Desperately need help with my menu planning

onlyroz

You really need to come up with the menu plan *before* you go out and buy the food. That way you'll end up spending less, have less food wastage and be less likely to be tempted by "special offers" that you don't really need.

Anyway, my menu plan for the week is:

Monday: "Ninja chicken" (which is chicken breast marinaded in ndjua, tomatos, sage and red-wine vinegar. I'll be having this with corn-on-the-cob and spicy rice - it was prepped last night and is currently sitting in my fridge)

Tuesday: Thai green prawn curry with rice and dim-sum (the dim-sum are homemade and are sitting in the freezer after a bulk-cook a few weeks back, and the curry is broadly home-made apart from a few tablespoons of commercial paste)

Wednesday: Scampi, chips and beans (this is my swimming day and so I don't have a lot of time to cook, so it's usually something grabbed from the freezer with chips)

Thursday: Lasagne and Greek salad (hubby does the cooking on thurs/fri and he makes the lasagne himself using a Lloyd Grossman sauce for the mince - he'll do a double portion so we can have it again next week)

Friday: Burgers and chips (hubby made a double-portion of home-made burgers last week and so we're having them again)

I've already bought most of the ingredients, apart from the cucumber, tomatos and olives for the Greek salad - I'll pick those up on Thursday lunchtime. I usually do the shopping for the following week on thurs/fri of the previous week, apart from some of the fresh fruit/veg which I try to pick up from the local market a few days before it's needed.

We tend to wing it for meals at the weekend - on Saturday we often go to the local farm shop and find something tasty like steak or kievs. On Sunday we often go out for the day and so we'll eat while we're out, or we might do a picnic or go down the local pub.

OrkneyStar

onlyroz wrote: »

You really need to come up with the menu plan *before* you go out and buy the food. That way you'll end up spending less, have less food wastage and be less likely to be tempted by "special offers" that you don't really need.

Anyway, my menu plan for the week is:

Monday: "Ninja chicken" (which is chicken breast marinaded in ndjua, tomatos, sage and red-wine vinegar. I'll be having this with corn-on-the-cob and spicy rice - it was prepped last night and is currently sitting in my fridge)

Tuesday: Thai green prawn curry with rice and dim-sum (the dim-sum are homemade and are sitting in the freezer after a bulk-cook a few weeks back, and the curry is broadly home-made apart from a few tablespoons of commercial paste)

Wednesday: Scampi, chips and beans (this is my swimming day and so I don't have a lot of time to cook, so it's usually something grabbed from the freezer with chips)

Thursday: Lasagne and Greek salad (hubby does the cooking on thurs/fri and he makes the lasagne himself using a Lloyd Grossman sauce for the mince - he'll do a double portion so we can have it again next week)

Friday: Burgers and chips (hubby made a double-portion of home-made burgers last week and so we're having them again)

I've already bought most of the ingredients, apart from the cucumber, tomatos and olives for the Greek salad - I'll pick those up on Thursday lunchtime. I usually do the shopping for the following week on thurs/fri of the previous week, apart from some of the fresh fruit/veg which I try to pick up from the local market a few days before it's needed.

We tend to wing it for meals at the weekend - on Saturday we often go to the local farm shop and find something tasty like steak or kievs. On Sunday we often go out for the day and so we'll eat while we're out, or we might do a picnic or go down the local pub.

Agree with your first sentence, with the add-on that maybe plan 5 days out of 7 and see if there are any offers/anything that looks really nice/you really fancy for one of the days. E.g we often don't plan Sat but have that as a treat/what we fancy/easy day.

Frugalista

Gillyx wrote: »

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

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

Gillyx wrote: »

Will PM you x

Could you just post it on here as I'm sure there are others (myself included) who would like the recipe.

Thanks in advance

Gillyx

I don't want to publicly take the credit for someones recipe was the reason why I didn't post it, I don't mind PM-ing it to anyone who wants it, but that way I can give credit to where I got it from. Will send it to you now

Threebabes

We are a family of 5. I buy the chicken 3 for a tenner or half price. We have salad, roast, curry, soup, sandwich, stiry fry. When you order your shop have an idea in your head which meals you are going to make.

pesky85

How old are your children? I see you have a 7 month old - the biggest recommendation I could give you is to try baby led weaning. If you haven't heard of it check Google! This way your baby will eat the same foods as the rest of the family without any extra effort on your part or wasting money on expensive (and IMO yucky!) pouches / jars. It's great for their motor development too.

I have a 2 year old and 3.5 year old.... their typical meals are:

Breakfast: porridge (with various added extras to mix it up eg honey, jam, fruit, raisins) / yoghurt + muesli / eggs and toast (scrambled, poached or boiled) / or just toast and banana if I'm in a hurry!

Lunch: sandwiches / beans on toast / eggs and toast (obv not twice in one day!) / omelette / filled pittas / houmous + pitta + carrot sticks / cold pasta salad / soup + roll / toasties

Snacks: raisins / dried apricots / fresh fruit / rice cakes (I usually hit poundland for snacks, or lidl - best value by far. Do not use Tesco!)

Dinner: chicken korma or tikka masala / spag bol / cottage pie / sausage and mash / roast dinner / beef casserole / fish pie / tuna + white sauce pasta / tomato + cheese pasta / hot dogs / fishcakes...and much more!

All of the above is home made and it isn't too much work. A lot of the dinner meals can be made in advance and frozen - especially when you're only having to freeze small portions (one takeaway style container tends to be a perfect 2 x toddler portion for me).

I've stopped using the big supermarkets as it was just getting too expensive. I now go to Lidl and my local greengrocer and keep the food bill to under £50 a week most of the time.

Someone on this thread recommended roasting a large chicken and using it over a few meals - completely agree with this!!! We will have a roast chicken dinner on a Sunday, chicken / mayo / sweetcorn wraps for lunch the next day, and still enough left for a salad, or a spicy noodle soup, or whatever else we fancy.

The same goes for any meat you would roast on a Sunday (we don't have a roast every week as other meats are expensive!) - buy a bigger portion than you need for that day and your monday dinner is sorted. Eg. lamb for shepherds pie, beef for a stirfry....

Gillyx

Rainsey, you have pm'd me, I cannot PM you back it won't let me, maybe your settings? Hope you see this x

BAGGY

Last week we had
sun - boiled bacon & salad with new pots
mon - left over of above
tues - carbonara with bacon dregs
wed - 1/2 price bratwurst with h/m oven chips and beans
thur - prawn stir fry
frid - pub meal with 25% off voucher
sat - freezer surprise (sri lankan curry and dall. Boys had fish and mash)

Nicki

Did you want a meal plan based round what you bought? It's just that you bought a lot of processed crap and not a lot of fresh ingredients which you could use to home cook. What recipes are you hoping for involving frozen chicken Kiev or breaded fish? Baking them for half an hour in a moderate oven is about all you can do with them and you haven't bought anything obvious to serve with them.

Despite your disdain for the OS board, you would find it easier perhaps to piggyback on some of the meal planning threads there and build a shopping list based on someone else's meal plan you like.

neverdespairgirl

Something that does surprise me about the above lists is how much meat is eaten - on a tight budget, personally I'd buy far less meat and far more nice fruit / veg / etc.

We tend to have meat about once a week, fish once or twice, and the rest veggie.