Desperately need help with my menu planning

Tea-and-Cake_3

Amanda65 wrote: »

Add a tuna and sweetcorn pasta bake to the list then, with a crushed crisp and grated cheese crunchy topping

That sounds lovely....do you have a recipe please?

Gillyx

I felt a bit like you and I have started doing a shop every 4 days aiming to spend £25-£30 a visit. I will not go to the shop except on those days. I find only going every 4 days, means A- I only buy meals that I fancy to eat so I don't have the 'oh I don't really want that tonight' that I had when I done 2 weekly shops, B- I can plan for veg/salad so it is all used up and no waste. I am a SAHM though so I appreciate I have the time to go twice weekly that others may not.

I am due to go today, and will be buying chicken fillets £1 each for a large one at my local butchers, and I can stretch 1.5 large fillets to do 3 of us (14 month old and 2 adults) if I bulk it out with veg, chorizo, tinned tomatoes, garlic bread, rice, cheese, red, yellow and green peppers, 2.5kg potatoes, 500g mince and a tin of corned beef. I have other bits to buy yogurts/milk/bread but out of that I will have spanish chicken with rice and garlic bread, home made burgers (will make 4 adult sized burgers and 3-4 baby sized, so will freeze another portion for us) and home made chips, will make pizza bases with what I have in the cupboards and add cheese and whatever toppings we fancy and a corned beef hash. Will also make a big portion of savoury rice for a few lunches.

Obviously there are times I need to buy staples, flour, oil etc but I do make double portions of a lot of things to stick in the freezer, so when it comes around that I need staples, I use up the freezer supplies for a few days.

Thinks I make on a regular basis include:

Chicken Tikka Masala
Quorn and Lentil 'shepherdess' pie
Sausages, mash, HM yorkies, and roasted veg (sort of a cheap roast)
Chicken Roast
Boston Bean Bake (mince, baked beans, tomatoes, spices, pasta done in slow cooker)
Chicken Fajitas
Lasagne
Cottage Pie
Sweet Potato and Spinach Curry
Bolognese
Burgers
Cornflake covered chicken goujons with wraps (usually buy them and freeze when they're cheap)
Chicken Casserole with dumplings
Chicken/Beef Pie with HM pastry

For lunch I do things like, omelette, french toast, savoury rice, soup (I make a huge batch and freeze it) pasta with HM sauce, scrambled egg and beans, bagels with fillings, baked potato and fillings, savoury muffins, savoury flapjacks.

For snacks for my 14 month old I give him things like dried cheerios, fruit (which is a good chunk of my shopping) I buy Ellas Cereal bars, malt loaf, organix crisps.

You do need a lot of will power though and I have found that not buying things like crisps, biscuits, snacky bits it has brought my shopping down a lot. I always have butter, flour, eggs and sugar, oats and golden syrup in the cupboards so I can usually knock something up if I fancy something sweet.

sassyblue

Gillyx wrote: »

Boston Bean Bake (mince, baked beans, tomatoes, spices, pasta done in slow cooker)

Please may l ask how you do this? Sounds nice but l'm wondering what the spices are you use and when do you put the pasta in?

Cheers. x

Gillyx

sassyblue wrote: »

Please may l ask how you do this? Sounds nice but l'm wondering what the spices are you use and when do you put the pasta in?

Cheers. x

Will PM you x

kjmtidea

My shopping for 2 adults and 4 very greedy boys is £100 a week, that includes 3 cats and 1 dog as well.
I get all my meat at the butchers.
I get 5 chicken breasts for £5, we butterfly them, coat them and then oven cook them, serve them with potatos and veg. Cheap meal and there will be some left over chicken for the kids lunch boxes.

A very large free range chicken is £6.50 and that will do a roast and then a stir fry. Stock will be made for the freezer.
A big pack of sausages for £4 and that will do toad in the hole. We have tuna pasta bake or other pasta dishes.
I always do a meal plan before shopping and then we go to Aldi and Asda, my supermarket is a good website to compare all the deals. My shopping used to be about £160 a week and we have gradually brought it down by shopping around.

paulineb_2

Make soup. You seem to have a few frozen meals that you could make with potatoes or sweet potatoes and you can also use the lentils, potatoes, veg to make soup. Very cheap.

If you are trying to shop around and save money then consider going to aldi for your fruit and veg, they do a super six that changes every two weeks and the fruit and veg on the super six is between 49 and 69p.

Again for your deodorants, shower gels etc, you'll find stuff cheaper in places like home bargains and poundland/poundworld.

I have pasta a couple of times a week, very cheap, I try and eat wholemeal. Also you can make a home made curry for a couple of quid or less if you have spices or a jar of thai curry sauce and a jar of coconut milk.

I buy staples from approved foods, pasta, rice, lentils and other bits and pieces. I dont waste food, leftovers get used, spare veg gets made into soup.

I think its very easy to get into a habit of going shopping thinking you need more food when you probably have enough in the freezer/cupboards to last you.

BitterAndTwisted

You won't need to trawl through the threads on the Old-Style part of the forum to get good advice and guidance. Just start the same thread as this over there with an inventory of everything you have in your cupboards, fridge and freezer.



This is how some people can feed a family for about £50 a week or less:

http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/


But a good strategy is to do a meal-plan and then build your shopping-list around the plan, rather than the reverse. I would suggest a weekly meal-plan rather than a fortnightly or monthly one, which could be a bit daunting or over-complicate matters.

If you've got time to spare it might be worth having a read of the "Grocery Challenge" threads on Old-Style.

lil.smartie

Home made pizza my 4yr old LOVES making the dough, it doesn't take long & tastes much better then frozen and you can use up what's in the fridge for toppings!
Pasta bake & biryani curry work well as it's all mixed in so all gets eaten

Kate

Amanda65

Tea-and-Cake wrote: »

That sounds lovely....do you have a recipe please?

This

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/9649/tuna-pasta-bake

But I then cruch some crisps to mix with cheese and top.

OrkneyStar

Tea-and-Cake wrote: »

I have just had £124 of shopping delivered from Asda for the week and have no idea what our meals will be!

I am cooking a chilli at the moment which the children will probably not eat - they'll end up just eating the rice!

I need a 7 day menu that is healthy, cheap (we cannot possibly keep spending this amount every week) and the kids will eat. Please don't direct me to the OS board as I don't have the time to search through threads.

Any ideas would be so appreciated. Family life in our home is so chaotic at the moment and food is one area I need to address.

The shopping we've had includes lots of fruit and veg and things like lentils, mince, tinned tomatoes etc

Without sounding cheeky, a lot of the info is already there.
You don't have time to search and read, equally many of use don't have time to re-type information already there somewhere else, or do your meal plan for you. The idea is for you to see what you have and then search for what others have made with those ingredients, not for others to do it all for you! This may sound a bit harsh, but honestly loads of other folk are short on time too.

Kayalana99 wrote: »

Thanks for posting :-) I was going to post a similar thread last night but never got round to it......I have no idea what to do Im a complete newbie when it comes to these things

Our meals on a good week are;

Cottage Pie
Spag and Bol
Beef and Pots with veg
Cajun chicken and chips
Sausage and Mash

Then we turn to freezer stuff/takeaways.... -.-

There is a meal plans thread on the OS board. Hang on and I will try to find the link for you.

link to this weeks meal plans:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.phpt=4557471&highlight=meal+plans

There will be one from every week over last few years so if you search 'meal plans' in the forum search box it will give you more.

Maybe a board guide could move this, if there is one around .