Craving Fresh: What's been cooking

One of these days I'm going to have to write a post about why menu planning is so great. It has become second nature to me and sure does make life easier. Now that I have dinner menu planning down pat, I've started making Paul's lunches to help us save money for a big house deposit. This was week one, so just as a once off I'll include his lunch plan on What's been cooking.

For this week's dinners I tried a few recipes from Annabel Langbein's latest cookbooks, Anyone can Cook and Anyone can Bake. I'm in the process of reviewing these and will let you know my overall thoughts in a couple of weeks. Here's what we ate this week:

Sunday: (Lamb) Paul cooked lamb ribs and served them with mashed potato and kumara, as well as steamed carrots, cauliflower and broccoli.

Monday: (Vegetarian) Indonesian rice with peanut sauce (from Keeper of the Home). Cinnamon and apple pinwheels (from Anyone can Bake). This meal was for our shared Monday night bible study, where we also ate roast pork, quiche and chips.

For lunch on Monday Paul ate sandwiches with cheese, gherkins, lettuce, zucchini relish and mayonnaise on Freyas soy and linseed bread. His snacks included mandarins, carrot sticks, almonds, homemade Greek yoghurt mixed with frozen blueberries and a dollop of raspberry jam.

Tuesday: (Chicken) Organic roast chicken (recipe from Anyone can Cook) with roast pumpkin, kumara and potato, steamed carrots, peas and cauliflower, cheese sauce and gravy. Dessert - Berry and peach marshmallow brulee (from Anyone can Cook).

I used the leftover chicken to make Mexican rollups for me and chicken sandwiches for Paul. I also cooked a batch of chicken stock with the carcass.

For lunch on Tuesday Paul ate sandwiches with cheese, gherkins, lettuce, cucumber, zucchini relish and mayonnaise. His snacks were sliced apple, cashews, mandarins and Greek yoghurt with frozen blueberries and homemade boysenberry sauce (leftover from Tuesday night's dessert).

Wednesday: (Beef) Roast vegetable, beef and couscous salad with curried dressing. (This was a slight variation on what I had planned (potato salad) because we had so many roast vegetables left over from Tuesday night that I wanted to use up. I cooked the eye fillet following a recipe in Anyone can Cook and then sliced it up to lay on the salad.)

For lunch on Wednesday Paul ate sandwiches of roast chicken, cheese, gherkins, lettuce, zucchini relish and mayonnaise. His snacks were Greek yoghurt with frozen blueberries and homemade boysenberry sauce, mandarins, almonds and pumpkin seeds.

Thursday: (Pork) Pork and peanut stirfry with udon noodles (from Anyone can Cook. Toia cooked this and found it pretty easy to make. We all thought the flavours were beautiful. We substituted cabbage for the recommended bean sprouts as that's what we had in the fridge and it helped spread the meal further.)

For lunch on Thursday Paul ate leftover roast veges from Wednesday's dinner. His snacks included Greek yoghurt with frozen blueberries and homemade berry sauce, mandarins, almonds, peanuts and pumpkin seeds.

Since Toia was cooking on Thursday night, I used the time to make some more Chargrilled capsicum and chickpea patties from Sophie Gray's 100+ Tasty $10 Meals. I made these smaller than last time so got double the quantity. I froze some and put the rest in the fridge for Paul and I to eat for lunch on Friday.

Friday: (Fish) Tuna pasta bake (my own recipe).

For lunch Paul ate a Chargrilled capsicum and chickpea hamburger, as well as Greek yoghurt with blueberries and boysenberry sauce, mandarins, a mixture of almonds, pumpkin seeds and peanuts, and homemade chocolate chips cookies I baked on Thursday.

Saturday: (Lamb) Dinner at our friends' house. Lamb curry on couscous. Pumpkin, walnut and spinach salad. Berry cheesecake for dessert.