The 3-Week Plan: Day 5

The plan for Friday said sausage with mash, but I was having more left-overs than I thought, so I decided to fry the roast potatoes & carrots from Tuesday with onions and peppers to make them go further, and serve them with the five last slices of roast beef, accompanied with lettuce, chutney and creme fraiche. The husband prefered barbecue sauce, which isn´t my thing really, can´t get into that smoky stuff. We found some rye crackers and ate them with the last of the tapenade, and drank blackcurrant saft. Pretty much a repeat of Tuesday, but tasty, all the same.

That head of lettuce was uncommonly large and has kept well all week, surprisingly. I still have half of it left, so I rinsed it and put it in the sandwich box so I will remember to eat it on my breakfast bread. It´s really exceptionally good lettuce, something we are not spoiled with.

Tomorrow, we intend to get our dinner at the international street market, and the mum-in-law, who is planning to tag along, called today and said she had bought some fresh raspberries for dessert. She had taken a walk today with Maria from the home-help service, which had cheered her up no end. Being so hard of seeing, she really needs someone to go with her, and it´s frustrating for her to be dependent on us, who have jobs and little time for her during the day. The home-helpers are a godsend, truly.

Käsespätzle

What we made from the left-over spätzle: mixed them with cheese and baked them in the oven. The paprika on top was the husband´s inspiration. We served it with left-over steak fried with onion. Quick and easy!

Left-over gratin

I am loathed to throw out any kind of food, and Mondays I usually have lots of left-overs. Depending on what I have, a gratin or a soup is usually what I go for.

Today I had four potatoes, one carrot, a bit of cheese (it has survived since Christmas - we bought a huge edamer that just never ends), half an onion, two bits of sausage (Norrlandsfalu - a boiled and lightly smoked sausage- and a spicy one I can´t remember the name of), 200 ml of cream, and some kebab sauce.

I put all the veg and cheese through the food processor, using the coarsest grater, diced the sausage, and put it all in an oven dish. I usually put in a layer of veg mix, then sausage, then the rest of the veg. I mix cream and sauce with a bit of spice, like tabasco and Worchestershire sauce and pour it over the whole thing. I then sprinkle some bread crumbs on top, to prevent the cream from burning and going all icky. This is traditionally done to Janssons Frestelse (= Jansson´s Temptation), a potatoes au gratin dish that is seasoned with anchovy (I will certainly do it later on the blog), and I really like the texture of the surface so I imported the technique to all my gratins.

I leave it in the oven for 50 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius, and if dinner is delayed I just turn the oven off and let it sit in the remaining heat. I serve it with a fresh vegetable, we seem to like cucumbers at the moment, and a glass of saft.

This size of gratin usually feeds the two of us and one person besides. I often put any left-overs on a plate, put a soup plate on top, stick it in a plastic bag and freeze it, for the next day when I eat alone (this happens most weeks). It´s like a home-made microwave meal, very handy!