Frank aka PCGuyIV is our host for the Truthful Tuesday prompt. You can find out more and last week’s round-up of participants (myself included) here
Frank’s question this week:
Whether it’s soups, stews, or chili, are there certain foods that you consider “winter fare”, only suitable when the temperature dips low enough to turn the furnace on, or do you just eat whatever whenever?
At school, Tuesdays always meant ice cream for dessert, Wednesdays would see curry and rice, Fridays fish and chips, we’d have roast potatoes once a week, as with mash and boiled potatoes.
Therefore, one thing I promised myself as an adult was not to have specific things on certain days and if we fancied cereal for tea or supper, then so be it.
Hubby and I have just polished off the second day of our stew. Usually it would serve us three days, but he didn’t fancy a third, so I simply made less. Most of our meals are governed by cost rather than the weather, though I admit stews are more popular with us in the colder months because it is after all normally three days meals and quick to serve.
I make most of my meals from scratch, though we do have tins of curry, minced beef, beans, tomatoes and soups in reserve. I love to cook, and watching our diet is easier if I know exactly what is going into each meal. I can make a chili with 200g of lean minced beef, a tin of red kidney beans, fresh tomatoes, an onion and garlic, serving it with rice or a jacket potato and that will give us a meal for two days.
As to some meals being ‘winter fare’, there’s nothing like a warming stew or home-made soup on a cold day and as we get those throughout the year here, stew is winter or summer for us.
You could ask if we have a lot of salad stuff in the summer, and the answer to that is not really. This is because it can work against me because of the high water content so the weight can increase and most salad packs tend to go off within two days of opening so get thrown away, but there is nothing wrong with having a small salad garnish with a jacket potato and chili as above!
Our main meal ingredients are chicken (curry, sweet and sour, ginger and pineapple, steamed with veg), minced beef (cottage pie, lasagna, chili, spaghetti bolognese), pork chops (with roast potatoes, sweet and sour or ginger and pineapple sauce), sausages (mash, beans, lately pasta for me) or breaded fish which is shop bought. Our stews though are nearly always all veg.
In the summer, there are days when it is too hot to cook and we’ll have a snack of something on toast, but on a chilly day, stew or soup is the favourite after starting the day with porridge.
pensitivity101 
Yum! You do a great job in planning out your meals, which reflects in your weight control and loss, and your budget. It takes some rare talent to be able to do that, so I hope you take deserved credit for your successes!
We do OK, and eat really well, still having the occasional treat. We’re out tomorrow so may try and get a pie for dinner. Still got a few things in the Christmas drawer to get through too. It’s more difficult to plan now though as Hubby tends to snack all day whereas I’m more of a three meals a day. We compromised in that he gets his own breakfast, and I cook the main meal for around midday to 1pm. Anything in between is up to him. It’s easier than me going in and out of the kitchen all the time and ‘picking’.
Did you have curry at school? Wow. School meals gave me nightmares, the smell from the kitchens was awful. The puddings were okay.
Yes, served in a white bowl with rice round the top. Most of it was sultanas, chopped carrots, onions and very little meat, but the spices were there.
Best pudding was the chocolate crispies with pink custard.
I remember some strange puddings we never had at home: tapioca, semolina and sago. I always liked jam sponge pudding with custard.
We had semolina, and jam sponge.
Sounds good to me 💜
I’m like you Di, I eat whatever, whenever! ❤
A hearty stew or thick soup can really warm you up in the winter! Summer soups tend to be thinner and lighter (or served cold). But other than not wanting to heat up the house by using the oven in the summer, I don’t usually have summer vs winter meal plans…
In the cottage we had an aga, so Summer cooking was HOT! We bought a table top two ring burner and oven, but it ran away with the electric. The aga was mis-sold as couldn’t run the central heating and the company went bust before we got a settlement. We ended up replacing it with an oil boiler and got an electric cooker which turned out to be pretty economical to run.
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