Time to get organised!!

After a good few days off and a weekend away in Manchester I needed to get back on my thrifty bandwagon!! Yesterday some relatives gave me a food parcel! They buy so much food and always have too much leftover so they asked if I would like any. I said yes of course! I came home with three big tubs of houmous which went straight in the freezer and a big cooked chicken and other storecupboard items.
As the chicken needed to be used straight away I got up this morning and got cooking. I made a chicken and vegetable pie and also a healthy chicken curry.
Chicken Pie recipe:
Short crust pastry
Half a large onion diced
Cooked chicken cubed
Frozen veg
300ml milk
Chicken stock cube or gray granules
paprika
garlic
Flour salt pepper
Method:
- sweat off onions until translucent, then add one garlic clove crushed and cook for 2 mins.
- Add a tbsp of flour, pinch of salt and pepper to form a roux, and then cook on low heat for 2 mins
- add milk and chicken stock cube to the pan and cook until sauce thickens, add paprika and add chicken and frozen veg. I had carrots, green beans and peas in my freezer so thats what went in!
- put chicken mixture in bottom of quiche dish or pan.
- the other day I made cheese and potato pie so I still had half a pack of shortcrust pastry. This was exactly enough to top the pie. I just rolled it out, cut out some heart shapes in the pastry, topped the pie and washed with milk was and popped it in a 180degree oven for 30 mins.

Chicken Curry Recipe:
This is basically the slimming world potato and chicken curry recipe; which was nice but lacked a bit of flavour so I tweaked it to make it a bit more yummy!
Ingredients:
Cubed cooked chicken
2 x potatoes peeled and cubed
Half a large onion diced
Garlic clove crushed
1tsp Cumin
1/2 tsp Coriander
1 tsp Curry Powder
1/2 tsp Turmeric
1/2 tsp Ginger
1/2 tsp Garam Masala
chicken stock cube
Tin of tomatoes
Method:
- Cook onions in oil or frylight until translucent. Add garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Add all spices except for the garam masala. Cook for a further two mins on low to cook out the spices.
- Add potatoes and around 200ml of water and the tinned toms.
- crumble stock cube into pan and stir until dissolved.
- Simmer curry for 20mins until potatoes are tender. When you can pierce them with a knife add the cubed chicken and heat through. At this point stir in the garam masala too.
Note if you are freezing this like I am, then do not add the Garam masala as it will go bitter. When you take the curry out and defrost it add the garam masala when re-heating.
Note: These curries really do stain tupperware so I tend to wait until they're completely cool and then put in freezer bags. A lot less fuss.....and scrubbing!!!

Now the cooking is done and tea is sorted its time to sort out stuff for selling. Christmas is coming up and I want to make as much money as I can so I need to have a good sort out!