What We Ate December 31 - January 6

We had two unusual (for us) meals this week; the first on New Year's Eve and the second on Friday.  

New Year's Eve fell on Meatless Monday and, while we wanted something celebratory we also wanted to stick with our customary meatless meal.  We chose Indian food because vegetarian recipes abound, and based our dishes upon the most affordable vegetables on offer at our favourite farm market.

Two of the recipes in our New Years Eve meal were sourced from Chow and Chatter.  Rebecca shares many tasty Indian dishes on her blog.  I've included links for the dishes below.

On Friday, I made a very lucky purchase at the grocery store.  I found two huge porterhouse steaks (about 32 ounces in total) on manager's discount, at 30% off, and had enough coupons to pay for the rest of the purchase.  I got that beef entirely free!  

Sadly, I fell sick during the day so my fella ended up eating Friday's dinner all alone.  There were lots of leftovers.  They made two more suppers, and three lunches for the two of us.

We try to eat from our pantry and freezer as much as possible between January and late spring.  Food in our area is at its most expensive during these months and the selection of local produce very limited.  We plan our meals around the most affordable fresh produce on offer and find ourselves grateful for the harvest bounty we put by in late summer and early fall.

Even with our two special meals, we managed to stick to our pantry eating/seasonally available plan.  We ate very well but did so quite affordably.

Here's what we ate last week:

Monday, December 31:

• Breakfast: Egg and cheddar quesadillas, oranges
• Supper - Beetroot poriyal, aloo saag, onion bhajis, homemade chapatis, raita, apple chutney, mango sorbet

Tuesday, January 1:

• Breakfast - Oatmeal and applesauce
• Supper - Cheese souffle, a salad of steamed and chilled snap peas and red onion in a honey mustard vinaigrette, Christmas fruit crisp (from the freezer)

Wednesday, January 2: 

• Breakfast - Canned peaches and homemade yogurt
• Supper - Baked breaded basa fillets (from the freezer), risotto style barley cooked in home canned vegetable stock, baked butternut squash, steamed chard (a gift from a generous gardening friend), leftover Christmas fruit crisp.

Thursday, January 3:

• Breakfast - Wholewheat pumpkin biscuits (I got the recipe from Southern Lady Cooks) made with home canned pumpkin puree.
• Supper - Hot dogs on home baked cheese buns (from the freezer), a salad of shredded carrots, matchstick radishes and celery in homemade coleslaw dressing, brown sugar pound cake (from the freezer) topped with warm apple pie filling (home canned).

Friday, January 4:

• Breakfast - Cranberry orange bran muffins, cream cheese, apple slices
• Supper - Grilled T-Bone (Porterhouse) steaks (I got them free by combining a manager's discount with coupons!), roasted broccoli tossed with parmesan and black pepper, baked potatoes, eggnog latte tartlettes.  

Saturday, January 5:

• Breakfast - Pear and gingerbread pancake bites (from the freezer)
• Supper - Beef and greens stir fry made with leftover steak from Friday, onions, and baby bok choy in a garlic ginger sauce.

Sunday, January 6:

• Breakfast - Oatmeal and applesauce
• Supper - Ginger beef soup with soba noodles made from Saturday's leftover stir fry, pears canned in brown sugar syrup with ginger.