Weezl and friends Phase 2 -giving it a whirl for Shirl! Testing meal plan for a month

weezl74

poor potty and shanks, night shifts, bleurgh!

Julimk

I've been lurking! And this household is a football free zone!

But I have had a poorly DD. Nothing too serious, mainly a sore throat, but she has been a bit whingy & clingy. It's sweet really, as she wants Mummy cuddles, but at 4' 9" she doesn't easily fit on my lap any more!

OT, no messages today & will try & be more helpful tomorrow.

HowlinWolf

Weezl, I just took my first look at the new website. Had to read a fair few pages on here before I found it. I'm still only up to page 83 but I love love love what's been done.

Murrell

I've not been scared away. Still reading when I can, just had nothing to comment on and been busy with visitors and work.

After finding out about the fact that I get many visitors to my blog, I put on sitemeter as suggested. For the last week (which I haven't posted anything to entise followers) I've had 46 visitors and 86 pages viewed. I think this is good for a quiet week, so will compare to a week when I post often at a later date. Thanks for suggesting sitemeter. So after visitors have gone, I must get back to blogging every day or so and test some more of your recipes!

OH is watching every match, apart from a couple of days he couldn't book of work, so I intend to do some cooking and sewing as well as internet stuff.

I think keeping meal planners recipes under 'meal planners' and all recipes under 'recipes' is ok as it is. Additional frugal recipes can just be added in with the other recipe list. Perhaps mentioning the £100 meal plans are under the meal planner tabs and all recipes under the recipes tab on the front page. Hope that makes sense. As it is basically, for what my opionion is worth.

Sandra
x

queen_of_string

Did I mention I tried the planting dried peas for pea shoots thing? Bought a huge bag of dried peas from the "ethnic foods" section of the supermarket, very, very cheaply. Planted approx 63 in a shoe box sized tub, and so far about 58 of them are up and growing strongly!! I've planted another boxful and am planning to plant a box a week to have yummy pea shoots all the time.

SusanC_2

weezl74 wrote: »

I wonder if there's a way we can recruit some more helpers?

Lots of the regulars are a bit burnt out after all their hard work.

If there's anything anyone feels I can do about that (recruiting), do please let me know

I don't think I can claim to be burnt out by hard work (just whooping cough) but perhaps a new thread with the right kind of title would bring some new people in?

weezl74 wrote: »

and sorry, one more question and I don't mean this to be a final straw for anyone!

I wonder if anyone can just help me understand how the 'more recipes' thing is useful, ie how just doing the first month kitty/shirley planner will have been enough to teach them to put the month's food together for themselves, so that they can then go 'off plan'.

I'm not being obstinate I'm genuinely confused!

I suspect a lot of people are likely to just pick and choose odd recipes rather than doing the full planner in which case having a larger number of recipes increases the likelihood of them using recipes and therefore reducing their food bill. It also gives people doing the plan a few more ideas so that they aren't stuck with the same month repeating forever.

weezl74

SusanC wrote: »

I suspect a lot of people are likely to just pick and choose odd recipes rather than doing the full planner in which case having a larger number of recipes increases the likelihood of them using recipes and therefore reducing their food bill. It also gives people doing the plan a few more ideas so that they aren't stuck with the same month repeating forever.

If the new recipes aren't linked to a plan, then people will be able to say that it is not healthy.

And then shirley might not use it

I know people have tried to answer this for me before, but there's obviously some part of my question I'm not able to articulate, because the answers, whilst very sound and sensible, aren't seeming to scratch this genuine itch that I have!

I shall try to work out what my issue is

(are you and Alice getting any sleep? )

weezl74

part of the problem is people aren't clear why I am concerned about detractors on health grounds.

You have all tried to reassure me by saying 'oh that's just a few people, and they can think that and others will like the plan and follow it and that'll be great!' like a don't worry weezl, everything has it's detractors!

I hear this, but when it comes to issues of their children's health I do not feel that most people are able to disregard scary statements about children's health, and therefore they carry on throwing money at foods they believe are healthy, whilst getting into even more debt.

The irony is that I could extremely easily satisfy these people who criticise the planner on the grounds of health.

I could publish for example a reduced fat reduced calorie version of the bean curry. It would have 4/5 of 5 a dayness and be below 500cals and have nil fat.

The people I'm talking about would be pants-wettingly excited about this recipe. And if it was frugal too- yeeehah!

I could have got a website up there in about a week containing literally hundreds of those recipes. This is not an exaggeration, it would have been an exceedingly easy site to build and very easy recipes at that price point.

But what would actually happen to shirl and family?

Hang on, back in a minute!

weezl74

Well shirl might have a few pounds to lose, so a couple of months of 500cals per dinner would be ok, but then when she'd lost the weight, what then? And in the meantime, what about that bob is approx 1000 cals below his daily need, as are jenny and jason. So jenny's periods stop and her hair falls out and neither of them can concentrate at school, and they're raiding the fridge cos they're hugry, and bob's out for a clandestine pie and chips with work at lunchtime cos he's got knawing hunger pains in his gut!

The problem is that everything that the media is telling us is healthier at the moment, is only healthier if you are actually overweight!

ask 100 ordinary people which is the healthier meal: 900 calorie bean curry with 13g of fat or 500 cal bean curry with nil fat. I bet you 95 or more would choose the second one.

This is something approaching my best explanation of the struggle I am having. I don't know if it helps anyone to help me

SusanC_2

But where are the people who are criticising the website/planner/recipes? If someone comes to the site from google (or from a recommendation on a blog or on Facebook etc.), would they see the criticisms?