meal planning - where do i start?

spike7451

lauracusack wrote: »

Is it meant to be like mince or something? Quorn's nice but a bit pricey...

It's sort of like that soya mince that you get in the Pot Noodles or Vesta Curries.Weird texture on the tongue,not firm like mince,more spongy.Not nice at all.

Malfiore

Today, I was taken out to lunch to this lovely little veggie place. I had a spinach, cheese and potato pie. It was delicious but also really cheap to make as well.

It was literally wholemeal pastry with potato layers, cheese layers (obv. melted) and spinach to top off. No pastry on top. You could try that as it was delicious and very filling

Pink.

Hi Laura,

Cheap, vegetarian meals that we have would be baked potatoes filled with beans/roasted veg/cheese etc, omelettes, quiche and green salad, hearty soups with crusty bread, vegetable /casseroles/curries/risotto, pasta bakes and pasta with sauces.

These threads may give you more ideas:

Easy, cheap Vegetarian recipes?

Gingham's Vegetarian Meal Planner

Gingham's vegetarian meal planner - SUMMER

Gingham's vegetarian menu planner SPRING

Vegan and vegetarian food on the cheap

A vegetarian meal planner, please

Vegetarian OSers

Cooking for the freezer - vegetarian

I'll add your thread to the first link later to keep the suggestions together.

Pink

pinkmami

We eat very basic food compared to what is on the OP lists!

Things on my menu are: roast dinner every Sunday with plenty of leftovers for DH & DS's tea on Monday, egg & chips, lamb chops/pork chops with veg & pots, lasagne, chilli con carne, spag bolg, macaroni cheese, pizza & wedges, chicken in black bean sauce (Asda own brand is delicious!), chicken chasseur (colemans' packet), lobscouse (firm family favourite!!), curry, cod & chips.....

see? Very basic but DH & I have been brought up on these. We have the odd Chinese takeout once a month & have ample stock of waffles, nuggets, fish fingers for the kids.

zippychick

as this has dropped down the board ive merged it with our main meal planning thread

This thread may also help

Zip

xRaindrops

Hi everyone I am new to the forums so this is my first thread. :T
DH and I have been on JSA for a few months now, desperately looking for jobs and before now I was cutting into my rapidly shrinking savings to help us get by, but now with hardly anything left in the bank we have to really budget as our workings out have left us with only £10pm (And that is with NO leisure activities at all, no fun for us! lol) all bills and rent paid and a food shop of £30 a week.

Before now we have just been going out and buying food we think we (And our 2 cats) might need during the week (Nearly all Mr A Smartprice) to the value of £30, but we figure we might be able to cut this down even more if we meal plan.

But this is where we get stuck! I have tried meal planning in the past and get the plan all done, and when I tot things up and do a mock shop online for the ingredients, it turns out our meal plan is more expensive than we thought!! Sometimes £10-20 more...

We have never successfully made a meal plan because we don't know any way to do it other than think up meals > make a table in excel > write down ingredients > add all ingredients up > do a mock shop for ingredients before we confirm the meal plan > get the shock of our life at the price and go back to square one feeling very stressed and demotivated at the thought of trying to make another.

So OSers... I need your help! How do YOU meal plan in a way that makes your shopping list affordable, within budget and not astronomical?

*Feels all hopeless and deflated* ...

rosie383

I think you do need to change the way you plan. Go for ingredients that you can get a fair few meals from. Eg, rubber chicken, big pot bolog sauce that you can use to make chilli for jacket spuds, spag bol, lasagna etc. Bulk it out with lentils, oats etc.
I think you need to do a weekly plan but with a longer term plan too IYKWIM.
EG, you may go for a big bag of pasta the first week, but should be able to make it stretch for 2 weeks between the 2 of you. Maybe a bag of lentils the 2nd week, but it would last for a month.
Gradually build up a store cupboard so that many of the ingred you need, don't need to be bought each week.
There are many plans on here that you could easily do for £30pw for 2 of you. (Mind you, not sure how much the cats cost each week, so if you are spending a set amount on them say £8 per week, look at a plan that costs £20 pw for 2 adults).
I know someone will be along with a link to many threads that will help eg, Weezl's blog.

rosie383

http://weezl.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/hello-world/

Found this link for Weezl's blog. It feed a family of 4 for £100 pm, so that should be easily doable on your budget.
HTH.

Bigjenny

This is the direct link for the website mentioned above http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/
for some ideas

HTH

mrswive

Welcome xRaindrops.
A few ideas that may be of some use:
I think that possibly it's the buying of storecupboard ingredients that you will use for several more meals in the future, which is one of the things that bumps up the price - once you've bought an ingredient like a herb, spice or sauce you won't have to replace it for a while, and you won't have to buy more than one at a time. Maybe if you calculated over a 2 week period rather than 1 week some of that could be taken into account.
Do you have easy access to one or more supermarkets that you could get to an hour before closing time so that you can perhaps pick up some reduced items?
Home made soups can be cheap to make eg. a vegetable soup with lentils or a can of beans added for protein is wholesome and filling with a few slices of bread.
Pasta is a great way of providing meals that are filling, tasty and cheap. A sauce that I make: any bits of leftover veg, onion and garlic, some green(puy)lentils for protein and a carton of passata, with a bit of grated cheese on top - in fact, you can leave out the passata & lentils, just use a very small amount of olive oil; you can crush a clove of garlic and a few herbs or a chilli, and cover it with a bit of olive oil, just a few tbsps is enough, leave it so that the flavours infuse the oil, then pour over pasta and grate a bit of cheese on top.
If there's enough of anything like soup or pasta sauce left over to make a portion, freeze it so that there are a few meals on standby at the end of the week/month; there's no rule that says you both have to have the same thing for dinner!
Multiple use ingredients are good - I buy a butternut squash for a bit over £1 and make a pasta sauce and soup with it; a bag of potatoes can be used for jackets with something cheap and nutritious like baked beans or tuna, baked in the microwave then cut into wedges and fried to have along with eggs or sausages, then mashed and mixed with onion and left over veg, made into patties and fried - bubble and squeak with an egg on top or a few mushrooms.
If you're a meat eater, you don't have to have meat every day or a large portion of it when you do, and there's nothing wrong with beans on toast once in a while!
I'm sure the other posters on here can come up with loads of other ideas - some will work for you and some won't, so please don't get disheartened with the ones that don't.
Good luck with it - after a while it just becomes what you do and when times aren't so tough you'll have money left over for fun stuff 'cos of all the good habits you've learned now.