Forward planning

This is my last week in Montpellier before I make my triumphant (and long-awaited) return to good old Blighty. With that in mind, a bit of forward planning with regards to dinner has been needed - the last thing I want is to come back to a fridge full of food that's gone off. I've got a meal plan until Thursday - and Monday night was sausage casserole night.

It's amazingly simple and quick to make and is lovely and filling. All you do is cut sausages into small rounds and cook them with a tiny bit of butter in a pan. Once they're cooked, add a drained and rinsed tin of cannellini beans (which, in case you're interested, are haricots blancs in France), and then as much sauce as you fancy. Cook on a low heat until everything's warm through, then serve. That's literally it. And I made enough for two evening's worth, so after I return from my final exam on Wednesday I won't have to think about cooking anything as it'll be there already. I will admit to being a little bit naughty and eating some from the portion I set aside for dinner another night - so I might have to add something to supplement it then - but it was too delicious to resist.

Tuesday rush

It strikes me that there will be one day every week where you struggle to find time to fit in dinner. For me, this is Tuesday. It's not that I'm particularly busy, it's that working at an awkward time makes it difficult to know what and when to cook. Today, I plumped for cooking the main meal at lunch so all I need is to pick up (or make, if I had anything in my fridge) a sandwich to eat during my break at work, and then indulge in some marmite on toast when I come home - alternatively, I might be very naughty and call into Tesco's on the way back and pick up a little something as a reward!

I'd had in my head the idea of making a different version of the sausage casserole I always do. I tend to make a very improvised casserole and have it with mashed potato or rice - a couple of sausages, a tin of chopped tomatoes and some tomato purée, garlic, onion and chopped peppers, all into the oven for about 45 minutes. But I've had a tin of cannellini beans lurking about in the back of my cupboard since I moved into the house in September, and I really fancied using them in something so I wouldn't need to wait for the rice or potatoes to boil. So this morning, when I really should've been doing something more about my essays, I trawled the internet looking for a good casserole recipe that wouldn't require putting anything into the oven. Unable to find anything that didn't require an oven or lentils (seeing as I'd used the last tin of green lentils on Sunday) online, I turned to one of the M&S recipe books my parents bought me last year for Christmas.

Amazingly, there was something in there that was exactly what I was after: a sausage and bean casserole that only needed one pot and could be done just on the hob in about 20-30 minutes. Even better, I had all of the ingredients apart from the tin of chopped tomatoes, but I did have a ramekin full of tomato purée that needed using up, so I thought I could improvise. In the future, I'll definitely leave this one for when I've got some chopped tomatoes (which will be after tomorrow when my shopping arrives) because the purée was just a bit too rich, and even with adding a fair amount of water, the sauce was still quite thick. I think having the chopped tomatoes would sweeten the meal a little bit and also then, you've got the lovely chunks of tomato in addition to the green pepper, onion, garlic, sausages and beans.

The cannellini beans make this really filling and means that you don't have to get another saucepan messy by having to cook rice or any potato - I didn't even need any bread to bulk up the dinner, although I think that if you did have the chopped tomatoes in there, even with using some tomato purée to thicken everything, you might want something to mop up the sauce afterwards!

Another success, although definitely one to save for when you've got all the necessary ingredients. Now, to try and find something I can make tomorrow with the cannellini beans that are left - and the new additions to the kitchen with my Sainsbury's order...