Weekly Menu 11th to 15th May 2009

This week I'm hosting the gluten free menu swap and have chosen potatoes as my ingredient. We love potatoes and for the firs year ever we are growing them on our allotment. This is really the first year we are growing vegs in general though I did grow some years ago.. never potatoes however. The picture above is our first earlies growing on well and indeed some of them are close to flowering already. Our later potatoes some weeks behind these but in all we do have quite a few potatoes and indeed a good few varieties, around 20 I think!

So what can I say about potatoes? Good question. I think we all know them pretty well and I expect most of us eat them regularly. I think one of the things I have learnt over the last couple of years is that actually one potato doesn't do everything. Some are good for mash, others better for chips and still others work well cooked whole and used in salads. Know your varieties and ask your green grocer what the potatoes they are selling are and I don't mean are they red or white !! This year we have planted many varieties and they all differ.. there are early ones, salad ones, red ones, white ones, blue ones!, multicoloured ones, round ones, long thin knobbly one and so on.

So tell me how will you eat your potatoes this week? Either email me on esther dot reeves at gmail dot com or leave a comment here.

Menu

Monday - shepherd's pie.. lamb mince topped with mashed potato.

Tuesday - Bubble and squeak with an egg on top. Left over mashed potato and cabbage cooked together.

Wednesday - chicken casserole with rice.

Thursday - Salad plate, including roasted vegs and probably some sort of protein but need to go shopping first.

Friday - Fish and chips.

Other menus

Wendy at Celiacs in the house muses about the potato famine and family history she has been researching. She has a wonderfully varied menu to go with it.

Sea at Book of Yum - As always a lovely sounding menu and she has linked to a bunch of interesting sounding potato recipes, I'm particularly tempted by spinach shepherds pie as nearly all the ingredients are favourites of mine and it may well sneak in as an extra dish one day this week as not everyone love spinach as much as me.

Elizabeth at Modern Gal has another great sounding menu and several bean recipes. We are constantly trying to up the amount of pulses we eat so I may well be checking some of those out.

Angela from Angela's Kitchen is cooking up a whole host of things this week and has so much rhubarb that she is planning a variety of ways to use it up I'm really jealous. I love rhubarb ! She adds dandy lion leaves to her potato salad, I keep meaning to try them and that sounds a mild way to do it.

Heather from Celiac Family is cooking a lovely family friendly menu that I'd happily have here. She is trying her hand at making GF pizza so good luck it is well worth finding a version that works for you as pizza is one of those things so many people miss when they go gluten free.