Dining with The King's

Ever since we have been married, John has done the vast majority of cooking in our house. He's great at it, and far more creative than I am at rustling up something delicious with a few ingredients. Up until now, we haven't really planned meals. I do the food shop on a Monday and before I go, I ask John if there's anything in particular he'd like me to get. More often than not, John doesn't have particular meals in mind for the week ahead when I ask him, so I just go ahead and buy a reasonable amount of fresh produce, store cupboard essentials (tinned tomatoes, beans, pulses, etc), and one kind of meat. Then John works his magic on these ingredients throughout the week.

But since Ruby was born, things have been changing. Much to my surprise, I have found that I have had more of a desire to cook for us. Part of this desire comes from my enjoyment of time alone in the kitchen, and with Ruby around, it can take a little while to start and finish any kind of baking or cooking. So, the prospect of John coming home and looking after Ruby while I rustle up dinner in the kitchen, holds great appeal to me.

For such a long time, I have intended to document some of the meals that we eat, so that when inspiration is lacking, I can look back at past ideas and revisit some of our favourites that might have been forgotten. One of the reasons I have been so slow at actually getting round to this is because I find savoury food so much less photogenic than sweet treats. That, and sweet treats can sit around for a few days, whereas once we have cooked our evening meal, we usually want to eat it there and then, rather than photograph it!

So I'm keeping it simple and photoless this time around, and I'm just going to share a list of some of the things we have eaten over the last couple of weeks, along with a few links to some of the recipes that I have used, or adapted. I started out by creating a Monday to Friday meal plan for you, but John looked at it, and declared that I wasn't giving an accurate representation of what a week's worth of meals looks like, because we will often have leftovers. Regardless of how I present this list, I hope that these meals might bring you some new ideas of things to try in your kitchen, as well as helping me to remember what we eat.

At the moment, we don't eat a great deal of meat. When we do eat meat, I tend to buy a whole chicken, roast it, and then get approximately three meals out of it. This is cheaper than buying breast fillets, and seems to be the only way of buying free range chicken in a supermarket, and we prefer the texture and flavour of roasted chicken. We eat a fair amount of chorizo, which serves us well in that it is a brilliant flavour enhancer if you want to have a simple dish, but something that's a bit more exciting than just pasta and vegetables.


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chickpea curry (similar to this recipe)

homemade pizza (we use Jamie Oliver's recipe for pizza base & love it and always use mozzarella)

pasta with kale & chorizo in a tomato based sauce

salmon with zesty lentils (we use salmon fillets rather than smoked salmon)

vegetarian hot noodles with cannellini beans as main source of protein

thai green chicken risotto (made just as you would make a curry but with arborio rice)

chicken fajitas

tuna & potato fishcakes

wholemeal pitta pockets stuffed with anything and everything


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