My Meal Planning Method

In case you haven't figure out by now, I love to cook. Actually to be more precise, I love to eat, and I'm cheap. So cooking is the next best thing! Thought I'll share with you some of my meal planning method. Usually I only do my marketing on the weekends. I'm kinda particular about the food I eat. I don't eat frozen meat at all, so during weekends, I go to the market on both Saturday and Sunday. Yes, I am pretty anal when it comes to my meat :P  But luckily for me, I love vegetables, so I'll stock up on vegetables either on Friday after work, and also during the weekends. I usually just buy whatever is the cheapest vegetable available (usually SGD1 per packet), and that will keep me happy. But there are a few things that is always in my kitchen: tomatoes, onions, and garlic. I am addicted to all three. I find that i am also especially fond of carrots, and can eat a whole pack in a few days. And eggs, there are always eggs at home :)

 

Anyway, to plan what to cook, I usually scan through what is available at home, and write out a meal plan. If I'm cooking only for the weekend, the meal plan would look something like the above picture. That is a meal plan for one fine Sunday. Yes, it's written apple spaghetti. I love apple spaghetti ever since I tried it once in a fusion vegetarian restaurant. I cook them quite often actually. I kinda like fruits with my main dishes. Baby tangerine with salad during Christmas time, lychee with roast duck during Chinese New Year, mango prawn spring rolls, French toast with bananas. I love fruity dishes although I hardly eat fruit on it's own.

So once a plan is hatched, off to the market I go to gather my ingredient. That usually just takes half an hour and I'm home. I usually don't spend more than SGD20 each trip. Compare that to a SGD40 meal in a restaurant, I pretty much indulge in raw ingredient without much guilt. The only pity I have is I'm not allowed to cook steak at home due to religious reason (even though I myself am not religious. Preparation usually takes another 30 minutes, and after that it's the cooking that usually don't last more than an hour. My husband always comments that I make cooking seems so easy. But seriously, it is easy if you have a plan, and you love fresh and simple food.

 

I would love to be able to cook home-cooked meal everyday, but sadly I have to work to make a living. I used to per-packed lunch to work, but somehow the nutrient is lost in overnight food and microwave heated food just isn't the same. Now I just try to cook for weekday dinner, and weekend meals. Above it a weekday sample meal plan. I'll try to write everything out by Sunday so that I can stock up, and I can go auto pilot mood during the weekdays. I usually get home by 7:30pm in non-peak project period, and can eat my dinner between 8 to 830pm (depending on how complex the meal is).

So there! My retirement plan is to live within walking distance to a market/supermarket so that I can always buy fresh ingredient to cook daily! I have self-made recipe scrapbooks in which I collect recipe I'm interested in. Hopefully one day I'll be able to cook them all!

Grilled Salmon

So I have this pack of Hollandaise Sauce that has expired like 3 months ago the other day, and it was during the weekday, so I can't egg Benedict out of it. So the other most logical way to get rid of the sauce is of course to cook it with fish. So during one of the weekday lunch, I went to NTUC and bought a salmon fillet for SGD 5.95, which to me was bloody expensive meat! But it was on my blackboard of food to try and cook, so I had to give it a try. When I got home, I just grilled the salmon fillet in my Happy Call pan, and pare it with some vegetables (1 carrot, 1 potato, and 1 tomato. I cooked the salmon 15 minutes one side (skin facing down do the meat won't over cooked), and 3 minutes the other side, followed by 1 minute high heat just to charred the skin.

Here is the end result. Hollandaise Sauce goes over the fish, and a bit of garnish and there you have yourself a gourmet meal! For cost price of around SGD8, I think it's pretty worth it considering how much restaurant meals cost these days.

Now here is the part that totally blew me away. When I cut into the salmon and ate it, it was moist and creamy with fish oil! It was not dry one bit as it was normally the case when I pan fry fish. I credit this to my Happy Call for retaining the moisture of the fish. Incidentally, the Happy Call pan is also great for grilling vegetables as it always come out perfect, soft inside, and charred to perfection outside! Would definitely give this try again in future!

Ref:

Hollandaise Sauce

Happy Call Pan

Cheese Platter

I've always love cheese platter. The very first cheese platter I ever had was from Le Bistro . It came with the set dinner as a dessert. I was goggling around on how to make my own cheese platter, thinking that I could make a cheaper plate than what they charge in the restaurant (usually SGD15 a plate). So one day while shopping with a friend in Jason's Marketplace in City Hall, I decided to spend around SGD20 on three type of cheese. I got a Camembert, an Aged Cheddar, and some French Reblochon (I have no idea what that is). I also got some Pate De Foie. Guess I was feeling kinda depress that day and needed to treat myself something nice. Anyway, on the right is what the platter look like after assembling. I added some nets and dark spice orange chocolate to the mix.

 

 As I was having the whole thing for dinner, I serve it with some homemade bread and balsamic vinegar, and some red wine to add to the ambiance. I know I know, it sounds damn atas (high class). But actually it's kinda fun to make this at home.  The verdict? The bread with vinegar was great, the nuts and chocolate was great. The French cheese was the best of the three cheeses, followed by the aged cheddar. The factory made commercial Camembert was a real flop. So lesson learned. Buy only french artisan cheese :P

I tried another cheese platter from the Wine Company on my anniversary in 2013. It cost around the same price as well, but it was wonderful. They have three types of platter (red wine, white wine, and sweet wine). I believe I tried the red, and it was just fabulous!!! The above are the cheese that came with the platter I ordered. They write the name of the cheese which I taught was a great idea for cheese dummies like me!

Ref:

The Wine Company

Pizza

You know that when you own a breadmaker, you are bound to make a pizza at least once. Yes, this is pizza made from scratch! Following a breadmaker's recipe, make the dough. Ingredient required aside from the dough: Tomato paste, fresh tomatoes, eggplant, mock crab meat, green bell pepper, pineapple (cause I like Hawaiian pizza), and lots of mozzarella cheese! Oops, guess I forgot to tell you this is a vegetarian pizza. Yeah, I'm kinda really into vegetarian when I'm cooking for myself, or when I'm eating out. I'm kind of a social meat eater. I realize this when I was staying alone in Bali and realized I ate no meat at all when left to my own devices. I do however crave steak from time to time, or a big mac however shitty people say McDonald is.

Anyway, back to the pizza. Once the dough is done, just assemble! Dough, followed by tomato paste, and vege on top, followed by a generous layer of cheese! Bake till perfection and ta-dah! Homemade pizza! It was edible, but I think my dough was kinda wet so it tasted more like bread than pizza. Guess I'll just make it thinner next time so that when I bake it the moisture will all be baked out!

Paint By Numbers

 Remember my Italy post where I told you how a DIY painting inspire me to travel to Italy? Well this article is about that painting. There was a push card that started selling these paint by numbers box set where I work, and everyday I would walk past it. At that point, I just got my own place in my hometown of Penang and have all these crazy ideas on how I would decorate it. I wanted to decorate it with paintings, but I didn't want to spend money on them. Frankly, I thought if I painted the paintings myself, they would be more meaningful. So one fine evening, I got myself a set of a riviera scene. The box came with the canvas, the paints, and one brush. All you have to do is match the colors with the numbers on the canvas. Pretty straight forward. You started out pretty mechanical, but after a while, you realize it doesn't really matter whether you follow the numbers or not, so long as you get the idea, the painting would still come out ok.

 

So I started one weekend to paint it. It took me 8 hours to get from the first picture above, to the second picture below! My back was hurting by that time. I suddenly have a strong appreciation of painters and their art. The painting was so vibrant in colour, and I told myself that I wanted to visit such a place one day, which kinda kick start my mad plan to visit Italy to find such a scene. You can read about my Italy trip 2013 here.

Here's a picture of my hard at work in my living room. Look at those killer arms of mine :P You should have seen those arms after my trip. Backpacking does wonders to your body! Anyway, till today, the painting is not yet completed. Me bad. But one day, I promise you, it is going to hang in one of the walls in  my place retirement home in Penang. Maybe I'll get another painting to inspire me to travel to another mysteriously beautiful place? Who knows? And then my wall would be covered with memories of great adventure in all those crazy places! What a way to live! For a list of Italian Riviera you can visit, see reference below. The place I visited was Cinque Terre, technically not a riviera, but just as beautiful all the same :)


Ref
Paint By Numbers
Italian Riviera
Cinque Terre