Thursday 20 February 2014

Gammon/Ham meal stretching...

Welcome to two new followers - Mickle in NZ via here and Ellen Ashley via Bloglovin. You are both most welcome.

Taking a leaf out of Frugal Queen's recipes, we decided to try her meal featuring ham, and spicy tomato sauce. Her link is here:

We bought a gammon ham joint on a 'special' offer for £5 (around 800g in weight) which we thought pretty good value for the size of it. Anyway, here is our first meal from it:
We liked the tomato sauce but for us, needed to add a little sprinkling of chilli flakes. We sliced most of the joint but kept about a 1/3rd back to use as chunks. Then we had a ham sandwich for lunch another day, followed by this for tea:
Another day saw us having a snack of cheese, gammon and mayonnaise grilled on toast. The last of the slices were diced up and used in a pea, mushroom and ham risotto:
The chunks were added to a leek and vegetable white sauce mix and created two 'pies' topped with mash:

There was also enough of the sauce left over to be stirred into 6oz of spiral pasta, topped with a small grating of cheese to make this:

All in all, that £5 joint made 6 main meals (for 2 adults) and 2 snacks for us, plus another snack for DB as well. Now I don't know about you, but I reckon that was pretty good going!

16 comments:

  1. That's amazing isn't it? Incredibly inventive - and delicious!

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    1. Thank you. Ever since I found the recipe for vegetables in a white sauce, I have used it for all kinds of meals.

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  2. I don't know how you do it! And these are generous portions too. Anything with a creamy sauce gets my vote. I am a bit up to my eyes with mine and mother's arrangements at the moment but I am determined to pick up a similar gammon joint and divvy it up as you have here. Terrific!

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    1. I think they are currently around £7 but still a bargain.

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  3. Wow thats some going and all the meals look delicious ...we love stuffed peppers here too :)

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    1. I could have kicked myself with the peppers as I didn't cook them quite enough but they were still good to eat.

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  4. This is a great example of why people should learn how to cook from scratch. I often think it's not money that they're short of, but a willingness to learn how they could eat more cheaply.

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    1. I love cooking from scratch but also love to make dishes to be frozen for those days when we really don't feel like cooking.

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  5. Thats pretty amazing and great value for money.

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  6. Wow who'd have thought you'd get all those delicious meals from one piece of gammon joint. I like the sound of the mashed topped pies with the leek and white sauce.
    Patricia x

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    1. Thank you Anne and Patricia. I just love the challenge of stretching food.

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  7. I must have known you were going to write this post as I bought a gammon from lidl on monday so I will certainly be trying some of these fab ideas. Thank you for sharing .

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  8. Gammon is a favourite here and I shall be using your post as inspiration for our next joint!

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    1. Karen - hope your trials go well.
      Kim - hope you are feeling a little better and your inspiration serves you well.

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  9. Some really good meal ideas me dear thank you for sharing, I shall be trying that white sauce with additions for certain.

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    1. It is a basic white sauce but uses half milk and half vegetable or chicken stock to help the flavour. You can use any meat and vegetables you wish.

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