of course crippling the local takeaway economy. Hubby has cheated occasionally as he buys his lunch but overall he is slowly making better food choices.

 

It’s such a nice feeling to get to the end of the week and know that you have actually used the items that you bought shopping the week before and have tried hard not to waste anything. It saves time too – no more having to clean out the fruit/vege box, coming across something dead at the bottom! Every week it is automatically cleared out by planning our meals around what we need to use up. I am looking forward to getting the house renovation finished and the landscaping done so that I can start growing a few things.

 

Today’s consumer decision was one of cost versus creating waste. Once a month my treat is a home/garden magazine. It is read over many times and kept, not thrown away. I decided that it was time to get a subscription as it is a significant cost saving – $7.20 vs $4.60 per issue. Having got my credit card details and the phone in my hand it suddenly hit me. When I buy a magazine by post it has to be individually wrapped and individually transported to me. Environmentally it is much better to pick the magazine up when I am at the shop to get my groceries. Damn.……why couldn’t I have had that thought after I had sorted out the subscription? I’ll have to put that one in the think about it later box to see if I can come up with a solution that suits me and my conscience.

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Fish decisions as a consumer

Reading Saturday’s newspaper from front to back (apart from just glancing at sport and the motor section) is one of my weekend pleasures. The review of a local sushi bar (Dominion Post 24/01/2009) sparked my interest for two reasons – one I like sushi and two the reviewer (David Burton) made reference to the fact that he should have asked the waiting staff whether the tuna was blue fin or yellow fin, as blue fin is an endangered species. It reminded me that I have been meaning for a while to obtain a copy of the Forest and Bird Best Fish guide. If you’re downloading the guide also have a look at their site – Sea Week is at the start of March and there are lots of activities being organized around NZ for people to get involved in.

 

So having downloaded the guide I was shocked to see how far down in the Red Zone Hoki was – a fish I sometimes buy for the freezer. My husband will be pleased as he much prefers John Dory which is up near the top part of the list. While I was looking at fish I also downloaded the Greenpeace Red Fish Guide which has 12 types of fish targeted to make it easier for the consumer to remember. GreenPeace cites that during the Hoki season hundreds of fur seals and seabirds are being killed. In addition some Hoki stock are being depleted. With regards to tuna Greenpeace recommend not purchasing any tuna other than SkipJack tuna from NZ or poll, line or troll fisheries in the Pacific.  

 

David Barton made a good point that sushi bars need to explain the fish species they use in greater detail so that their customers can make better informed decisions when choosing their sushi.

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Pikelets and Popcorn

One of our usual Sunday activities is going out to the local bakery for breakfast. In a no takeaway zone Sunday’s have had to change a little. So today I whipped up pikelets in a few minutes – my first made from scratch pikelets since my cooking classes at school when I was 11 yr old. (Actually I think I may still have that recipe – I remember making pikelets with yoghurt, I’ll have to search for it). Previously I have always made my pikelets from pre-prepared pikelet mix or bought pikelets already made but I am trying to cut down on manufacuring, packaging and cost if I can. A few more weeks of practice and I should be perfect hopefully!

 

Recipe: 1/4 cup sugar and 1 egg beaten together. Add 1 cup sifted self-raising flour, 1 pinch salt and about 3/4 cup milk.     

 

 

 

One of the best things about writing is that it makes you stop and think about the decisions you make in your day to day life. I know for me sometimes things are so busy that lots of decisions especially my purchase of items just happen on autopilot.

 

So how does the popcorn fit in to the story? Well looking at my pantry this morning while getting my ingredients out for pikelets I noticed my box of microwave popcorn. I remember clearly buying the popcorn, I wasn’t under the influence of alcohol or anything when I bought it! I just didn’t think about it. Looking at it now, however, I’m asking myself what on earth was I thinking? Why would I buy a product that is shipped all the way from the USA, has each bag individually wrapped in cellophane and when you make the popcorn the bag itself has to be thrown away because it is covered in this revolting yellow looking butter substance that coagulates very quickly. On top of that it costs $4.38 for a box of three popcorn bags. Why haven’t I just being buying plain popcorn and putting it in my popcorn air popper? It would be considerably less cost and less packaging.  

OK – one of my projects for next week, get my popcorn situation sorted out. And keep looking at the products I ‘automatically’ buy just from habit and keep questioning my purchasing of them!