Chicken Paprika Stew

Chicken Stew was first on our list of 'Norfolk Veg Box' dishes. 

The beauty of stew is that you can add as much veg as you like - making an ultra healthy meal and a brilliant winter warmer!

Before now I haven't ever made a Chicken Stew, it has almost always been a beef stews. 

I did a little research, well Googerling (I wonder if Googerling will be added to the English dictionary soon) and then I created my own.

Delicious meringues....By Courtney

Delicious Meringues - By Courtney

Another recipe that I have really wanted to try - I used the BBC Good Food Recipe

They take ages to cook so leave yourself lots of time! :)

Excuses, excuses

Crikey - its been alittle too long since I last wrote...

I am full of excuses. 

I'm finding it hard to juggle full time work, four beautiful children and blogging! 

Having said that I see blogging as a helping hand in our change - a diary of our journey and a very public way of keeping us on course - breaking habits is hard! 

So excuses aside I MUST make more time for blogging. It's soooo important that we eat healthy and if I can share our experiences, tips and help others do the same then that's awesome too! 

Eating Healthy? Saving Money? Wasting Less?

Our weeks review

OK, we are on week 2 and I should really give you an update as to our family resolution of eating healthy, wasting less and saving money on food.  

To be honest I haven't been keeping track,  not as closely as I would like.... an update is a little hazy. It is true to say I need to focus on this task much more, being back at work I have dropped the ball on cooking.

Family food budget?

After a trip to Tescos and an additional £32 spent I am wondering what budget we should be aiming for?

The reality is I have no idea what we should spend, with all the recent food price increases I don't know what is reasonable - how much would you say to feed a family of 6 healthily for 1 week?

I know a budget would normally be 'what you can afford' however, I want a challenge to see how well we can do. I am finding it fun thinking of simple, cheap and healthy meals. 

The Mothership Roast Pork....

I woke up this morning and thought - why wait til the new Year to change?

I got out the laptop and checked tesco.com to see what meat they had on offer. Pork joints were reduced and I decided to do a lovely roast pork.
It was a little ambitious, seeing as I have never cooked roast pork and we invited Giz's mum, dad and brother to join us, making 9 in total.

Armed with my ingredient list from the 'Saving with Jamie' recipe I headed off to our local Tesco. I decided to pop into Morrisons on the way so I could check their offers. 

I am glad I did - they had lots of beautiful joints half price. I picked up a 3Kg Pork leg for a tenner - Brilliant!

Time to change....

So here it is - our first post for our family eating blog...

Last Sunday I cooked for 16 (in my tiny oven it was a Crazy idea!). For the children (7 of them) we cooked a Spaghetti Bolognese. For the adults I did a big pot of Goulash and served it up with new potatoes, hot rolls and carrots. 

The Goulash turned out yummy!

The Goulash I cooked from scratch and spent ages perfecting the flavors, I used the BBC Good Food recipe and added extra everything, I amended the spices, herbs and peppers as I went along  - to make the dish suit us. I  enjoyed cooking it up and was I really thrilled when everyone had an empty plate.

Inspired by this experience and a new cook book I got for Christmas I intend to cook properly much more, waste less and teach the children as I learn too. This is going to be a lifestyle change for us - much more of the healthy goodness.