Reverse Meal Planning

joedenise

I always add a bit of mustard powder when I'm making cheese sauces.  Like you say it helps give it an extra kick!  I also think parmasan is a stronger flavour than cheddar too so you don't need as much!

CCW007

Another vote for mustard in cheese sauce here! 

Just debating whether to do mushroom and leek lasagne for dinner or pasta with sausage and mustard (Nigel Slater recipe) for OH and quorn sausages in sauce for me.

Hi candylucy!

ruby_eskimo

Morning all.  Welcome @candylucy sounds like you'll fit right in here!  

In my quest to empty the freezer before Christmas, I'm back on some leftover lentil and vegetable soup for lunches this week from the batch I made a couple of weeks ago.  Dinner tonight is yet more lentils in the form of dhal and rice, but with a roasted then pureed carrot base.  Will also be chucking in some frozen spinach too.  Hopefully DH likes it, he's a bit funny sometimes with pulses but he does like the chickpea curry I make so hopefully he'll like this too.

EssexHebridean

That dhal sounds nice Ruby - it's something I love but often forget about making, I ought to do it more often! 

All on plan here for the week I hope, and starting to see some space appearing in particularly freezer 2 - freezer 1 was looking a bit more empty but it got three tubs of bolognese sauce, one of roast lamb and some leftover tomato/onion/mushroom sauce last night so  a bit less so now. I'm going to earmark Mondays as "pasta Monday" for a bit I think though as that is such an easy win for the start of a week - and all the more so as Monday tends to be one of the evenings we get home later as well. 

Tonight will be the Cheats Aubergine Parmigiana I made last night - it will just need reheating, probably via a blast on combi in the microwave I think as I reckon that stands the least chance of the mozzarella going rubbery. The fridge is currently jammed solid with the contents of the veg box - it was a nice week although the replacement for the lettuce I opted out of was a small cucumber which feels like a bit of a swizz I must say - I also have not the faintest idea what I'm going to do with it - possibly a quick pickle as an accompaniment for another meal during the week? Hmmm...  other than that though we have a large bulb of fennel, 5 small Aubergines (4 have gone to the Parmigiana, the other will be roasted along with some other veg I think), 4 large orange peppers, a cauliflower, a huge pile of kale, a bag of small tomatoes which apparently are "escapees" from the ones that get sold as "on the vine") two enormous potatoes (one did roasties yesterday, the other will wait a while while I think about it) and some red onions. 

rtandon27

EH - our meatless Monday has morphed into (meatless) pasta Monday - LOL - comforting & stodgy for this cold weather.  I keep suggesting hearty vegetable soup, but OH is insistent that soup is not a meal. So tonight's dinner will be mushroom ravioli with pan-fried mushrooms in an artichoke sauce.

Our planned dinner last night of Spanish meatballs came to naught as OH was not up to cooking - we did the freezer dive & came up with some chicken stroganoff for himself & taco mince with rice for me.  Some steamed choi sum with oyster sauce made for bit of a weird fusion dinner, but does now mean there is now 1/2 shelf free in the freezer.

This week's dinner plan is super simple as commuting is taking a lot of extra time due to last Sunday's train crash at the nearest large town - no service at my small station is planned until next Tuesday while the tracks get repaired.  OH is now doing two 1 hour drives to get me to the nearest express train service into the city & back again!  Being both chef & chauffeur in not going to happen - LOL

chrobakx

Hello, I like to use whatever we have left in freezer or cupboard, but my wife, she will always fill it up before I have a chance to use it .

EssexHebridean

@chrobakx This is where a meal plan and shopping to a list comes in! 

CCW007

Had to move the cabinet which lives at the bottom of the stairs for the carpet fitters who came today.  This involved emptying all my cookbooks.  Seeing as they don't all fit in there I'm going to take this as an opportunity to rationalise and get rid of any I don't use.  However first I have to look through them which is giving me some more meal ideas!  Favourite one I found which I'd forgotten about is slow cooker curries, off to have a browse through it!

Dinner tonight was beef in black bean sauce for OH (YS beef out of freezer) and veg red curry using an on-the-turn aubergine for me with egg fried rice.  Leftovers for lunch tomorrow.  Mushroom risotto for dinner tomorrow.

chrobakx

EssexHebridean said:

@chrobakx This is where a meal plan and shopping to a list comes in! 

We are almost always planning, but she like to have everything full just in case. I don't know what case, maybe aliensatack.

fionaandphil

chrobakx said:

EssexHebridean said:

@chrobakx This is where a meal plan and shopping to a list comes in! 

We are almost always planning, but she like to have everything full just in case. I don't know what case, maybe aliensatack.

My DH would probably say the same!