Weezl and friends Phase 2 -giving it a whirl for Shirl! Testing meal plan for a month 5 April 2010 at 7:39AM edited 5 April 2010 at 7:54AM in How much have you saved? 6.3K replies 347.2K views

weezl74

well, good morning and welcome to batch cooking day :j:j:j

this is the day before our lovely brave testers will begin cooking like Bob and Shirley for a month-eeeek

if it would help and people would find it useful, please feel free to post your 'do list' and have the satisfaction of ticking them off

storage: Can I recommend that people take your potatoes and onions out of the plastic packaging and put them in a cardboard box, as this will stop them going slimy. Ideally if you can put them somewhere dark and close the lid of the box that is ideal

weezl74

Space for us to address the following questions:

what this month planner is: Our aim was to provide a healthy and very cheap meal planner for an average UK family. We have aimed for 80p per person per day. We have followed the government recommended targets for fruit and vegetables (our planner exceeds this ) omega 3 and has an appropriate percentage/ratio of fats/carbs and protein. We have also looked at calcium and dietary fibre and these are well within the guideline daily amounts.

Saturated fat, salt and sugar are below the amounts which are said to become unhealthy in a person's diet, and all are approximately half of the amounts consumed in the average UK household. (Defra food survey, 1942-2000 data)
Trans fats are virtually non-existant in this plan (less than 0.001%) and are eradicated if you rinse your raisins in warm water

what it isn't: This is not intended to be luxury eating, it is a subsistence planner and will save people a great deal of money. We felt that to do this, the average family needed to eat a relatively normal diet, but did not need lots of luxuries. We are not saying that this is the most super healthy plan ever, with more vitamins than you could possibly require, but we are confident that it is more healthy than the average family in the UK is currently eating. As a subsistence planner, we feel this is good enough, and further healthy additions would reduce the planner's effectiveness in helping people to reduce debt/get out of financial hardship.

why we are testing it: This testing phase is to help us to see how real families cope with the challenge of trying the planner out, what hurdles they face and how it fits into a working week. We will also be looking at how our testers feel health and motivation-wise as they try out the food.

weezl74

recipes list

essential list for testers

shopping list, broken down by kezlou into weeks-work in progress, we'd value your feedback!

weezl74

I thought it might be good if the testers briefly introduced themselves, to say who is participating?

Like who you are (just MSE username I mean!), how many of you are doing the month, any special dietary needs, any things on the list you are not going to be trying/making, anything you're nervous about and the 64 billion dollar question, what made you decide to try the month 1 planner?:D

xxx

weezl74

shanks77 wrote: »

Good luck Frankie i will be doing some tonight after work depending on when shopping arrives (between 6&8pm) it will be fun im sure and we can all help and support one another on our journey and if we have a new thread then we wont be jamming up this one with our little bits of important trivia. I will be thinking of you whilst at work and look forward to catching up with your day later on.:)

just quoting shanks supportive post here too:)

FrankieM

Hi,
My name is Frankie and I'm a Frugal Meal Plan Tester :j

My family consists of 2 adults and 4 children, but I'm missing a child this week and my DH has a tendency to work away so I will be cooking for 6 when I can freeze the meal I've made, otherwise it will be for whoever is here.

I've decided to give this a go because we've been pretty skint in the past and I just had to try my best on my own. I think having a resource that people can come to is a great idea and I think weezl has done great work on it so if I can support her by 'road testing' her plan....I think it's the least I can do :T

nopot2pin

Good Luck to all :T

I hope it all goes well for everyone

weezl74

Allegra wrote: »

A quick look at the planner suggests the following to me as tasks for the batch cooking day:

Level 1 (essentials)

Bread
Carrot cake
Apple curd
Pumpkin seed/nut butter
Houmus
Tangy bean pate
Lunchtime pate (to freeze)
Grate and freeze cheese
Slice and freeze bacon

Level 2 (if you have loadsa time, a big freezer and want to get ahead as much as possible)

Chop onions/ make pastry (in readiness for Thursday's onion tart) or even batch cook and freeze onion tart
Soak and boil marrowfats (in readiness for Friday) and freeze

Level 3 (if you want to keep the next weekend free)

Batch cook pizza (in readiness for Saturday) and freeze
Poach chicken and make chicken pies For Sunday and freeze
Batch cook bacon and onion puddings for following Monday and freeze

Plus prepare any snacks as needed.

Oh, and can lunchtime pate be frozen until needed ? I hope so, cos it doesn't make an appearance until Week 4, and we want to 1. avoid the liver going off and 2. avoid unnecessary washing up of the food processor

Does the above make any sense ? If so, I'd say that the only recipes missing so far are final carrot cake and houmus. And can I confirm, please, if the bread recipes on offer ara definitely the Paul Merret recipe and method, and Weezl's no knead bread ?

Allegra's list for today to remind us

weezl74

if people did soak that 140g dry weight chickpeas when their order came (I think I posted it on saturday?) now is the time to pop the kettle on to rapidly boil them before simmering

weezl74

no- kneed bread recipe updated it's in the usual place now, arty, can you link to it, it's called 'bread of heaven'

FrankieM

weezl I would find it helpful to know what main meals can be frozen.

On the bread front, I've worked out that at 5 slices a day, I would need to make 14 loaves a week...I think I'll see how it goes before I committ to that today!