Meal Planning Monday - the breathing space edition!

Lord, it's been a month. (Nearly). Don't ask. Too much to do, too little time. From today, life gets a little easier for a while. Well, maybe. At least I have time to blog my meal plan.

Of course, an easier week doesn't mean we're doing nothing. Oh no! Parents' evening tomorrow, although I am going early afternoon. The children have stuff every evening except Tuesday (when I take them to the gym anyway) and Friday, when we do homework. Saturday, I've got cake club but determined not to get cakeache. Just no meetings in the evenings. No trips to London. No do three things in a day, going from one to another and just making it.

So this is what our week looks like.

Monday - Chicken chow mein
Tuesday - Kale hash
Wednesday - Curried pumpkin soup
Thursday - Sandwiches
Friday - Cottage pie
Saturday - Baked potatoes with some kind of random filling
Sunday - Roast dinner

Don't forget that Mrs M has the Meal Planning Monday linky going on here. Join in and get inspiration from others!

Meal Planning Monday - the regrouping and hopefully calm edition!

I was very organised last week but not organised enough to link up to Mrs M again. Gah. But I had a busy week, preparing for a weekend away in Coventry at work's national conference. I got home at 7.30 on Saturday evening and by 9.30, I was in bed. Shortly after, I was asleep and the next thing I knew it was 4.40am and after a couple of brief awakenings, it was 8.30. And on Sunday, after Missy's swimming lesson, we headed off to Skipton to meet my sister, her husband and their dogs as they are on holiday in North Yorkshire to have lunch with them. Luckily, I kind of had the basis of a meal plan made from last week so I've just juggled it to fit our week. Monkey is going out to tea tonight so Missy has chosen tea. They're starting choir on Tuesday so I don't have to pick them up til 4.30.

Husband starts his new job properly today, as in he now gets to go to his workplace (which he still hasn't seen!) so we will now be working out how the family day fits together. This probably means my meal plan won't work!

Anyway, I'm rambling. This is what I have planned for us.

Monday - Fish goujons, mushy peas and mash
Tuesday  - Keema with naan
Wednesday - Pumpkin and lentil soup
Thursday - Sandwiches
Friday - Slow cooker ham and beans
Saturday - Leek and tomato eggy bread bake
Sunday - Butter pie, apples and cheese

As ever, click the badge to visit Mrs M's and you will find lots more meal planning fun.

Hallowe'en Pumpkin Cake

The lovely English Mum is running an Autumn Bake-off competition and I thought I would have another go. I don't do pretty cakes but I thought I'd enter anyway.

When I thought about what to do with a vaguely autumnal theme, I was a bit stumped. I made parkin once and it wasn't all that successful. I thought of something appley but again, apple cakes don't seem to do it for me. I like them with blackberries but they are past their best by early September and I refuse to pay supermarket prices for blackberries.

At this time of the year, I normally end up making a cake for Hallowe'en as we do a fundraiser/family event in our NCT branch. So, I set about thinking of a cake to make that would fit both briefs. Of course, pumpkins are a big feature of Hallowe'en so I set about wondering if you could make a pumpkin cake. After all, pumpkin pie is a big thing in the US, right? So pumpkin cake can't be that different. I tweeted this thought out loud and some lovely ladies furnished me with links to recipes. I was sold on this recipe when I realised that it doesn't require the pumpkin to be pre-cooked, thus making the whole process easier and quicker. It's very similar to carrot cake, right down to the cream cheese frosting, which I'll admit now is not my forte.

I actually made this with butternut squash because I had one on I wanted to use. The timings are slightly variable as the pumpkin or squash can vary wildly in water content so it might take a lot longer to cook.

Here's how I made it

Hallowe'en Pumpkin Cake
(makes around 15 pieces)

Ingredients


for the cake
300g self-raising flour
300g light brown muscovado sugar
3 tsp mixed spice
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
175g dried fruit (I used raisins, you could use sultanas)
1/2 tsp salt
200g butter
4 eggs, beaten
zest of 1 orange
1 tbsp orange juice
500g (peeled and deseeded) pumpkin or butternut squash, grated

to finish the cake
85g butter, softened
200g full fat soft cheese (low fat doesn't work, don't do it!)
100g icing sugar
zest of 1 orange and juice of half

First, prepare your tin. Take a roasting or baking tin around 20x30cm (8x12 in), butter it well and line with baking parchment. Preheat your oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

Mix all the dry ingredients for the cake together (not the pumpkin) in a large bowl until combined. Melt the butter (best done in a jug), then beat in the eggs and add the zest and juice. Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients and stir until well combined, then stir in the grated pumpkin. Pour the cake mix into the prepared tin. Bake for 30 mins or until golden and firm, springing back when touched. I found mine needed much longer as the middle was not cooked so I turned it down to 160C to avoid burning and cooked for about another 15 mins.

Whilst the cake is baking, make the frosting by beating together the cheese, butter, icing sugar, most of the orange zest and 1tsp of the juice until smooth and place in the fridge until needed.

Take the cake when done out of the oven and leave it to cool for 5 mins before removing it from the tin and placing on a wire rack to cool. Whilst the cake is still warm, prick all over with a skewer and drizzle over the rest of the orange juice. Leave to cool thoroughly.

Once cool, you can trim the edges of the cake (the sides of my tin weren't straight so I did, but you really don't have to.). Swirl the frosting over the top of the cake using a flat knife or spatula. Decorate with the rest of the orange zest.

And so, finally, let me unveil my entry to English Mum's Autumn Bake Off. It's shocking photography but I made the cake, went out for a curry, came home and finished off the cake and I remembered late on that I hadn't taken a pic, so it's as bad as, if not worse than my usual standard. Still, it's all I got so this will have to do.

(Late edit, but here is some of the cake cut up and ready to be eaten at the Hallowe'en Party.)

And if you want to have a go yourself, please do. The winner will get a cook book by Diana Henry and there is a kid's prize of a Chef Curly Bear. You've still got until midnight on 12th November to enter the competition so get baking!

Happy Hallowe'en!

A soupcon of something

At this time of year, as the temperature starts to drop along with the leaves on the trees, soup becomes the perfect lunch. It's warming, and generally a healthy option. It's quick to heat up, and even if you don't have access to a microwave or cooker, you can take it in a flask.

I have a serious soup habit and am quite fussy. Only fresh soups will do for me these days. They are expensive, so I often make my own to save money. Making soup is the easiest thing in the world if you have a blender. A hand blender is best as you can blend in the pan, making less mess.

I do, however, get in a bit of a soup rut. I often end up just making soup from the leftover veg at the end of the week. This means that most end up tasting quite similar and looking distinctly orange from all the carrots and swedes that dominate this time of year.

So, I'm starting another meme. A soup recipe meme. The idea is we all share a recipe for a soup. It can be anything - a new recipe you've discovered or designed yourself, your ultimate recipe for a particular soup, an unusual soup or just an old favourite. It just has to be soup. I've designed a badge and everything. And yes, I know that soupcon has a fancy cedilla thingy under the c, but the application I used to make the badge wouldn't allow me to enter fancy schmancy characters. I'm hoping we've all got different favourites and we'll be able to discover new soups to keep us warm in the colder months.

So, the guidelines for this meme are as follows:

1. Write your post including recipe and add my spectacular badge.
2. Mention this post so your readers can find other blogger recipes for some fab soups.
3. Tag some other bloggers to join in and share their favourite soup recipes.
4. Once you have published, come back and add a link to your recipe below. The Linky tool is set up to stay open all Winter so there is no rush, but please let me know if it's not working properly.

My soup is an unusual one.  In the mid 90s, I went to work for a company that ran a chain of American themed diners and nightclub, looking after their IT. I would visit venues who had problems I couldn't solve over the phone, or to install new equipment and software. One day, I was called to Basingstoke to fix a major problem. Whenever you turned up to fix the computers at a venue, nothing would be too much trouble. The staff would offer you drinks or food if the kitchen was open and bring it up to the office. On this occasion, they offered to get me some lunch. I asked what their soup was and was intrigued by the answer. It sounded odd but I decided to try it.

The soup was peanut butter and pumpkin. You're probably pulling faces right but trust me. It was so good that I remember that soup to this day and wanted to recreate it. After a quick Google , I found a few recipes and decided to have a go. All the recipes give measurements in cups so I've adapted it for UK foodies with the help of the good folk of Twitter pointing me at great resource like this. This soup is easiest if you can get canned pumpkin, but it's not widely available in the UK. It's not that hard to cook the puree, it just takes a bit longer. Use peanut butter that doesn't have added sugar.

Peanut Butter and Pumpkin Soup
Serves 6

Ingredients
25g butter, unsalted best
900g canned pumpkin or fresh pumpkin (not a carving one), peeled, deseeded and cut into cubes
400g sweet potato, peeled and cut into cubes
250g smooth peanut butter
1.4l chicken or vegetable stock
Ground black pepper
Snipped chives
Sour cream or low fat natural greek yogurt, to garnish

1. First, make your puree. Put the pumpkin (if you don't have canned) and sweet potato cubes into a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to the boil and simmer until the cubes are soft. Drain, then whizz to a puree with a hand blender or place in a blender.

2. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Stir in the puree, the canned pumpkin if using, and the peanut butter. Add the stock, and season with pepper. It should not need salt! Stir well until smooth. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes.

3. Serve, garnished with the sour cream or yogurt and the chives.

This soup tastes better the day after it's made so it's worth making in advance. When I made it, I had to use butternut squash as Asda didn't have any pumpkins - a shocking state of affairs for mid-October! It was pretty much as I remember it and unless you really hate one of the ingredients, I recommend you give it a try. And yes, I realise it is another orange soup - but it is definitely not run of the mill.

So, now I must tag some lovely bloggers to carry forward my newly birthed meme. They are:

Cass at The Diary of a Frugal Family
Kerry at And Then All I Thought About Was You
Nic at Nic's Notebook
Kirsty at Imperfect Pages

If you're not tagged, either ask one of these lovely ladies to tag you, or just blog and add your own link here. All contributions are more than welcome.

Don't forget to check back here for links to other great recipes here soon!