Got to be birds flying higher

So you might be wondering, what the heck am I looking at here?





There's no shortage of jokes about British cuisine, but the bean-covered meal was cheap and ridiculously delicious! Milton Keynes has this amazing mall with an outdoor food fair with more things than our bellies could fit. After London, where we ate overpriced ice cream, it was a relief to find some budget-friendly fare. For example, the London hotel buffet breakfast was 22 pounds and in MK it was 13 pounds. The Canadian dollar was not in our favour either. $1 CAD = 1.77 pounds.

Somewhere on Instagram prior to our trip I discovered bean-covered baked potatoes are a street food and I joked to hubs about how I had to try it. My wish was granted! What you're looking at is 1.5 baked potatoes covered in butter, then covered in shredded cheese, topped with beans and crispy onion bits on the side. Different toppings were available, like chicken, but I wasn't feeling that adventurous :D Honestly, I'd have it again in a heartbeat.

Other foods we tried--Nutella-filled chimney cakes, a "French taco"--which is a filled burrito pressed to perfection in a panini grill, Gregg's famous sausage rolls, scones with clotted cream and jam, fish and chips (of course) and meat pies. We had a hotel hamburger since we landed late at night and it was interesting. The beef certainly was different from back home, but still delicious.

Getting back to meat pies, we tried two different kinds. One was more traditional and the other was this giant man-sized pie with thick crust. Both were amazing in their own right. Hubs tried jellied eels at the one pie place and I couldn't watch. Bleh! It was so unappetizing.

We visited a Bangladeshi restaurant in London because hubs just had to try chicken tikka masala. The British concoction is best described as dessert butter chicken. It's super sweet and heavy on coconut flavour. Here at home it would be a spicy feast--but the British way is so inoffensive and unadventurous.

Two Turkish restaurants and a fast food donair place were within walking distance of our hotel, so we tried all three. The lamb iskender was so tender at the fast food place and the olive dip amazing at all three. Mmm!

We didn't try a lot of snack foods. I bought a hazelnut Aero bar and it was super sweet, even for me.

If you visit the UK, be prepared for a lot of salty, greasy fare--I was definitely hankering for a green vegetable by Day 4 of our trip!

Just a note that homemade cranberry sauce made from Craisins is quick and easy. There's no shortage of recipes online. It boils down to (literally) sugar, Craisins, orange zest and a dash of lemon. I used lemon and because I didn't have orange zest, I mashed up a slice of mandarin orange. It was so yummy and took minutes to make. We're just two people and a whole can of cranberry sauce would be wasted on us!

I made Coca Cola cake on the weekend. As it happened, our furnace motor conked out and it was a great reason to turn on the stove for a while!

There are definitely some "from scratch" Coke cake recipes out there, but you can also use a box cake mix and replace the amount of water or milk with Coke. I also used canned frosting for ease of use.

The cake smelled amazing as it baked, but it ultimately ended up being a tad too sweet. I'd try it again, but it's definitely a sometimes thing!

I started ordering groceries from Save-On Foods because the boutique grocery I normally use doesn't sell cans of bachelor chow Chef Boyardee 2 for $4 :-D We always keep a few cans in the cupboard, just in case.

They also had free-run turkey roasts (essentially a giant turkey breast) for $20 and hubs really wanted turkey instead of beef. We don't have turkey often. For some reason hubs thought I had bought a whole turkey and said that it would get all weird if I used the slow cooker, LOL! I'm not sure what he was thinking since we're just two people, LOL! Granny used to do a whole turkey up until she couldn't lift the roasting pan anymore. I don't know how she did it sometimes!

Anyway, if all works out, here's what we'll be feasting on:

Slow-cooked turkey with gravy
Carrots
Asparagus
Cucumber (regrettably romaine lettuce is $$$ right now)
Mashed potatoes
Mushrooms
Potato bacon soup or borscht
Apple stuffing

And if we don't pick up a pie somewhere between now and then, there's always a box of Jello in the cupboard too, just in case.

Canadian Thanksgiving is this weekend and I'm excited to have my family over for the first tine in forever!

Here's what's on the menu:

Salad with tomatoes, celery and cucumber
Roast beef with mushrooms
Swiss Chalet ribs (in case Dad finds beef too challenging)
Mashed potatoes
Corn
Carrots
Bread
Vanilla ice cream
Pie
Cranberry sauce and stuffing (as per hubs!)

Sunterra had short ribs on sale last week, so I order 1kg with no idea how much that would be, exactly. I had never cooked that cut of meat before, but 1kg was just the right size for the slow cooker and included four short ribs.

I found recipe online to try. It's a great starter recipe and once you make it, you can try adding a few other things like mushrooms or spices. I used rosemary sprigs and fresh garlic and topped the short ribs with butter since that worked so well for roasts. The meat falls off the bone and you can make the leftover liquid into gravy, num! I would say one short rib per person is enough.

Ingredients

4 pounds boneless or bone-in beef short ribs about 8 short ribs
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
3 cups beef broth
1/4 cup worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 sprig fresh rosemary

Instructions

1. Season the short ribs with salt and pepper. Heat a large skillet over high heat. Sear the short ribs on each of the 4 sides for about 60 seconds per side.

2. Pour the beef broth, worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, and onion powder into a slow cooker and stir together. Place the short ribs into the liquid in the slow cooker.

3. Place rosemary sprig on top of meat and put the lid on. Cook on low for 6-8 hours, until meat is tender.

I always feel like I come out ahead if I use the slow cooker at least once a week. Last week I bought a pork roast from Sunterra for $15.50 that we had three dinners out of--score! Buying roasts sight unseen is new for me. I usually pick whatever looks like it will fit in the slow cooker. I never noted how much it weighed. Today I learned that 900 grams (about 2lbs) of beef brisket just barely fits in the slow cooker.

I tried to find some brisket recipes online, but I get frustrated by the long winded stories and too many ads. It's easy to forget that Better Homes & Gardens exists and they didn't disappointed with their beef brisket and barbecue sauce recipe.

Mmmmm! We had it with buns and coleslaw and it was just perfect. I substituted paprika and curry powder (and doubled up) for the cayenne pepper. I didn't have dry mustard, but I had grainy Grey Poupon which just added to the texture. I ended up nuking the final barbecue sauce mix instead of making it on the stove. Wow. Also I cooked it for eight hours instead of ten as our large slow cooker seems to run on the hot side. Can't wait to have leftovers tomorrow.

Of course, my picture wasn't as fancy, but gotta have a picture :-D My brisket fell apart easily.

I'm not sure if it's because our immune systems are going unchallenged, but hubs and I had the blahs the last week. He couldn't stop sneezing and I couldn't stop sniffling. I didn't do much on Saturday, even though it was our last chance to dine out for four weeks (gotta bend the curve!). I just stayed home and had random things from the fridge. I went to bed early and got out of bed at 8:30am, which is practically unheard of.

It seemed to work because I had a lot more pep yesterday. I stayed off the computer, worked on some New Year's cards and made a great lunch and dinner.

I always feel proud when I can get a lot of mileage out of food. I feel like Granny, who grew up during the Depression, is standing over my shoulder and approving of my thrifty ways. I bought a $19 beef roast last week and made in it in the slow cooker on Friday. Later it become beef vegetable soup with the help of a soup mix packet, a quarter cup of barley plus fresh and frozen vegetables.

Then, later, I whipped up a big Japanese style curry with carrots, rice and onions in the French oven. We had two heaping bowls of it for dinner and there was enough leftover for two lunches.

It was the kind of day I needed--just one that was restful and full of self-satisfaction.

Not the most exciting post, even for LJ, but I was reading another journal where the author hoped to cut down the grocery bill. It's always a challenge, especially when you live farther away from the produce! Right now we have chard and corn in season. I'm hoping a local greenhouse grower will take the edge off of winter vegetable prices and spare me the pain of a $5 cucumber in December.

One of my 2020 goals was to cut down on our grocery and dining out bill and we accidentally did so. Hubs had surgery in February that required a bland, mushy, small portioned diet afterwards. "You won't be eating steak, that's for sure!" the surgeon told us in December. Hello pudding, rice, soggy cereal, Jell-O, oatmeal and pasta!

Then, COVID-19 came along. Goodbye dining out! Goodbye pricey lunches! We have been trying to support our favourite restaurants with delivery, but it's only now that hubs can start to eat regular food again.

Grocery shopping has become it's own mini nightmare. My parents grew up in scarcity and I grew up with scarcity, so I have scarcity on the mind. Hubs, however, did not, and meal planning shows our disparity. For example, a typical dinner when I was growing up was canned corned beef, canned vegetables and mashed potatoes. Dad used to be a work camp cook in the oil and gas industry a long time ago, so he knew a thing or two about making eggs and pancakes. It feels like we ate a lot of frozen waffles as kids along with mac and cheese.

Anyway, since hubs was immune-compromised for a while, I did the grocery shopping. We would try to figure out what to eat but I couldn't make any guarantees that I could buy it. I used to enjoy going to Safeway at 7am--no more. I used to enjoy shows like Supermarket Sweep as a kid, but gosh, the real life version is not so fun! Grocery shopping has become a game of dodge 'em. There are grocery delivery services where I live, but our smaller appetites also make it difficult to plan. I don't want to spend money on food we won't eat.

I stocked up on pantry staples so we wouldn't have to go grocery shopping again for another week. I also stocked up on frozen dinners since that takes the guesswork out of everything. Surprisingly, I have been able to get a lot of fresh produce and that makes a big difference.

I appreciate working from home and being able to make us a good hearty lunch! Here's yesterday's lunch of black forest ham, leftover bratwurst and cheese on a bun. It was really delicious. It was a bite of gratitude in action :-)