Reverse Meal Planning

EssexHebridean

CCW your food sounds delicious! (apart from the tofu, I don't get on with that!)

By some bizarre miracle (or probably more likely regular posting on here reminding me to focus!) I have a meal plan. A proper one, pre-planned and everything. 

Meals for the rest of this week: 

Tonight - already planned - lamb & butternut curry, rice. (Using the last of the butternut squash, cooked lamb from the freezer - at least I hope it's lamb, the label has fallen off! - and some other random veg)
Thurs 21/10 - Pork steaks, mixed grains (packet) veg. (Pork from freezer - veg will include some of the runner bean glut)
Fri 22/10 - fry-up from freezer. (Will use up the last of this week's mushrooms and the last potato - tattie scones)
Sat 23/10 - burgers, onions, dip & chips. (Burgers are from the freezer - bought a 1kg bag of red onions last week so this will use a couple of those - need to check that we have a bag of tortilla chips)

Sunday lunch will be pulled pork done in the slow cooker - I've bookmarked a BBC Good Food recipe for that. I bought a chunk of reduced pork in T's the other night so this will come back out of the freezer again - then once cooked I'm hopeful that there should be a couple of portions to go back in. 

 

And for next week:

Monday 25th - Liver, onions, mash, veg (Liver from freezer, more of those red onions, tatties will be arriving in the veg box, more runner beans...)
Tuesday 26th - tuna salad (Salad stuff arriving with veg box - plenty of tins of tuna in stores)
Weds. 27th - Pulled pork with sauteed fennel, pepper, mushroom & courgette (first three veggies from the box, courgettes from the garden - still!)
Thurs 28th - something with cauliflower... (Cauli in the veg box)

Also have a plan in place to make piccalilli using half that veg box cauli, more runners, green tomatoes, onion and whatever else we find needs using. Yum.  

Hopefully that meal plan should maximise the things we have while minimising the stuff to buy, which is, after all, the point of being here! 

CCW007

EssexHebridean, I want to try making piccalilli again.  Love the stuff but last time I made it the recipe used way too much ginger - I have used it but not too keen.  Must find a better recipe!  I think it's great you have already meal planned your veg box - something I need to do.

I used to love pulled pork, being mostly veggie I keep saying I'll make it for OH and use some of the BBQ sauce to make pulled jackfruit for me.   

joedenise

Got some chicken out of the freezer yesterday to make butter chicken for dinner forgetting that it needed marinading overnight so will marinade tonight and cook tomorrow and then reheat for dinner on Friday (much prefer curries reheated, same with stews and casseroles).

Tonight have decided to use some of the mince in the freezer to make a keema curry which I will add some grated courgette and carrot to as there are a couple of each in the fridge in dire need to using up!

Just need to find something in the freezer for dinner tomorrow night as don't really want curry 2 nights running!  Think there's some pork steaks so will probably have those with some mash & veg.

Suffolk_lass

@EssexHebridean beware mystery freezer packs. The chicken fillets (as we thought) turned out to be peeled and poached pears. Played havoc with the casserole!

We are on holiday at the moment (up in the north of Sutherland) and all the food talk on here has me sending messages to someone out from the house (I'm not, it's lashing) to bring back warming casserole ingredients (he mentioned venison twice last night so it might be an open door). The restaurant we were booked into has cancelled our reservations (no reason given, but COVID in the kitchen seems a possibility).

I might have to try these gluten free tortillas too after @LadyWithAPlan mentioned them - they sound simple and I have chana and tapioca flour in my storecupboard

rtandon27

Last night's dinner was a prawn and snow pea stir-fry with noodles - a quick and easy meal that OH has ready in the time it took me to change out of work attire into stretchy leggings!  I am truly missing my 18 months of working from home - LOL

Tonight we will be having stuffed soft taco boats using a kit & some turkey mince from the freezer.  OH plans to cook the meat up & slice up all the toppings before I get home, so it should be no longer than a quick blast in the microwave before we can assemble & eat.

Lunch at the office continues to successfully be bits picked up from the c0-0p on the way in, so day to day spends are nice & low.  May even start some overpayments to the mortgage next month if we can keep the discretionary spending in check this month!

EssexHebridean

@CCW007 we use the River Cottage Piccalilli recipe - https://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/pams-piccalilli - it's very forgiving of "using what you have"! 

@Suffolk_lass this was definitely meat (I opened the corner of the lid and had a peek!) - but I confess to a degree of uncertainty over the precise nature of the beast concerned. I'm hoping it was lamb - and this does seem most likely as it's what we've eaten the most of recently, so fingers crossed!

The other thing I've found in the freezer which has me head-scratching is a small pot labeled "stock for noodles" - but what sort of stock, and why specifically for noodles?  

CCW007

Ha ha Suffolk_lass, my sister took some sausages out the freezer recently only to discover they were frozen (whole) bananas!  I've just portioned up and frozen some turkey mince and made sure I wrote on the bags what it was as I know from experience I think I'll remember but I won't!

fionaandphil

I always feel so much better when I realise that I am not the only one who gets things out of the freezer only to find they are something else!  I have got better recently after a few very unusual meals!  We're using up things in the fridge before half term next week so tonight is chicken fajitas and tomorrow will be fish pie

Primrose

Yes, I should draw a veil over the time i dropped an unlabelled bag of gooseberry purree Into a minestrone soup mix thinking it was chicken stock.  You always think you'll remember what things are but the memory isn,t always that reliable !

rtandon27

Haha - Love a mystery freezer dive! I once took out what I thought was bone broth only to discover a sweet mystery sauce that neither of us recalled making! We used a stock pot for the risotto instead.