Batch Cooking – December 1, 2019

Sunday night is cooking night in Julie’s kitchen! I’m keeping with the Mediterranean theme this week, and boy does it smell yummy!

But first, some thoughts on last week…

• Both the split pea soup and the Berbere veggies were very tasty. Would make the soup again for sure, the veggies are a maybe. They were definitely more liquid than intended, and I’d definitely want to cut down on the liquid next time I make them.
• As anticipated, having only a single thigh for a serving was a little on the lean side. Would need to portion things so that I could have two thighs next time or, more likely, shred them and mix them into the veggies so that they’re just part of the portion. And then have slightly larger portions.
• I picked up some midweek groceries, mostly more fruit. I’ve gotta say, the Lady Alice apples I got on sale were *super-tasty*. Would eat again for sure if they go on sale. (Though the regular price is a big exorbitant.)
• I had a few unanticipated out-of-the-house meals this week, one of which even had some leftovers, so my batch cooking lasted a little longer than I intended. Consequently I’ve got about a serving and a half left of the pea soup and an almost-full container of the Berbere vegetables left. (Though the roast potatoes and chicken are all used up by now.) Ah, well. I’ll have the soup for lunch tomorrow, and I’ll see whether I’m inspired to keep eating the veggies or to let them languish in the back of the fridge, given all my new, tasty food.

Honestly, not much more to say about last week. Onward to this week’s shopping and planning!

• I knew I wanted to keep things pretty simple this week, since my weekend was going to be quite busy. I ultimately decided on two things I’ve had luck with before: an instant pot tagine and some hummus bowls with roast vegetables.
• For the hummus bowls, I decided to add some meat. Originally I’d planned for ground beef, but it actually turned out that the “free from” ground lamb was cheaper than the organic ground beef, so I picked up that instead. Mmm… lamb. And lamb goes pretty well with Mediterranean cuisine anyway, so I didn’t feel I was missing out on anything.
• The last time I made tagine, I used chicken and chickpeas. However, since I was already adding meat to the hummus bowls and since I try to aim for only one meat dish per week, I decided to go fully veggie on the tagine. Originally I planned to pick up some tofu, but once I was in the store I decided that I didn’t feel like bothering with draining and cutting up the tofu, so I got a can of white kidney beans instead. So the protein in that dish is a can of chickpeas and a can of white beans.
• Also for the tagine, I picked up a box of baby kale blend, to add some greens to the mix. From experience, I know they wilt down into almost nothing, so I don’t mind adding an entire box to a single pot.
• Since I knew I was gonna be doing hummus bowls, and since I didn’t want to double up with hummus for my afternoon crudités (which is usually my go-to dipping preference), I figured I’d make some herbed yogurt dip instead. I wanted to get a bunch of fresh herbs, but nothing was on sale, so I settled on just some mint and to use the rest from my dried herbs stash. Ah, well.
• I really wanted to get my normal cashew granola bars, but the Provigo near me didn’t seem to carry them. I ultimately settled on some “cookie dough” granola bars. I have no idea how they’ll turn out, but I’m super-excited to try them.
• I got the carrots mostly to roast for the hummus bowls, but since I knew I was only going to make one tray and that three pounds would definitely be too much for a single tray, I figured I’d just cut up the rest for my afternoon crudités this week.
• The oat milk is a new thing for me. I was having some cognitive dissonance on the idea that I am committed to buying only sustainably raised meat and eggs, but I can’t really do that with milk because I need to buy lactose-free, and most of the “treat the animals well” brands don’t come in lactose-free versions. So I figured I’d try oat milk instead and see how that goes. I don’t usually drink full glasses of milk anymore — usually I use my milk in overnight oats or a splash in my tea, so hopefully the oat milk will work just as well for that.
• I found some organic chicken stock in the organics / health foods aisle, which normally wouldn’t be very remarkable, except this brand comes in four one-cup packages instead of one four-cup package, which was very nifty. It was expensive but I got it as an experiment.
• Overall my grocery bill was about $15 less than usual, even accounting for the overpriced chicken stock and some gifts I picked up for a friend. I suspect the difference is in the milk price ($2 for one litre of oat milk instead of $5.50 for two litres of cow milk), and that I didn’t buy eggs, yogurt, or other dairy products. Dairy and meat add up *fast*!

Okay, I think I’ve wrung all the words out of the planning process that I can. Onward to execution.

• I probably cooked the tagine too long. When I made this dish with chicken, I did it on high pressure for 12 minutes with a natural pressure release, which is about the right amount of time for bone-in chicken. Since I was using canned beans this time, I brought the time down to 6 minutes on high pressure, which was still probably too much. The beans are kinda mushy now, but I don’t mind too much. It makes the broth richer, and that’s a good thing in my book.
• I probably could have been done a half-hour faster if I’d only done one tray of veggies (or if my tiny apartment oven could fit two trays at the same time while still circulating the air). Ah, well. Such is life sometimes.
• For the roast veggies, I did one tray of broccoli and cauliflower, and one tray of carrots. The broccoli and cauliflower were both using up bags of frozen that I had in the freezer. The last time I tried to roast frozen veggies, it didn’t go so well, so I went searching online for now to make things better. The tips I found were: 1. preheat the pan with a drizzle of oil while the oven is heating up, so that it’s already hot when the veggies land on the pan, 2. don’t be afraid to crank up the heat, 3. use plenty of oil and be sure to coat all the vegetables really well. And I’ve gotta say, it turned out much better this time! Well done, internet! This time, you didn’t steer me wrong!
• I used my new one-cup chicken stock containers this week. For both the tagine and the couscous, I did half-stock, half-water, and that worked out quite well. Would do again for sure.
• I used up the last of my ras el hanout with the tagine, and most of the grocery stores nearby don’t carry it. So this is either an occasion to cry, or an occasion to take a trip across town to the specialty spice store that I haven’t visited since last year. Hmm… maybe a spice restocking trip is in order.
• I honestly thought that there would be more veggies compared to the lamb. Hmm. I’m not sure if that means I didn’t make enough veggies, or I made too much lamb.
• I’m a little worried about portions this week. From an eyeballed perspective, I’ve got about four servings of each of my two main meals, plus one serving of the soup from last week. I’ve got a potluck on Thursday, dinner out on Saturday, and brunch on Sunday, which leaves me 10 meals to eat at home and only about 9 servings of food, even if everything goes well. Eh, it’s fine. If I have to buy one more meal or scavenge my freezer, I can do that.

I think that’s everything from cooking. Here’s my groceries breakdown:

Provigo (not shown)
Item	Price
Grapes	$1.99
Lady Alice apples x4	$5.50
Bananas x3 (1 lb)	$0.84
Total	$8.33
Provigo
Item	Price
Microwave popcorn (not shown – gift)	$3.19
Chickpeas x1 can	$1.49
White beans x1 can	$1.49
Stuffed vine leaves (not shown – gift)	$3.29
Granola bars	$2.99
Couscous	$2.29
Organic chicken stock	$6.49
Oat milk	$1.94
Oranges, 3 lbs	$2.99
English cucumber x1	$2.99
Fresh mint	$2.99
Carrots, 3 lbs	$1.69
Gala apples x5	$4.37
Baby kale mix	$4.19
Ground lamb, 360 g	$7.94
Hummus	$4.49
Taxes	$0.45
Total	$55.27
Grand Total	$63.60

And that’s it for this week! Next week is gonna be a bit interesting because I’m busy on Saturday and may or may not be busy on Sunday, but we’ll see how things go when we get there. Until then!

Tagged: batch cooking, lamb, mediterranean food, moroccan food, vegetarian