Monday Meal: Creamy Cider Chicken

I made this tonight, having found the recipe in a magazine in WH Smith entitled '£1 Dinners'. Of course, the £1 is slightly misleading, as it is £1 per person rather than £1 total. But this is rather tasty, and everyone enjoys it but two of my children who pretty much don't like anything.

Ingredients:

6 chicken breasts
6 slices of streaky bacon (I use 4 large chicken breasts halved)
2 onions, chopped
3 stalks of celery, chopped
300 ml apple juice or cider
500 ml chicken stock
100g creme fraiche
2 tablespoons dijon mustard
1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard
1 tablespoon thickening granules
2 cooking apples, sliced

Method:

Wrap a slice of bacon around each chicken breast and fry in 1 tablespoon butter or olive oil for 10 minutes until browned all over. Add celery and onion and fry for a few minutes; then add stock and juice, bring to boil, cover, and cook in 180 oven for 40 minutes.

While it's cooking sauté 2 cooking apples, sliced, in butter until browned all over.

Take out of oven, add creme fraiche, mustard, thickening granules, and apples. Stir and cook on stovetop for 3 minutes.

I serve it with rice and salad.

Sorry it's a stock photo--I forgot to take a picture of our dinner!

Budgeting

This post doesn't necessarily have to do with village life, but my life, and as my life is a village life I think it relates. It relates to a lot of people, I suspect, in these trying times, and so I thought I'd post about my aspiration to budget for groceries.

I have budgeted for groceries--ie, set an amount for food shopping each week--every year of my married life. I've never quite managed to keep to it for very long, although I have been, for the most part, a thrifty spender. I think it's because my goals have been unrealistic, mainly because we didn't have a lot of money! Now I've decided to try, instead of one lump sum for food for the week, breaking it down into groups.

To clarify: I feed eight people, five of them eating adult-sized portions. All eight people have dinner; all eight people have a cooked breakfast. Three to four of us have lunch everyday. And on the weekends all eight of us have lunch, plus we have, on average, people over for a meal once a week. I also try to bake around twice a week, either a cake or cookies. So! Here is my budget, in pounds, for food per week:

Meat: £25
Dairy (yogurt, milk, cheese, butter, eggs): £20
Produce: £15
Dry goods, including bread: £10
Diapers: £5
Frozen: £5
Juice: £3
Household: (toilet paper, laundry detergent, etc) £10
Baking (flour, sugar, etc): £5

The above totals to £98. I shop at Aldi except for bagels and cereal, which I get from another supermarket, so I'll add another £8 for those items, which brings me to £106. Adding another £19 for unexpected items/wiggle room, and I've reached my hoped-for budget of £125 a week.

Do you think this is reasonable? It means no readymade meals, no extra treats unless they fit into the above set amounts, and no extras like soda or snacks. I'm going to shop on Monday. I'll let you know how it goes.