Need help planning

dekaspace

I keep buying food and piling up my chest freezer and end up wasting a lot (though a lot of the waste is leftover junk food or things like fish I gor reduced.

I currently have a lot of butchers meat, about 30 pork sausages, 30 beef ones, a overflowing carrier bag sized pack of mince, about 15 chicken breasts, puff pastry, 4 bacon steaks

I have a 12.5kg bag of potatos, a few packs of pasta, about 10 tins of tuna, 5 tins of soup, bread sauce, dumping mix, noodles. about 8 packs of thoze cheese balls you use to make pizza, yeast, flour, rice.

Bound to be far more but considering my chest freezer is overflowing it would take weeks to empty.

To be clear I mean I need a actual meal plan rather than just what to cook i.e take x amount of meat out and x amount of veg on Monday, on tuesday take out x amount of something else.

VfM4meplse

dekaspace wrote: »

I currently have a lot of butchers meat, about 30 pork sausages, 30 beef ones, a overflowing carrier bag sized pack of mince, about 15 chicken breasts, puff pastry, 4 bacon steaks

I have a 12.5kg bag of potatos, a few packs of pasta, about 10 tins of tuna, 5 tins of soup, bread sauce, dumping mix, noodles. about 8 packs of thoze cheese balls you use to make pizza, yeast, flour, rice.

Why not have a party one weekend next month? Its all wintery stodge so should go down well.

dekaspace

I have no friends to invite lol

FrugalWorker

I really only look to tomorrow/next day. Sure I plan approximately for the week, but every day, I consider what am I cooking tomorrow/next day and if or what needs to come out of the freezer.

Take say mince out for tomorrow, make up a Bolognese sauce and serve it with pasta. If there is left overs this can be served with baked potatoes. We can't tell you how much to take out - we don't know how many people you're feeding/what else you have. You've lots of food, you just need to take it out, 1 piece at a time and start to use it.

I would say to eat that frog. I don't mean literally - but if there's something in there you've been avoiding - you need to take it out. Best way to deal with procrastination is to deal with the hardest thing first. I'm thinking of that left over fish you said was lurking in there- there was a fish with bread topping on eat well for less two weeks ago that I saw people speaking highly of, maybe you should google it! I suggest that for Sunday or Monday!

PasturesNew

You need to eat it all, then, irrespective of the fact you've got a huge freezer, LIMIT yourself to how much stuff you keep in it. e.g. put two buckets in the freezer and limit yourself to filling those and not filling the freezer.

I was quite 'upset' when I saw my F/F for the first time as I've bought one with a huge fridge bit (that's got margarine, squash and cheese in it) and a 'tiny' freezer bit, that fills up so quickly you wouldn't believe it. I wished it'd been the other way round....

However, I now realise that having a small freezer forces me to eat everything I put into it. There's no point having a biggun that you just fill. Ultimately everything in there has to be eaten by you .... so small is good.

Rainy-Days

Make an intinery of everything you have in that freezer and then meal plan around it. That will stop you wasting food as well and all you should need is fresh stuff. Read that list before you go shopping as well!

chrissy59

my aunt has a small chest freezer and an under counter one and at least once a month we go through both and make a list of contents and then she sits down and plans meals based on what is in feeezer usually meals for two and then only tops up on what she needs for meals and that way you keep an eye on what you have got and used up.

dekaspace

Well the reasons I do it this way was in the past stuff like I go to a butcher at a weekend market and they often do deals where you get a big amount for meat for under a tenner, such as got a carrier bag sized portion of mince, 2 packs of bacon, 1 pack sausages, a few pieces of chicken and about 4 large things that look like chops but bigger so I stuck them in freezer then ended up forgetting I had them.

Also I get cheap reduced food at supermarket, I go go weeks without getting many bargains than one day go in and get like 10p ready meals and enough to last me 2 or so weeks or I treat myself to a cheap meal in a cafe when in town meaning my food in fridge is wasted.

And I am a single person so just cook for myself

FrugalWorker

If you've taken these good deals home and split them in to 1-2 serving size portions, then it's easy, just take one out tonight, put it in the fridge and cook it tomorrow or Sunday.

But I suspect, you've just chucked it all in at once. In which case, still take out say the mince. You need to cook it all at once. Then you will portion out the cooked product in to single size servings. After they have been cooked, then cooled down it is safe to freeze them again. But once you take raw meat out of the freezer and let it thaw, you can not put it back in raw for safety reasons.

First use up what you have. But if you do bring home any more deals - make sure to split them in to suitable size portions before freezing them so it's not so daunting.

[Deleted User]

I am single too and know what you mean, last week I shopped for the first time this month and saw sweet chilli chicken breasts reduced to £1.50 for two.
Now being on my own I wouldn't eat two, so I split them in half and wrapped in cling film and they are in the freezer so two meals for the meat content of 75p each with veg and rice I should get a dinner for under a pound.To me that's good value. I bought three packs and when i got home I'd only been charged for two.£3.00 so I now have 6 chilli chicken breast for £3.00 or 50p each
Life just gets better.

My freezer is pretty full at the moment but to get this down I have just stopped shopping.I only shop for essentials i.e. fresh fruit and veg and things that I have run out of I know I have at least 4-6 weeks worth of meals in my freezer.

As I have done for the past 50 odd years I sit down on Sunday morning and do my menus for the week so I know what I am roughly having.As I go to my DDs every week for Sunday dinner that's one meal I don't have to cook.
I bring left over stuff home on Sunday night and usually have enough for Monday nights dinner.

Tuesday I cook maybe sausage and eggs or soup and crackers for lunch as I am always out at Quiz night at our local pub We get a small meal along with the quiz for £2.00 so no cooking on Tuesday night.So my menus for dinner really are Wednesday to Saturday

Wednesday night this week I had a jacket spud I cooked some fish fingers that I found in the freezer,half a tin of baked beans with grated cheese on top a bit of a cobbled together dish but I want to use up stuff from the freezer.

Thursday night I had a large cheese salad,lettuce tomatoes,cucumber, beetroot, red peppers, boiled egg with lots of grated cheese on top. No cooking to do just chopping up (apart from the boiled egg)

Last night I had a veggie curry from the freezer with rice.A couple of weeks ago I have quite a bit of veg that was getting past its best so I made a big curry and added almost anything in it I could and portioned it up into five plastic boxes,saved throwing food out and it was really very tasty.

Tonight being Saturday night I shall delve into my freezer and hopefully find a bit of steak in there I shall have that with some Charlotte potato's, mushrooms that need to be used up today and probably a small bit of salad lettuce tomato and some diced cucumber and the last of the red pepper.

So my freezer stock is moving ,albeit very slowly.But I have no need to shop next week as I have enough fresh fruit and veg in store and my freezer will provide me with the rest.

Its so easy to almost shop 'automatically ' at times .When my late husband died it took me ages before I stopped shopping for two as I had done for so many years.But sitting for half an hour on a Sunday morning with a cuppa makes me focus on what I already have in the cupboard and just build around that.Food in the cupboards is like money in the bank, and if you don't use it up then it will go to waste

Butterfly_Brain

dekaspace wrote: »

I have no friends to invite lol

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