Saturday, 31-01-26

Good evening, everyone.  I hope you've had a delicious day.

I've been busy planning my meals for the coming week - breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I find breakfast and dinner fairly simple to plan but often get stuck for lunch ideas so I had a trawl through some saved recipes on Readly and found some likely ones to try.

Fingers crossed.

The plans for the day all changed.  By the time I got back from the weekly food shopping, sorted everything out and put it all away, it was halfway between breakfast and lunch so I decided to sort of amalgamate the two meals.

So this is what I did.

I softened chopped onion, mushrooms and peppers in spray oil.  I added chopped fresh tomatoes and added the grain mixture left over from yesterday./
When that was hot, I stirred in some chopped avocado, salt, pepper and a tbsp mixed seeds, stirred in some quark (the last bit in the old pot) and sprinkled over some feta which also needed using up.

I topped it with an egg and had a bit of the salad stuff on the side (needed using!!)

It was very tasty!

Grains:  two and a half swips
Feta:  calcium

Avocado and seeds: healthy fats

Later in the afternoon I had another apple.

I found this recipe for the chicken curry.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/easy-chicken-curry
I added pepper and mushroom to the onion.

It cost two and a half swips for ground almonds, two swips for the curry paste, and half a swip for some garlic and ginger paste.  I stirred in some mango chutney for one and a half swips and with it, I had one of the SW naan breads for my fibre choice.

A really nice sort of Saturday night fakeaway and very satisfying.

Summary:

Healthy extras:  one of each

Swips:  nine

B:  sourdough pancakes with yogurt and fruit

L:  soup and bread - not sure what soup yet, I have choices in the freezer

D:  roast dinner

And fruit

Rest day.

I'm still working on perfecting as wholemeal a pasta dough as I can without sacrificing the flexibility that's necessary for good rolling and cutting.

Today I used some of my active sourdough starter after reading about it here.  I didn't want to make so much so I slightly adapted it and this is what I used.

40g activated starter (my starter is a rye starter)

80g flour (40g white and 40g rye)

one medium egg

half a level tbsp psyllium husk powder (probably optional but it's supposed to make a better dough).

a splash of oil

I put the lot into Thermione and kneaded it for three minutes as the recipe said.  The dough came out beautifully soft and pliable, just what a pasta dough should be.  It rolled well and the bits cut off kneaded together well and rolled out again with no cracking.

From that amount I got twelve ravioli and a good portion of tagliatelle from the bits.

I think I have my basic recipe now and I just need to keep upping the rye and downing the white to see how far I can go with it.  Todays was essentially a 60-40.