Soup for a miserable summer day

Today, according to the meal plan, supper was to be pea and watercress pasta, a lovely summery type dish (I hoped) much in the vein of St Hugh's macaroni peas, but frankly, for reasons that will become apparent, I've now officially had enough of trying to pretend that the rain hasn't really been raining pretty much every day since - well - since I can remember. I mean I know I've been all happy happy about going away camping and making the most of it, snatching those sparkling moments on the beach to store up for less cheery days; and I know that I have had some sunshine (a teeny bit) this year, but frankly, now I. have. had. enough.


The children's school has an open air swimming pool attached to it, and today was the day for the gala. KS2 this morning, and the Husband attended to support Blue. The sun shone and the children were happy. My turn this afternoon, for KS1. As I left the house, the sky had already clouded over - not quite 'fine at 7, rain by 11', but it was definitely spitting. It didn't take long for the heavens to open and it basically rained for the hour of the gala. Pink was in the first 'race'. Afterwards, she got changed and then sat on the poolside, in the rain (with her dressing gown on) for the rest of the hour. By the end, the kids were cold and wet, but there was still half an hour of school to go.

Now, I am going to try really hard not to rant about my kids' school and their totally erratic behaviour in situations such as this. If it had suited the school, we would have been encouraged to take our children home early. But today, clearly, it did not suit, so we were not allowed to liberate our soggy children (I would have had to wait for Blue anyway, but that's not the point here). Not only that, but with 30 mins to go, there was really no sensible option but to wait around. In the rain. Offered refuge in a friend's car, I gratefully accepted, and also accepted the offer of a lift back down the hill - it's only a 15-20 minute walk home but really, I was wet, Pink was wet, and I knew that Blue would be knackered from his efforts this morning. And frankly, as the car was already at school and was going to be going back down the hill, it was going to make no difference to the environment.

Pink was due to be going to Rainbows later on but she was cold and tired so I put her straight in the bath and had a rethink about supper. What they needed was not pea and watercress pasta. Oh no. What they needed was soup. In July.

I cannot believe that I was cooking up the sort of chunky soup that I'd normally serve up on an autumn/winter weekend, but I did. And I commend it to you for all those wet and miserable days to come. Bah humbug.

Warming and chunky soup for a miserable summer day

Ingredients: 1 onion, 1 clove of garlic, 2 carrots, 1 red pepper, 1 can of chopped tomatoes, 2 tsp vegetable stock powder, 125g cooking chorizo,  ground coriander and smoked paprika, large handful of small pasta - I had some orzo (left over from St Hugh's mushroom risoniotto) and some conchiglietti in the cupboard.

Method: Put the kettle on. Finely chop the onion and garlic, heat a splash of olive oil in a large pan, and add the onion and garlic and fry gently for a few minutes, stirring occasionally. Peel and dice the carrots, halve the pepper, remove the seeds and dice, then chuck the carrot and pepper in with the onion and stir for a couple of minutes. Chop the chorizo into similar size chunks as the carrots & peppers, add to the pan, stir in and cook for a couple more minutes. Sprinkle in a sprinkle (literally, just a sprinkle) of the paprika and coriander and tip in the tin of tomatoes. Add the stock powder to the empty tomato tin and fill with boiling water. Add the stock to the pan, then a scond tin's worth of hot water. Bring to the boil chuck in the pasta and leave to cook until the veg & pasta is cooked - it'll take about 15 minutes.

Serve with garlic bread

Sort of summery meatballs - or how a slow cooker saved my life

Today, I have mostly won.

First thing, it had been lovely and sunny. I had a load of bedding that I had washed yesterday, sitting, damp, in the laundry basket. I went outside. I looked to all points of the compass. Not one single menacing dark cloud. Anywhere. I hung the washing out.

Later on, I had a hilarious conversation with a South African friend as we walked our dogs through the fields - hers taking every opportunity to sit in the muddiest of muddy puddles, mine buggering off into the wheat as soon as I stopped concentrating.

By the time we were half way across the fields, the clouds were gathering in again. I started my "Typical, just when I'd got the washing out" speech and she creased up. "You know, you are just so BRITISH" she roared with laughter. "I have sworn never to fall into this WAR with the weather that you have going on here. hang it up, take it in, always watching for the rain. Did you know my mother in law RINGS ME UP to tell me she got the washing dry outside?!?" I had to laugh, but there it is. That's me all over.

It's not just the washing - although that has been a particular issue recently. I mean, I don't want to go on about the weather, but it has been foul and we don't have a tumble dryer. So a day when it might not rain just galvanises me into action. "What can I wash?" I think. And on the touch and go days, I suffer angst about whether to put the washing out or not. Lucky that is all I have to suffer angst about these days, I know...

Anyway, I digress. I was talking about being at war - on the domestic front. May be 'war' is a strong word, but as the end of term approaches, I feel like every morning, I have to arm myself more carefully to face the day and the various challenges it is likely to offer.

I was feeling very pleased with myself last week having sorted out a mega-meal plan to get me through the rest of the month, part of my armour. It covers the end of term, and through to when we get back from Scout Camp. I finished it, posted it up on a linky, and felt organised. So short sighted.

check out the veg - all from the garden

 Last night, having served up a salad which, I am proud to say,  was almost exclusively from the garden (lettuce, spring onions, new potatoes, broad beans and eggs), I checked the menu plan for the meal for this evening. Meatballs. This would have been fine, but when I did the meal plan, it had been my intention to make them last night. However, at that point, when I consulted said plan, the meat was still in the freezer. I retrieved it anyway and started pondering how to make it work in the grand scheme of today which involved my usual working day, followed by picking the kids up at 4.30 and going straight to Pink's end of term 'ballet show' (something straight out of Joyce Grenfell, believe me!), not due to finish till 7, while the Husband would be back
and needing something to eat before heading off to Scouts
- at around 7. The timing was not looking good.

Salvation came in the form of the slow cooker - in fact, The Ultimate Slow Cooker which is a book I bought on the off chance through one of those Book People type things when Pink was at Playgroup. I'd been flicking through it the other day to work out how to do some gammon in the slow cooker, and I remembered that I'd seen a meatball recipe in there. Just the job. One of the things I love about slow cooking is that 'Everything is done" feeling, and today was a day where I needed that. That's not to say that you don't have to do all the prep etc, but it's done far enough away from the time you eat it that when you finally sit down to eat, you can forget that you were trying to make meatballs and packed lunches at the same time as listen to reading, take on board the Husband's schedule for the day and worry about whether anyone needed swimming kit....


Anyway, I made the meatballs up themselves this morning, and left them in the fridge while I took reckless pleasure in hanging out washing, putting a second load on (I know how to live dangerously), getting the kids to school, walking the dog and finally getting down to work. Then while I was grabbing a sandwich at lunchtime, I fried off the meatballs, made the sauce and put everything in the slow cooker to do their thang. Once we got in, it was a moment's work to cook some pasta, and bingo. Dinner.


I was particularly pleased with this meatball recipe that I made up (I used the book for sauce volume and cooking times). When I was chopping up the spring onions from the garden yesterday, I decided, on the back of the success of my garlic scape risotto, that I would use the spring onion tops instead of onion in the meatball recipe.




They took a bit of chopping up because they are kind of 'hollow', so when you slice you get a little green circle, and it needs to be quite small to go in the meatballs, but I treated them a little like herbs and used a mezza luna (one of those semi circular knives with a handles at each end that Nigella uses). 






Sort of Summery Meatballs

Ingredients:

For the meatballs - 400g lamb mince, a handful of spring onion tops - or a red onion, finely chopped, 1 clove of garlic, crushed, a slice of bread - a day or 2 old is good, a medium egg, salt and pepper, finely grated zest of a lemon

For the sauce - olive oil, 1 onion, finely chopped, 2 cloves of garlic, crushed, 1 can of chopped tomatoes, 200ml veg stock, salt and pepper and a pinch of sugar.

Method: to make the meatballs, put all the ingredients in a bowl, mash together with a fork until well combined and the bread is broken into crumbs throughout the mixture. You could make the bread into crumbs first in a food processor but I was short on time. Make into between 16 and 20 meatballs depending on the size you like them. I divided the mixture into 4 then into 4 again, then rolled each portion into a ball (with apologies for stating the obvious).

Set the slow cooker to heat up, splash some oil into a frying pan (I used a dessert spoon's worth), and brown the meatballs on quite a high heat. Set aside on kitchen paper, and then in the same pan, fry the onion & garlic till it is starting to soften, pour in the stock and tomatoes, scraping up all the good stuff from the bottom of the pan, add freshly ground salt and pepper and the sugar. Bring to the boil. While the sauce is coming to the boil, pop the meatballs in the slow cooker, then once the sauce is bubbling, pour it on top and replace the lid of the cooker. Cook on 'low' for 6-8 hours, and then serve with pasta - or rice or couscous...

Gooseberry and Orange Drizzle cake

Gooseberry and Orange Drizzle cake.

There is not much I can say about this cake. Delicious light orange flavoured sponge with hidden gooseberries, and a crunchy orange sugar topping. As long as you like gooseberries this is a total winner.

If I had had some available, I might have added some elderflower cordial somewhere into the mix – perhaps in the drizzle on the top, but I haven’t had time to make anything elderflower this year (much to my disappointment) and I didn’t have shop bought in, so I just stuck to the recipe, which had caught my eye in a Good Food mag (June 2012 if you’re interested) and I had mentally bookmarked for when the gooseberry bushes in the garden got their act together.

It's basically an orange sponge mix using 4 large eggs, and the zest of an orange, into which you fold your lovely gooseberries.

Once it's out of the oven, you drizzle over a mixture of the orange juice and granulated sugar

and serve - we had it with creme fraiche as a pudding on Sunday but it tastes great on its own just as cake.

The rest of it has been sliced up, individually wrapped and frozen for school lunches otherwise I think I would have eaten the lot, it was so delicious.

I’m thinking that if there are some blackcurrants around next weekend, I may revisit the recipe but as Blackcurrant and lemon drizzle. I think it would also be good with raspberries and lemon. What do you reckon?

Pork Burgers with herby wedges (the potato ones)

My turn to host the after-school hordes today (it seems to come round very quickly), made even more logistically tricky because the girls don’t have choir at the moment, but the boys still have football, so I need to do a double run up to school at 3.30 then 4.30. I was already in a rush because I’d been working at a friend’s house due to lack of internet chez Recipe Junkie and had stopped in at home on the way up to school to dump my laptop and collect all the stuff that needed to go to the charity shop after my clear out on Saturday. 

Having collected the girls, I had a couple of jobs to do in the village before coming home to start tea, and then head back out for the boys. The boys have Cubs at 6.30 so there is a certain time pressure on tea on these evenings.

As I turned the corner into our road, I saw someone loitering outside the house and clocked the BT van parked opposite. In the manner of some slow motion film character, desperate to prevent disaster happening, I started madly waving my arms and picked up speed, as the girls scattered behind me, all the while hoping that he would see me and would not just get in his van and drive off leaving me forlorn and desolate on the doorstep as the rain became heavier –you’ve seen the films.

Lady luck was clearly smiling on me and he waited. We exchanged pleasantries about 3 legged pets – his cat to my dog – and then he set about checking the main socket. Apparently the exchange fault had been fixed but a test showed something else was not right. 

There is probably a secret box on the fault report form that says “Stupid Woman”. I had plugged the router back in incorrectly after all my efforts to get online on Thursday. I am still consoling myself with the fact that there was a genuine exchange fault that hadn’t been fixed till this afternoon...

Anyway, having recovered my composure, I rounded the girls back up and we headed back up to school – this time in the camper van – to collect the boys. Back home and my initial euphoria with the return of the internet quickly wore thin when it appeared NOT to have been returned. For a short and critical period of time, I was trying to get the tea ready and work out why the hell the internet was not working again - majoring more, I must admit, on the internet.

Good job then that I’d already started the tea.

This is a fabulous and easy meal and I thoroughly recommend it. It could have gone either way and nearly did when Pink discovered her first wobbly tooth on biting into the sweetcorn “How exciting – a wobbly tooth!” (she’s been desperate for one for months) “But mmmmuuuummmyyyy (sob, sob) it huuurrrrttttss”. However, tooth drama aside, I’m pleased to report success.

The recipe is based on a Good Food one from July 2009 – the original recipe is here, but is adapted significantly to meet the criteria required for Blue’s homework this week to design a healthy but delicious meal. Don't you love it when they spring things like that one you? I think I he did very well. And all 4 of the kids wolfed these burgers down, no questions asked, along with the salad, then fruit and cranberry and white chocolate blondie (watch this space) for pud. All in time for Cubs.

Pork Burgers with herby wedges

Makes 6 decent sized burgers

Ingredients: 750g lean pork mince, 1 large egg, 4 cloves of garlic (3 for the burgers, 1 for the chips), 2 tsp smoked paprika (I just used bog-standard, but you could use hot if you were catering for more sophisticated palates than I was), 1 slice of bread, 6 burger rolls, 4 baking potatoes, fresh rosemary, 1 tablespoon olive oil.

To serve: mayonnaise, ketchup, lettuce, tomatoes, red peppers etc

Method: To make the burgers, put the mince, egg, 3 of the garlic cloves, crushed, the paprika and the bread into a bowl and mash together with a fork. You could make the bread into crumbs first, but if you mash it in to the rest of the ingredients, and then mix it up well, you get the same effect. If you already had bread crumbs, you could use those.

Once everything is well mixed, divide the mixture into 6 and form into burger patties. I made the burgers this morning - It took minutes - and left them covered, in the fridge.

About 45 minutes before you want to eat, heat the oven to 220⁰C, pour half the olive oil onto a baking sheet and put it in the oven. Slice the baking potatoes into wedges, finely chop the rosemary and mix together the potato wedges, chopped rosemary, remaining crushed clove of garlic and the rest of the olive oil. When the oven is at temperature, spread the wedges over the baking sheet, sprinkle with some sea salt if you have some, and return to the oven. I got the potatoes in before I had to go back up to school for the boys.

Check the wedges after about 20 minutes, and turn. They will need about 45 minutes in total.

Turn the grill on to high and when hot, start grilling the burgers. They will need a good 10 mins on each side – check if you’re not sure.

When the burgers are cooked through, serve in the buns dressed to taste (mayo or ketchup – or both, lettuce, sliced tomato) with the wedges on the side. 

check out the size of those leaves...

I made a tomato salad to go with ours to celebrate a particularly fine pot of basil that the Husband has nurtured for me (sliced 6 tomatoes, ripped up a handful of basil leaves, and drizzled over a little balsamic, and a grind of salt and pepper), some sliced red pepper and some corn on the cob that needed eating (not good for wobbly teeth).

Cider slow cooked gammon to go with lovely garden veg

Now, you might think that with all this time available what with the internet being down and an unexpected weekend at home. I would have turned my hand to some serious cuisine efforts, but certainly on Saturday, I was feeling very uninspired. 

Having proudly blogged my menu plan for July on Friday, I realised when I got home that day that I had forgotten to take the planned salmon out of the freezer in time, so the kids had fish fingers and chips before the school discos. I got out a couple of pieces of salmon out for the Husband and I in the hope that they would defrost in time, but when I eventually got home, head thumping from one too many renditions of Nellie the Elephant, from dealing with the indecision of numerous children with £1 to spend and far too much choice, and slightly sozzled after a couple of illicit glasses of wine produced by the school facilities manager for those of us helping out, it was nearly 10 p.m. The Husband was ravenous having not eaten, and was out of the door like a shot to the chippy. Not a patch on Mr Stein’s, but just what was needed.

This left me with 2 pieces of salmon that needed to be eaten up. For those of you who think I must be some unbearable paragon of unprocessed food virtue, you will rejoice to hear that I found a pizza express pizza and some garlic bread in the freezer and fed that to the kids on Saturday evening (although I’ll admit to making them eat salad from the garden alongside – I do have some standards). The Husband and I did however have grilled salmon (I rubbed a little sesame oil on, but nothing else) with new potatoes out of the garden and some green bean (which weren’t). It was lovely, simple food (well, that's my excuse!).

And this is where this weekend has been really lovely. After all the miserable rain, the garden and allotment have suddenly produced real food for us to eat. True, we’ve been eating salad from the garden (lettuce and rocket) for a few weeks, and there’s been rhubarb and beetroot, but it’s all been a little bit hit and miss. But not this weekend.

This weekend, we have had raspberries, strawberries, red and blackcurrants, and gooseberries. 

There has been new potatoes,

 

 broad beans

and carrots.

Somehow the sight of all this lovely produce galvanised me into action.

Most of the fruit has gone into the freezer for now (watch out for summer pudding, coming soon to a blog near you), but it was the turn of the gooseberries to get the straight-out-of-the-garden treatment and got turned into gooseberry and orange drizzle cake.

The veg – well, we ate them for supper on Sunday. I boiled the new potatoes and steamed the carrots and broad beans on top. Just delicious.

Broad beans are one of my favourite vegetables, and the thing is, for all the fancy things you can do with them, I really love them just steamed, as a vegetable. There are plenty of amazing vegetable cookery books available that will give you plenty of things to do with veg once you are sick of eating them as is, but really, you can’t beat them straight out of the garden just served as they are.

The other thing about broad beans is that they go really well with gammon. Now, I was intrigued to read a fellow blogger ‘s post about slow cooking a piece of gammon and had bought some with (a) the broad beans and (b) the slow cooking idea in mind. I don’t use my slpow cooker as much as I’d like to and tend to just do straightforward casseroles in it, but I would like to use it more because I just love that – “Oh look it’s all done!” feeling at the end of the day. Anyway, I couldn’t go back to her blog to check out how she’d done her gammon, so I had a look at my slow cooker cook book for an idea of how much liquid to use, and came up with: 

Cider slow cooked Gammon 

Ingredients: 500g smoked gammon joint, 500ml cider (I used homebrewed stuff from last autumn), an onion, a carrot, 2 cloves and a bay leaf, a teaspoon of Dijon mustard and a tablespoon of crème fraiche

Method: Remove all the packaging from the joint, place in a bowl, cover with cold water and soak overnight. Drain off the water from the joint and set aside. Heat up the slow cooker on the high setting.

Peel and slice the onion, and fry in dash of oil for a few minutes with the bay leaf and cloves till the onion is starting to soften. Pour in the cider and bring to the boil. When the liquid is boiling, put the gammon joint into the slow cooker, pour on the boiling liquid, put the lid on the slow cooker and leave for 5-6 hours.

Once the gammon is cooked, remove the meat and strain the cooking liquid into a pan. Make a sauce by bringing the liquid to the boil and whisk in the Dijon mustard and crème fraiche. You probably won’t need any salt but you might want to grind in some pepper.

Serve the gammon with new potatoes and broad beans – and any other veg you feel like – as fresh as possible - with the sauce on the side.

This is not a craft blog #2

After our broadband fell over on Thursday lunchtime, it has still not been fixed. I have been provided with a cheery text message for BT advising me that they aim to fix the problem by 5 p.m. on Wednesday. Yes WEDNESDAY. That’s nearly a whole week without access to the internet at home. I haven’t yet managed to get through to an actual person at BT to explain calmly and rationally how much of a complete an utter embuggerance this is. Not only does it mean I cannot work at home, I cannot do internet shopping, check my bank balance, or do a myriad of other things, including Facebook, blog reading etc. 

However, rather than focussing on the negatives of all this, which would be very easy, I have been considering the positives of our internet-free weekend. Not only have we not had access to the internet all weekend, but the planned entertainment – trip to the Science museum on Saturday afternoon, followed by dumping of children with their Uncle in Earlsfield while the Husband and I went to a party – also fell through as Pink developed some alarming stomach pains on Saturday morning. Of course it all amounted to nothing, but by the time we had worked that out, we had decided that it wasn’t worth risking the trip – especially as one of the options we were presented with by the out of hours GP service was appendicitis. I am the most unsympathetic person I know if you're talking coughs, colds and grazed knees, but serious stuff gets me all on edge...

So instead of cramming all the jobs we needed to get done this weekend into a couple of hours on Saturday morning before we left, and on Sunday afternoon after we returned, no doubt hungover and grumpy, we have had a leisurely stroll through the washing and housework tasks, and even got round to some other things.

Now, as I have said before, this is not a craft blog, but I managed to not only clear out our spare room and reorganise my various stashes of material and sewing bits and pieces with which I might one day produce something glorious, I did manage to complete 2 projects that have been on my mind. I made a curtain to act as a pull across to go underneath Pink’s high bed:

And a matching cushion. 

I made them out of left over curtain material, and I was particularly pleased with the cushion cover because the material I had left (from the material I had left - if you see what I mean) after making the bed curtain was not quite wide enough but I managed to extend the fabric by making a trim out of a purple ribbon that I found stashed away. Oh the multiple benefits of having a clear out.

I’m not going to tell you what I did because both are a total cobble – I couldn’t get online to check out any tips from the lovely craft bloggers out there – but on the whole I was pleased with how they turned out.

I’ve also managed to do some more work on my quilt. Some of you may remember that the Husband gave me this in kit form for Christmas, and it was one of my goals for April to finish it. Well, it’s probably no surprise to learn that it’s still not finished, but I have been plodding away at it and I have now hand quilted round all the flowers – all 25  of them, and am on the second seam of the border that I am going to quilt. Once I have done that, all I will have left to do is the binding round the edge and it will be finished. 

So bets on this time next year then.

Organising July - the meal plan

So my internet is down. How to post? Well I have sneaked off to the 'office' of my employers, a rather swanky shed garden office, and am quickly going to upload a post that I wrote yesterday sans internet...

*************************************** 

Meal planning.

Sometimes I’m brilliant at it (yes, I know, blow my own trumpet why don’t I) and sometimes I am totally and utterly rubbish. I have a love-hate relationship with the whole thing. I know it makes sense - when it works out, I have a lovely plan of everything we are going to eat – usually for a month. When it's worked out REALLY well, it means that I've had lots of time to sit around flicking through my lovely stash of cookbooks and horded magazines, working out lovely balanced meals that all the family will enjoy (there's lots of lovely going on there isn't there). This makes shopping lists easier, and helps me feel that I am in control, because let’s face it, I’m really not.

When it doesn’t work out, well, then, we eat a lot of pasta and I spend a lot of money in the local Co-Op. In fact, the meal planning began in earnest when, at the end of one particularlly skint month, I actuyally added up everything I'd spent in the Co-Op (one of the curses of being a horder is that I always have my receipts stuffed into my purse).

I started this month, more than most, feeling the need to get a grip on something in my life.

We’re in the last 3 weeks of term and there are various end of term events that need to be negotiated, the kids are knackered, the Husband’s work is threatening to remove him from us for days here and there and for a full week later on in the month (the week immediately before we go on Scout camp). It’s the village ‘Sheepfair’ next weekend, which is an excuse for 2 days of drinking a great local event which happens once every 4 years, and my father in law will be staying, then my Mum is coming for a couple of days (and to take possession of the dog for his ‘summer holidays’). We go on scout camp for the last week of the month, well, Saturday to Friday (involving a whole other meal plan in itself), and then the French girl we are hosting for 3 weeks arrives on the Sunday.

I needed to get ORGANISED.

For me, most things start in the kitchen, so getting organised usually involves me planning, to a greater or lesser extent, what meals we will eat around whatever thing it is that is making me stress, but little else. As the whole of July is pretty much stressing me out at the moment, I have planned out (mostly) the meals for a month, and am starting to feel a little calmer. if i'm being totally honest with myself, it's fair to say that we will prbably go off plan at east once a week, but that doesn't matter, because it has served its purpose. I am organised.

This month has majored heavily on various back copies of July Good Food magazines which I have kept because at some point I decided that they were good issues to keep (I had a major clear out a year or so ago) with a couple of old favourites from Hugh Fearnley-Whitingstall and Nigella thrown in for good measure.

The recipes are picked on the basis of ease of preparation, amount of vegetables and general yumminess. Seeing as how I have been so efficient, I thought I’d share my plan with you. There are some holes. You can improvise. I will be!

MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY	SATURDAY	SUNDAY
2nd Kids out Left over burgers; salad; bread	3rd Husband away Cheese & marmite pasties (GF June 2012 but already in freezer), new potatoes, carrot sticks; strawberries & ice cream	4th Husband out; kids pick up 4.30 Macaroni peas (Veg Everyday)	5th Rainbows BBQ – taking pudding (from Kitchen by Nigella) & salad	6th Salmon, green beans, new potatoes	7th Away for night	8th
9th After school hordes; Cubs Pork burgers with herby chips (GF July 09 p26)	10th extra long ballet Pea & watercress pasta (GF July 10 p33)	11th kids pick up 4.30 Lamb meatballs	12th  Last Rainbows – Olympic theme Summer salad with anchovy dressing (GF July 09 p 27)	13th Pizzas	14th Sheepfair Quiche	15th  H to Saudi
16th H away, Allotment Junkie here; Cubs Cheesy bean burgers (GF July 10 p26)	17th H away, AJ here Lemon & Rosemary pork (GF July 10 p39)	18th H away; kids pick up 4.30	19th H away; Pink to M&T’s  party Cheese & Marmite pasties (as for 03/07)	20th	21st Off to camp!!	22nd CAMP
23rd CAMP	24th CAMP	25th CAMP	26th CAMP	27th Home from camp	28th Post camp BBQ	29th French girl arrives
30th African Chicken (Kitchen, Nigella Lawson)	31st Bolognaise

And, yes, I know. I know what you're thinking. "She's a freak!". Frankly, I'm not sure I should have shared the fact that I am so blimmin anal about it, but doesn't it look FABULOUS?? I'll admit to have made a special effort for the purposes of this post - usually, it's all scribbled in, with lots of crossings out, but it works for me.

Do you meal plan? I'm linking up with some other meal planners  at home with Mrs M and feel like I'm not alone, so if youmeal plan too, come and join in!