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

System

BREAKFAST:
~ congee (rice porridge) made with water, red lentils and a pinch of salt, topped with finely chopped raisins

LUNCH:
~ rusks, made by drying out slices of bread in the oven (handy if it's gone a bit stale, as is the garlic croutons recipe from an earlier suggestion)
~ liver-and-chickpea pate, blended with 10g oil, seasoned with storecupboard ingredients

EVENING MEAL:
~ damper-based pizza -- base made with SR flour, salt and water; spread with tomatoes and tomato puree mixed together; topped with defrosted spinach, peanuts, cooked green lentils, grana padano and seasonings as desired, drizzled with 27 g oil
~ potato wedges made with remaining 60g oil

SNACK:
~ carrot pudding

System

weezl74 wrote: »

just made a half batch of these, for 2 of us. I think they need garlic or chilli avocet, but otherwise they're fine We wondered if we can have toast with them tho cos it's not a big breakfast (probably the size of one shop bought scone in total mass of food IYSWIM?

I initially typed in garlic, but took it out because it sounds pretty repulsive at breakfast time. We're not big breakfast eaters! In fact, I only eat breakfast on holiday and on special cooking-something-for-breakfast occasions (a couple of times a year). To me, a scone sounds like a breakfast-sized amount of food, but by all means add toast. I had to shoe-horn the bread into most of the plans anyway, just to use it up, so if you think it is needed elsewhere, by all means move it around.

Actually, move anything around in all of the plans, or ignore them if they sound horrible! I'm not even remotely attached to them, and they only took an hour or so in total, so I haven't made any great investment of time in them. I offered them to you to with as you wish, rather than in the hope that they be used as is. :-)

System

weezl74 wrote: »

If we didn't think hardly anyone or no-one was going to follow the joel month, do we really think variety is so key?

I think variety is vital. Without it, it would be hard to persuade people to try it. And those who did try it would have a high drop-out rate. Plus, if the plan can't demonstrate variety, it looks as though the scope for "fishing" is non-existent, whereas if the plan shows lots of different dishes, then readers might get the idea that anything is possible and therefore be tempted to experiment.

HowlinWolf

weezl74 wrote: »

howlin:A sorry to bombard you with questions! Another one though:

If we didn't think hardly anyone or no-one was going to follow the joel month, do we really think variety is so key?

Not disagreeing necessarily, just want to follow the logic properly!

I think that it would be mad to aim for a month you don't think anyone is going to follow. If you can make it varied (even using the same ingredients every day) then surely more people will try it. It's all about buy in. I'm quite happy to eat the same thing a lot but I think if I had to have the same thing every other day with no variety I would become very depressed and would go and buy something nice to eat - which is exactly what you don't want shirley to do.

weezl74

how many different days are constituting variety here? Responding mostly to shanks avocet and howlin, but obviously open for anyone to answer

weezl74

HowlinWolf wrote: »

I think that it would be mad to aim for a month you don't think anyone is going to follow.

can you say a bit more about that howlin? :)I think people thought no-one would follow the hardcore one to the letter

HowlinWolf

weezl74 wrote: »

can you say a bit more about that howlin? :)I think people thought no-one would follow the hardcore one to the letter

I don't mean mad in a particularly bad way it just seemed to me from your post that it didn't matter if it didn't have variety because you weren't expecting people to follow - to me it seems an awful lot of your time wasted to create a planner that you don't expect people to follow.

Don't take this badly. I am mostly concerned that you would be putting a huge amount of time into something that you don't expect people to make use of.

If you don't expect people to use the whole planner then why make a whole planner? Why not just suggest a load of alternatives recipes using these super cheap health ingredients.

I'm sorry I'm probably being very thick but I'm just not following your logic. To me if you are going to put all of this effort in surely you want as many people as possible to give the planner a try.

HowlinWolf

ps I've jsut been painting in a very tight badly ventilated place so I probably have paint fume brain

ETA: I feel very bad now and I hope I haven't started variety-gate.

weezl74

Thank you howlin, don't worry! Alarmingly I don't think of mad as being a criticism at all :rotfl:

Re the above point, I think that's what I'm struggling with.

I think it was sian who said that the merit of the hardcore planner is that most people don't buy the cheapest type of anything. The 'tesco blue stripe version if you like.

So in order to make the shirley month atractive, we launch our value range.

So that's what I thought I was doing.

But now I feel maybe people are hoping for it to take more development time than kitty/shirl (which is fine, I'm not moaning!) just it doesn't then feel like the tesco blue stripe version, because they (tesco) obviously spend much less time on packaging design, marketing etc of the value range.

Am I making any sense?

Anyhow please don't think I'm posting huffily, I actually really value the opportunity to think it through rigourously so I don't waste my time.

So anyway I do value any input!

weezl74

HowlinWolf wrote: »

ETA: I feel very bad now and I hope I haven't started variety-gate.

:rotfl::rotfl:

me and my -gates!

don't worry lovely