Reverse Meal Planning

Suffolk_lass

We had a call yesterday afternoon to ask if there was room in our freezer for a salmon-encroute as their daughter had made one for New Year, not realising their old chest freezer had failed. A bit of judicious tetris and it is in there - with two panettone removed that I would have needed to get out to make trifles for tomorrow anyway, one loaf of bread and three small pots of luxury ice cream all moved indoors. DH's snoring woke me up this morning at 04.30 so I have part made one trifle so far (and painted a drawer front so the kitchen does not look too awful tomorrow!).

I think we might have soup for lunch and beef salad with half a monster jacket potato each for supper. I swear that potato is why the broccoli won't fit in the veg drawer!

EssexHebridean

I have sympathy with your monster potato situation after we had several in the veg box on a couple of occasions recently - we mostly went for sharing them as jackets too! 

We’re still having pizza tonight but it’s changed from home made to the leftovers from the enormous one Mr Boss bought me at lunchtime yesterday. He (probably sensibly) says there’s so little difference in price between the sizes it makes sense to order the XXL ones, and as we’re definitely not pizza compatible (he has his super-spicy!) also uses the 2 for 1 offer so I managed 4 slices of mine and have another 8 slices left for today!  Not entirely sure on lunch as yet - I’ll have a mooch through the fridge and cupboards later this morning. 

Carrots were prepped last night, the ones for tomorrow are wrapped in wet kitchen paper in the fridge, and the rest blanched and frozen. The beetroots were also peeled, chopped and roasted and are now in the freezer - I’ll need to bag those up this morning. Freezer 1 is then entirely full! 

joedenise

Got some LO potato and veg from last night so have made some bubble and squeak cakes which we'll have for lunch with some ham I found in the freezer yesterday.  Will have with baked beans.

I've taken some prawns and coconut milk from the freezer and will be making a Thai red prawn curry using up one of the spice packs from a Simply Cook pack which I got for £1 for 4 a while back.  Thought it was about time I used them!

Merry Christmas everyone.  There aren't going to be any LOs here to use up as we are going to DD1s for dinner tomorrow and all I know is there won't be turkey or Brussels as neither her nor her partner like them!  No idea what we'll be having!

rtandon27

Hello Ladies  - sending you all the season's greetings & best wishes for a happy and healthy 2022 filled with many creative meal plans - RT & OH

Primrose

Probably  not too many meals consisting of leftovers today, but tomorrow may be a different matter, especially for anybody whose plans had to change at short notice due to Covid, 

Christmas greetings to you all, especially anybody on their own.

Mrs_Cheshire

Morning all, hope you all had a lovely day yesterday. We ended up changing our plans at the last minute due to me testing positive so hoping to visit family for the new year instead. Going to have a sort out of the freezers and rearrange them to double-check what we have in. 

joedenise

What a terrible time to test positive @Mrs_Cheshire but at least you have options with having freezers.

We had a lovely day at DD1s and her chef partner cooked a lovely traditional dinner.  Have bought home enough cold meats for a couple of lunches, some shortbread (2 x 2 pieces already vac packed and frozen) and a few profiteroles.  Could have bought more stuff home but decided that would do for us.

Today will use of the meat to have at lunchtime with some HM chips, beans (which need using up!) and lots of pickles.  Dinner will be a salmon curry using up some small pieces of salmon from the freezer.

Primrose

This is certainly a time to be King or Queen of the leftovers and it makes you realise just how much food has the potential to be wasted over Christmas simply because many people don,t have the culinary skills to know how to turn them into something else.

if those people were to learn these basics in 2022 and put the potential money they could save in a separate bank account I suspect they would be amazed how it mounted up.  I had a relative who simply tossed away the rest of her massive turkey on Boxing Day  because she had no idea what to do with the leftovers. One year we stripped the carcass for her and got a stockpot going to make stock with it but she confessed she had no idea how to make homemade soup, but  we suspect that as soon as we left for home the whole lot was probably thrown away.  What a waste !  

Our village butcher saves chicken carcasses for us for stock making and we make delicious filling soups in winter for pennies. 

I know we're preaching to the converted on this forum but it,s such a shame that elementary cooking skills arn't taught as an essential topic to all pupils in  schools. It,s such an important basic life skill.

CCW007

Primrose, I used to have a housemate who wouldn't eat leftovers, everything had to be made fresh.  Made it expensive cooking as for example there was no point buying a big pack of mince (couldn't use half for one meal and the other half for another!)

Determined to get back to cooking from scratch and healthy eating, my body is craving vegetables after so much junk food!  

Currently batch cooking lentil and mushroom goulash and aubergine and tomato stew for the fridge / freezer.

joedenise

The salmon curry the other day wasn't a success and won't be making that again!  It was just far too tomatoey - salmon and tomato don't really go together we've decided!

Got a short beef rib out of the freezer to SC yesterday with loads of veg, some stout and horseradish cream.  Was supposed to be for dinner last night but for some reason the SC wasn't plugged in (something else was plugged in it's usual place!) so when I went to check it about an hour before dinner found it was still stone cold!  Cue:  off to the kebab shop to get something to eat as nothing available in the freezer which would defrost and cook quickly!  Hadn't bought enough meat home from DD1s to make use of that - only bought enough home for the one lunch!

Cooked the short beef rib stew overnight and it looks lovely so that will be dinner sorted for tonight.  I'm sure I'll need to scrape off quite a lot of fat once it's cooled down properly!