What’s Cooking for June?

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The same as I did last month, I looked through the cupboards and freezer to see what I’d already got before coming up with a menu and making a shopping list for June. This month I’ve even cooked it all ahead too.

In stock: 4 chicken legs. I’d already got another packet of lentils from before and the spinach came in a double pack. Neither of those would spoil, so I could have missed a month and not repeated that dish so soon - and I could easily have used them both separately in something entirely different too - but I did like it a lot and it saved me having to think of something else!

There were also still enough staples, like half the packet of capellini pasta, lots of rice and a few kilos of potatoes left, plus a few frozen peas, so all of those formed the basis of the dishes, along with half a bag of dry chick peas (garbanzo beans) that had also been hiding in the cupboard.

June Menu, not necessarily in this order:

1. Lemony Lentil-Spinach Stew
2. Special Fried Rice (remixed)
3. Chickpea Potato Curry
4. Macaroni & Cheese (the easy one!)
5. Mushroom Risotto (based on the broccoli one, only with mushrooms)
6. Capellini Al Pomodoro (this time with my own sauce)
7. Moroccan Chicken with Lemon and Olives (with potato (and carrot) added like this one to make it into a one pot meal

Then, on Saturday morning, I went shopping for the remaining ingredients I needed to make the dishes, which was only a few onions, shrimps for the fried rice, macaroni, cheese, cream and mushrooms. Not forgetting all the other stuff, like milk, coffee, toilet rolls, etc and another 20 kilo bag of kitty kibble. That’s where the grocery money goes, not on my meals!

I didn’t cook on Saturday: I picked up a ready made tortilla, which also made Sunday breakfast too. Apart from “having a day off”, if I started the 28 meals on Sunday, they would stretch through neatly to June 30.

And, on Sunday, I set to work …

If I’d thought (if only I had a brain?) on Saturday to put the garbanzos into soak, I would have been able to cook all of the meals in one go. As it was, I prepared 6 out of the 7 (counting the sauce for the capellini pasta).

Now, I know I didn’t get up until nearly lunch time, so I guess I started cooking some time around 2-3 PM and was all done, pots washed, kitchen cleaned and cats fed (on time), by between 5:30 and 6 PM. That’s not bad going and makes it clear how much time and effort can be saved. And, of course, I now know I have a meal for every day: no skipping meals, no take outs …

It was fun too. As each meal finished cooking, I served it out into the four appropriate containers and lined them up to cool on the kitchen table.

Quick wash of the saucepan, and in went the next item.

I’ve got two reasonably large saucepans, so I had both going, in relay.

Chopping several onions and peeling all the potatoes at once (three meals use them), didn’t seem like any more of a task than doing them for one meal.

Meanwhile, I had all the recipe pages open in tabs in Firefox. The kitchen is right next to my office, so I just worked through the tabs.

The macaroni is cooked and the dish is prepared as I suggested the other day, in four foil dishes ready to bake.

The rice for the fried rice, is cooked and separated into bags, with relevant prepared portions of shrimp, peas, onion and, since I couldn’t get the right pork here, chorizo. All I’ll have to do on the day, is beat an egg, fry it all up and add soy sauce.

By the time you read this, the curry will be in the freezer too and I will be done cooking for the whole month. Job done. It really was THAT simple!

Added Summer Bonus: While all this cooking activity did heat the house up and turn the kitchen into a sauna for a while on Sunday, not cooking (for any noticeable amount of time) again for the rest of the month will ensure that cooking is not adding to the heat during the summer months.