Back to Homeschool: lunches for every day of the week

Welcome to day 2 of the Back to Homeschool blog hop.



Yesterday, I wrote about our overview. Today, I'm writing about a very practical issue: lunches.
Home educated children don't have school lunches provided-that is the negative. The positive is that they don't need day after day of packed lunches. Today, I'm pulling together some lunch ideas which work well for the home educating family. I can be confident about this because I've used them! My aim for lunch is that it is quick to prepare, nutritious and economical.

• Soup is a real staple here. We make our own soup which costs a fraction of the amount of preprepared soups. Our favourites are lentil, leek and potato, tomato and split pea and bacon. We serve soup with grated cheese and bread. 
• Pitta bread with humus. This is quick and easy. Here we have small, value pittas which are ideal size for children.
• Baked beans or sardines on toast.
• Boiled egg or scrambled egg.
• Crumpets or English muffins with cheese.
• Tuna mayonnaise sandwiches. If the children have grown cress, we add this.
• Left overs.

We always serve these up with fruit.

What do you serve for lunch?

Do pop over to see what these other bloggers have written about on the blog hop today.

Nikki @ Angels of Heart
Tauna @ Proverbial Homemaker
Laura @ Day by Day in Our World
Melanie @ finchnwren
Joelle @ Homeschooling for His Glory
Linda @ Linda's Lunacy
Leah @ As We Walk Along the Road
Hillary @ Our Homeschool Studio

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After Christmas soups

Winter days call for soup. The remains of the Christmas chicken or turkey makes excellent stock. Making stock in the slow cooker is surprisingly easy.

We ended up preparing more parsnips than we ate on Christmas Day. This recipe from Delia Smith is a tasty way of using up excess parsnip. The first time that I made this, I didn't think that I would enjoy the combination of parsnip and apple but was pleasantly surprised.

Years ago, I borrowed a library book about cooking for older people on their own. One of the recipes was for Stilton and Brussel sprout soup. This has become a favourite, for those of us know love sprouts, although with our own tweaks and in larger quantities. This is my recipe but do realise that I don't weigh ingredients for soups precisely! If you like sprouts then this is for you!

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon of sunflower oil
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
Brussel sprouts about 300g of peeled and halved sprouts, alternatively use frozen spouts
1 litre chicken or turkey stock
pinch of nutmeg
sage to taste
pepper
Stilton or other blue cheese about 100g

Method
Peel and chop the onion. Soften the onion in the sunflower oil until just browned.
Add the crushed clove of garlic and the sprouts. Cook for 1 minute.
Add the stock and seasoning. Bring to boiling point and then simmer until the sprouts are just soft.
Puree.
Add the crumbled Stilton and serve.

This serves 4.

Bank holiday harvest

We've been blackberrying. This year's harvest is rich-lovely, big, juicy blackberries.

My freezer now has several pots of blackberries. We use them on porridge and with apple. 

This year, we seem to have a reasonable apple harvest. Something for which we are thankful after last year's poor harvest but, perhaps, not quite as big as the bumper harvest of a few years ago.

In case, anyone else has a fair few apples, here are the links to my compendium of apple recipes:

Breakfasts, soups, main courses and vegetables

Desserts

Apple turnover

Blackberry jelly

While the earth remaineth  seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. 

Genesis 8 v22

Cheese and onion quiche

It is useful to have some stand-by recipes that aren't expensive and use ingredients already on hand. Cheese and onion quiche is exactly that and it is a "forgiving recipe" so many of the ingredients can be substituted.

The principle is that a pastry case is filled with onion, cheese and an egg custard and cooked.

Ingredients:
Home made or shop brought short crust pastry rolled to fill a fluted dish 10" (25cm) in diameter.
2 medium brown onions
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/2 cup of grated strong hard cheese (I usually use Cheddar but Parmesan is an excellent alternative)
3 large eggs
1/4pint (150ml) whole milk
Heaped tablespoon of yogurt
Ground pepper

Method

Blind cook the pastry case for 15 minutes at 200^oC (400F)

Lower the oven temperature to 180^oC (350F)
Chop the onions.

Gently soften the onions in olive oil.

Fill the pastry case with onion

and then with cheese.

Whisk together the eggs, milk, yogurt and ground pepper using a fork. Pour over the onion and cheese.

Cook at 180^oC/350F for 30 minutes until the top is set and golden.

Serve hot with baked potatoes and salad.
When cold, this makes excellent picnic food.
Serves 6

Variations
The variations are endless.

• It isn't necessary to use a pastry base. Do grease the dish well if a pastry base isn't used. It isn't necessary to grease the dish if using a base.
• Leeks/spring onions/red onions can be substituted for the onion.
• Using bacon instead of cheese makes the traditional Quiche Lorraine.
• Other chopped, cooked meat,  such as chicken or turkey, can be used for bacon. 
• Flaked tuna or other fish can be used instead of cheese.
• Single cream can be used for milk or more yogurt substituted for the milk.
• Almost any hard cheese can be used although the more flavour it has the better.
• Other vegetables can be substituted for one, or even two, of the onions, for example, tomatoes, courgettes or parboiled broccoli.

Enjoy!

This is linked to the Schoolhouse Crew Blog Cruise and Try a new recipe Tuesday.