any ideas

dazzanator

hi im new to this site and have been told to do a meal plan but i cant think of three dinners so seven is out of my reach so any ideas for seven dinner for a famley of four would be good thanks dazzanator

taplady

Hi and welcome to oldstyle!

Here's a few that we regularly have:

cottage pie, toad in the hole, chicken pie, lasagne, gammon and pineapple
fish pie, curry, pizza,

theres load more and I'm sure there'll be lots of ideas coming your way!

Good luck!;)

Bogof_Babe

I'd suggest you start by writing down what you normally cook/eat, and if you like post this on here, then we can see if we can either expand your repertoire so to speak, or at least save you a bit of money by suggesting ways to cut the cost or make extra portions of things to go towards the following day, or the freezer.

Heth_2

An idea of what we have been/will be eating this week:
Monday - omlette with some new potatoes in it, chopped bacon, onion, served with steamed broccoli and carrots
Tuesday - chickpea curry served with basmati rice and peas
Wednesday - pasta with courgettes
Thursday - salmon, served with new pots, courgettes and carrots
Friday - roasted peppers stuffed with courgette, muushrooms, onion and ricotta served with steamed broccoli
Saturday - fish risotto
Sunday - sausages, probably with some mashed potatoes and steamed veg.

We both take packed lunches into work, usually have sandwiches with cream cheese and tomato, or with chicken (cut from a whole chicken roasted/bought already roasted at the weekend), pate, hummous). We take a couple of pieces of fruit in with us, say an apple/nectarine and a banana.

Breakfast: muesli (homemade) for me, sainsburies own fruit and fibre for my husband, and a glass of orange/cranberry juice each.

Snacks: activia yoghurts, occasionally a homemade muffin.

We'll usually have a pudding at the weekend, maybe summer fruits, meringue and greek yoghurt/whipped cream, or in the winter apple crumble.

Gingham_Ribbon

Knowing the kind of food you like would be helpful.

Some easy recipes we have include:

Pasta with tomato sauce and seasonal veg (fried in olive oil with garlic) add herbs, olives, capers. Nice as a pasta bake with mozzarella on top.

Easy curries include frying an onion, adding garlic, some curry paste (sorry curry queen) tin of tomatoes and adding lightly boiled potato and cauliflower or a tin of chickpeas.

3 bean chilli can be done in a similar way with chilli powder instead of curry paste, kidney beans, green beans and a drained, rinsed tin of cheap baked beans added at the end. This is nice with rice or in wraps with soured cream and jalapinos.

Good ole spagetti bolognaise. (I use lentils or occasionally veggie mince.)

If you eat meat, potatoes with chops, chicken or some other meaty thing (sorry, don't know much about this one) with fresh veg or beans.

Soup and crusty bread.

Macaroni cheese, or pasta with a cheese sauce with mushrooms and broccoli (or chicken.)

Grilled fish and potatoes?

If you're new to cooking from scratch, I'd suggest not trying to do everything all at once. One of the best pieces of advice I had on here was to just learn a dish a week. No more.

lynzpower

This week we've had...
mon- chicken rogan josh with veg in ( out of a jar, just couldnt be bothered) with naan, rice etc
Veggie/meat chilli nachos with sour cream ( thats tonights offering and it smells damn good)
last night we had a bbq with sausages, french stick , chicken thighs, salad, jacket potatoes and corn cobs all done on the BBQ
friday might do burgers, spicy wedges, salad, corn
sat might do a lasagne
sun depends on the weather, I might do another BBQ!

Queenie

dazzanator wrote:

hi im new to this site and have been told to do a meal plan but i cant think of three dinners so seven is out of my reach so any ideas for seven dinner for a famley of four would be good thanks dazzanator

Sounds daunting doesn't it! Here are some ideas which might help.

~ think back over the past week and what you have eaten. Even if it was a take-away meal, there will be a HM (homemade) variation.

~ from now on, note on your family calendar each night what you eat for your main meal - by the end of the month you will have a whole one month menu plan

~ assign each night of the week to one main ingredient and build a menu plan based around that. For example:-

Mon - Jacket potato meal
Tue - minced beef meal (chilli, spag bol, savoury mince, meatloaf)
Wed - Egg based meal
Thu - Chicken meal
Fri - fish based meal
Sat - HM Pizza night
Sun - roast meal (plan to use up any leftover meat in next weeks meal plan)

It needn't be boring if you h ave a look through our Recipe Index for inspiration

~ Taken from our Mega Index are the following topics, you may wish to spend some time reading through the links:-

Budgeting (in the Shopping section)

Can you do OS and work full time too?

First ever shop - and doing it OS

Getting organised (in the Misc section)

Help please - fallen off the Old Style wagon

How to be Old Style when there are only two of you

Menu planning (in the cooking section)

My first OS shop

New to OS

Please Help me become OS

The OS starter pack

What can a single person use on this board?

Where do I start?

Hopefully, that will give you the inspiration to need to be able to adapt the ideas and suggestions to fit in around your family needs, their likes and dislikes, any special dietry needs and of course, your budget.

All the best, it may sound overwhelming right now, but if you can only plan 2 days in advance, it really can stop the urge to splurge on a ready meal or take away.

Penelope_Penguin

I love to cook, but find I'm short of time on the days that I work. I like to cook big batches of pasta sauces and curries, eat one portion fresh, then freeze the rest in family sized batches in the freezer (Flora tubs are good). We can then have a home-cooked meal without my having to cook from scratch.

One of our favourites is pork and carrot pasta sauce. Fry onion and garlic, with minced pork until browned. Add grated carrot and tinned tomatoes, and season with pepper and oregano. Cook until tender (I do about 2 hours in the Rayburn), then serve with pasta twists and plenty of parmesan.

Smoked makerell is good, with new potatoes and salad at this time of year.

Pasta and cheese sauce.

Pasta and pesto.

Lentil curry.

Let us know what you like to eat, and I'm sure we'll have more ideas.

Penny. x

Heth_2

I just wanted to add that what we eat in the summer is quite different to what we have in winter time. We don't have a slow cooker, but at the weekend in the winter I'll often do a big casserole full of chilli, or chicken casserole with red wine, sausage casserole. Another winter favorite is a pasta bake with leeks, mushrooms and bacon in a cheese sauce. Pasta carbonara is another favorite.
We try to eat fish at least once a week, and certainly don't have meat every day, more as a treat. I cook things like quiche to put in the freezer, and freeze soup in the winter to have for lunch (red lentil is my standard one, as well as leek and potato).
We eat lots of pasta (recently changed to wholegrain) as it is cheap and filling and you can have it with loads of different sauces.

Pink.

Hi dazzanator,

Have a look on this older thread for some ideas: Menu Planning

For us a typical week would be:

Sunday: usually a roast
Monday: crusty bread and soup made from the leftover roast.
Tuesday: pasta with sauce or a pasta bake
Wednesday: a casserole in the slow cooker
Thursday: lasagne and salad or stroganoff/sweet and sour with rice.
Friday:chilli or something with left overs frozen after tuesday
Saturday: quite often a snack tea of beans on toast, scrambled eggs, omelette, or baked potatoes with a simple fillng, as I work on Saturday and don't really want to cook when I come home.

Think about bulk cooking things you like and freezing them.........it makes life so much easier if you can just lift something out of the freezer in the morning. As Heth says, we eat very differently in Summer........more salads and barbeques. One of the worst things I find about menu planning is thinking of what to make.

Pink

dazzanator

hi thankyou for all your replys i have been sent here from dfw who said that you will be able to help us meal plan better and cheeper i did a spending dairy last week on dfw and spent 159.00 in a week mainly on food so i am hoping that you will help me do a weeks shop so i dont have to keep poping in the suppermarkets and wasting money i will give you a list of what we ate last week so you can get a rough idea on what we eat
monday
breakfast toast and marmite
lunch corn beef sandwich mars bar
dinner fish fingers and chips and peas

tuesady
breaskfast
same as mon
lunch
same as tue
dinner
chienes take away

wed
breakfast
same as mon
lunch cheese sandwich and mars bar
dinner home made burger chips and colsaw

thursdae lunch ans breakfast same as wed
dinner rump steak cas with mash and peas
firday
breakfast same thursday
lunch chiken roll sandwich with mars
dinner
donner kebba with chips

saterday
breakfast
bacon sandwich
lunch
cheese sandwich jam dounut
pork chops chips mushroom peas and tom

sunday
toast with marmite
lunch
mcdonnalds burger
dinner
roast pork with roast spuds stuffing cauli peas and cabage
pudding cheese cake and cream

everyday mid morn snack choc bar like pengiun
mid afternoon choc bistute
evening choclate muffin

i know our diet is bad and thats why i have come here to get some ideas we dont like fruit we like most traditional veg but are big meateaters the snacking thing dont really know what to snack on whats healthy what dosnt contain fruit so any ideas would be great also dont know how to cook fish but we do like it thanks for your help and warm welcome