Reverse Meal Planning

Florenceem

Using puff pastry from fridge for today's dinner.

rtandon27

The forward planned dinner last night was canceled in favour of a reverse planned one to use up the last of Sunday's pork roast & another helping of the posh mac 'n cheese - also steamed the last of the green beans as a side.

Dinner tonight was fakeaway katsu with tonkatsu sauce, microwave fried rice & steamed Chinese lettuce.  Quick and easy to cook on an evening when work ran over by almost 2 hours!

The fridge is now starting to look bare which I love seeing after weeks of xmas gluttony.  All that is left to work our way through over the next month is an excess of cheese bargains.  We have a veg box arriving on Friday and a well stocked freezer & store-cupboard so it will be back to playing the reverse meal plan game in earnest for the next little while. I'm aiming for an empty freezer drawer so that we'll have room for a butcher's order at the beginning of February, which is by far the cheapest way to purchase good quality locally reared meat.

rtandon27

@ajmoney - on the subject of freezing spinach, we freeze ours from fresh in zippy bags with lots of air & once frozen smash down into pieces & let out the air so that it takes less room & stores flat.  We then add straight from frozen to stews, curries & mashed potatoes as it does not take much to wilt down and cook.  We don't eat frozen spinach as a side though, as we find it a bit slimey in texture.  Also use this freezing method for kale leaves and chard, though these do get chopped first & don't smash down quite so much.

JIL

ajmoney said:

The spinach is now in the freezer so now for my next question.  Do you just blanch it from frozen? 

Depends what you are using it for. 
But i would suggest breaking off bits and microwaving, then squeezing out the moisture. I dont like frozen spinach as a veg on it's own, I find it a bit slimy. 
Although I do enjoy cooked fresh spinach with smoked haddock, cheese and a poached egg. Yum.

ajmoney

JIL said:

ajmoney said:

The spinach is now in the freezer so now for my next question.  Do you just blanch it from frozen? 

Depends what you are using it for. 
But i would suggest breaking off bits and microwaving, then squeezing out the moisture. I dont like frozen spinach as a veg on it's own, I find it a bit slimy. 
Although I do enjoy cooked fresh spinach with smoked haddock, cheese and a poached egg. Yum.

I used some in a stir fry last night so that was fine to add in.  It will all be experimenting, thanks for all the comments.

Suffolk_lass

Planning my sausage bake for this evening. Last night's 2.5 hour zoom meeting 🥱🥱 meant the streamlined joint delivery of cauliflower cheese was in order. Such a huge cauli that half is left so I might roast some in the sausage thing tonight.

ruby_eskimo

Our fridge is also looking a little bare @rtandon27 but it is full of jars of pickles and sauces!  

Dinner tonight is going to be a mushroom pasta sauce that came in a hamper that we got as a gift with whatever pasta we have in the cupboard and some salad.  DH doesn't like mushrooms so he'll sort his own dinner out.  I can probably get 3 portions from the one jar so will just freeze the other portions for a later date.

Mrs_Cheshire

Afternoon all, doing well with the meal plan this week using ingredients from the freezer and stores. Did another food waste collection for 0lio last night so have filled those spaces up now. Off to write a meal plan for next week!

rtandon27

Last night's dinner was a simple use it up one - surprisingly delicious for such a simple meal.  We  made potato & sweet potato wedges,  defrosted two ready cooked chicken legs and warmed them in the oven at the same time the wedges were cooking.  On the side a generous helping of  pan-fried a leeks, ared pointed pepper and the last of themushrooms from last week's veg box.

We've now got in this week's veg box & a few extra bits as well - a regular grocery delivery was not to be had!  I managed to get a small pud and pork chops for OH's birthday dinner so we'll have fresh food one day next week.  The rest will be a creative reverse plan from what is in the freezer and store-cupboard! 

Suffolk_lass

Our fridge is looking reasonably empty except for eggs but after a nudge from Morries, I realised I got the C&C day wrong so DH is currently there, collecting our order. I feel really guilty as we have been actively avoiding busy times and today is the busiest. 

No idea what we will have tonight (it might depend on YS from the SM) but I need to raid the produce freezer and make more homegrown tomato passata and I want some frozen courgettes to make soup. It's that or leeks out of the garden and it is snowing at the moment so maybe the freezer...