All posts tagged: cheap eats

Turkey Meatballs in Tomato Sauce

I have recently been thinking of cutting back on the amount of red and processed meat that we eat, not least after watching the recent BBC documentary investigating the relative health-and environmental impacts of eating various kinds of meat protein. But Chief Stick Collector and Bird Girl definitely fall into the carnivorous camp, and love their bolognese sauce and beef meatballs.  Vegetables are either just about tolerated (on a good day) or outright refused (unless hidden incognito in something else!).  So the question was whether I could replicate one of their favourite beefy meals with something else? Step forward Turkey Mince.  The challenge? Make some meatballs with turkey mince that were not only edible, but tasty. A bit of internet surfing revealed a large number of recipes for turkey meatballs, but none seemed exactly what I was looking for, so I mixed and matched and added and subtracted and threw in a variation of one of our favourite tomato pasta sauces, and ended up with the recipe below. The results? Well, the children loved the sauce …

Blackberry Oaty Cookies

I love this time of year when it’s still summer, but the early mornings hint at the changing season to come, with a chill in the air and wisps of mist clinging to the fields and woods in the valley below our house. It seems early this year, but the trees and hedgerows near us are starting to reveal their autumn goodies, with cob nuts everywhere and ripe blackberries on show already.  So, we took ourselves off blackberry picking, joined by Bird Girl and Chief Stick Collector’s cousins and my sister. As luck would have it, blackberry picking is another thing on our list of 50 Things to do before 11 3/4. So we were hoping to be able to tick off another challenge, which sounded like it would be an easy and risk-free one to complete! We did have to be careful to avoid stinging nettles and blackberry thorns, so it wasn’t entirely without an element of danger (as far as that term is understood by preschoolers!).  But it didn’t take us long to pick enough to take home. …