prepping for the week ahead

Apologies for not getting any posts up during the weekend, but weekends are usually quite busy for me and my usual routine is completely thrown out the window.  I do lots of baking and cooking prep for the work week ahead, so my time on the computer is limited and my brain capacity is usually reserved for mindless things like Facebook, sorry!

For people who think that cooking from scratch and making all your family’s snacks and sides while working full-time is impossible, it’s not.  Yes, it requires a bit of dedication on the weekends.  I hate doing stuff in the evenings after work, so that’s why I cram all my tasks into Saturday/Sunday.  Differently-minded people could spread things out through the week.  As it is, I’ve forgotten to make peanut butter, so I’ll be doing that tonight anyway (luckily a 5 minute task).

Just to give you an idea, here are some things I prepped over the weekend:

-          baked bread for the week

-          made raspberry muffins for snacks/lunches

-          made meat loaf/pie thing for lunches/G’s night shift meals*

-          cooked a chicken which will be turned into several meals this week

-          made bagels (fulfilling a craving!  I don’t do these as a regular item, just an occasional treat)

* because I wanted to blog that I tried out hot water crust pastry from the recent series of The Great British Bake-Off (BBC2).  I’ve never made it before, but they said it was good for meat pies because it’s very robust yet flaky.  I like to try new things, so it was a challenge.  It’s VERY different to work with, very floppy and difficult in its warm stage, but practically hard as a rock when cold!  I’d recommend NOT making a big pie with it, as it’s near impossible to transfer into the pie dish once rolled out.  Smaller would be better, like the individual pies they made on the show.  I made a loaf which was very challenging and a bit hodge-podge, but a real learning curve!

If people are interested, I can post the pastry recipe and bagels recipe.  Bagels aren’t super frugal because about 500g flour only makes 8 servings, but they’re still cheaper than buying in the shop!  A good breakfast treat when you get sick of the usual cereal/toast/porridge combo.