MealPlans WB 26th September 2008

pretz_2

ok as usual im late so ill do monday to sunday. think i might keep doing it in this gap as my veg box arrives on mondays so never know what i get till its here

so heres what .we're having

tonight- venison casserole with mash and kale
tuesday - morracan lamb neck with cous cous
wednesday - sausage pasta bake for oh and dd (sandwhich for me as ive got dance teaching)
thursday - mil's
friday - fish with chips and peas
saturday - bean and leek crumble
sunday - mil's

schueys_girl

Hi Guys,

I know a lot of you talk about the brilliance of planning menus each week to do your weekly shopping around, and this sounds like a brilliant idea....but I am new to this and even struggling to think of different meals to have for dinner each day!

I was wondering whether there is already a lot of people's example menus on here, or wether you could all post examples of what you have for dinner in the week so I have some ideas to pick from!

I am new to cooking so am not up for anything too complicated, but if you have a recepie for somethng too...that would be great!

Thanks guys

schueys_girl

RichyRich

You are in luck

schueys_girl

Wow thanks for the quick reply!!

Pink.

Hi schueys_girl,

There is a weekly menu planning thread where everyone posts their meal plans for the week so I'll add your post to it so you can see what everyone else is having.

For more ideas have a browse through The Complete Menu Plans Collection

And for recipes these threads should help:

Recipe Collection Thread (recipe board)

The Complete Cooking Collection

Pink

schueys_girl

Thank you very much! Where should I post for advice on cooking in general? For example me being very new to this i have questions such as - "how to cook a pork chop!"

Lol sorry I know its lame!!!

Pink.

schueys_girl wrote: »

Thank you very much! Where should I post for advice on cooking in general? For example me being very new to this i have questions such as - "how to cook a pork chop!"

Lol sorry I know its lame!!!

Hi schueys_girl,

It's not lame at all! Welcome to MSE :hello:

If you need help with anything Old Style you can search to see if there is an existing thread that will answer your question. (For help with searching have a look in the site's A-Z under search)

Alternatively you can post in the Quick Questions thread or start a new thread and if there is an existing thread that will help you one of the board guides will add your thread to it.

Hope that helps.

Pink

Kerriebaby

Im late!

Monday; Roast Spuds and veggies
Tuesday; JP beans and cheese
Wednesday; Bangers Mash and Veg
Thursday; HM soup
Friday; Bacon Omellette
Saturday; HM Chilli
Sunday; HM soup

thecornflake

I'm trying to do menu planning for the first time and also increase the amount of home cooked food we have at home. Some background - when we had our first child we fell into the convenience food trap and mostly ate food cooked in the deep fat fryer because it was so quick. I got into cooking and started with roast dinners, gradually moving to more and more home cooked food. My mum always cooked proper food and I have worked in a restaurant and like cooking, so it was easy for me to get into it, I'm nto sure sure why I didn't before really.

3/4 years on, we eat home cooked food often but still a lot of meals are from frozen food - oven chips, pies, chicken nuggets, etc etc. I started growing some veg on the patio last year to supplement this though. I also want to reduce our budget - currently £200/month which is roughly £140 for everything except frozen food and then £60 at Iceland on frozen stuff.

The main aim of this exercise is to do more food cooked from scratch, batch cooking and freezing and reduce the food spend.

I have started cooking cake things at weekends to replace shop bought choc bars that are used for lunches. We have a five year old who takes packed lunches to school and I take them to work, and also a 4 week old so time is an issue here for my wife. Plus I'm not usually in from work until 6:30 each evening. This means meals have to be quick or involve preparation earlier in the day, so they can fit in with our time better. My wife isn't the kind of person who will happily spend an hour or so cooking a meal and with the baby at home it's hard to find slots of time to do proper cooking. She's also a carer for her mum so sometimes isn't at home until just before I get in from work. For these reasons the plan has to be a bit flexible.

The menu plan was drawn up last week, and the actual food required for just these meals came to £19.68. Bear in mind we already had some food in the cupboards - rice, cans of chopped tomatoes etc. I am working partly from that new book with the stupidly long name, which is where some of the recipes come from. The plan was as follows -

Saturday - Lamb chops (frozen, already had some) on bed of rice with Rataouille
Sunday - Roast Chicken
Monday - Chicken Lousiana (using leftover chicken)
Tuesday - Sausage Casserole (use up packet of sausages as Monday's dinner required only 2) with mash (make double to use next day)
Wednesday - Sheperd's pie (extra mash used from Tuesday night)
Thursday - Mainly freezer food as it's there and needs to be eaten, but served with veg and possibly home made hash browns (we have a lot of potatoes to use up)
Friday - Not yet decided, probably home made pizzas

Over the weekend I make up some chocolate crunchies for lunches and planned to make a dundee cake and some flapjacks but didn't get round to them.

All is going well so far. My wife had the genius idea of mixing leftover sausage casserole (dished up all the sausages but left quite a bit of the casserole) with mince for the sheperds pie. I will let you know, but I'm sure this will taste fantastic. With the leftover mash on top it meant the only ingredient we needed for tonight's dinner was mince.

My new Panasonic breadmaker turned up yesterday so hopefully I can start making some bread soon. We get through about 2/3 loaves a week so I worked out it should pay back for itself within a year and the bread should be healthier and nicer anyway.

I'll try and keep this updated in case anyone is interested in how we get on.

Pink.

Hi thecornflake,

I have added your menu plan into the weekly meal plan thread as I'm sure you'll appreciate that if everyone who posts on Old Style was to start their own 'diary' thread the board would very quickly become clogged up and nobody would be able to find the moneysaving information that they need.

Good luck with your meal plan, it sounds lovely.