Reverse Meal Planning

joedenise

@ruby_eskimo - I'd add some chickpeas or lentils to your curry for some protein; this will also stretch it to another meal!

StickyTheStickInsect

I’ve written our meal plan for February, which about half can be done with bits I already have in freezer and stores. I could possibly have squeezed a bit more out but the littles get to choose meals for 2 days each and this month they’ve mainly picked things we’ve run out off.
Today I finished off making stock in the slow cooker from yesterday’s chicken carcass and some veg that had got freezer burn, it made enough for 10 little portions of stock, 2 for a soup base and one for DH to make gravy.

joedenise

I'm another who does a month's plan at a time using stuff from freezers and cupboards as much as possible.  I don't need to buy any meat this month but will need some fish.  Even so my shopping still seems to cost a lot more than most peoples and no idea how to cut it down.  Most of this is soft drinks, fruit and veg.

EssexHebridean

The other half of Sunday's soup will be eaten tonight - and I've got the final chunk of chorizo out of the freezer to add to it. I'll heat some chickpeas in the same pan as well so they heat in the oil from the chorizo. 

Last night's pasta was lovely - used half the pot of cream I bought to use in the soup (the remainder will get added to tonight's soup), plus a big handful of veg box rocket, as well as some other veg and the chunk of flaky smoked salmon we had in the fridge. 

I probably need to think about meal planning a bit further ahead - I could easily enough do veg box to veg box and that might be a practical way of dealing with it as well. Hmmm...food for thought. 

ruby_eskimo

joedenise said:

@ruby_eskimo - I'd add some chickpeas or lentils to your curry for some protein; this will also stretch it to another meal!

Thanks @joedenise, was going to add some pulses in but DH vetoed it.  Still, it made enough for 4 portions so 2 of those are in the freezer for another time.

Used up the last of the mango for breakfast this morning and lunch was another salad bowl with leftovers from the weekend.  Dinner tonight is a mushroom risotto for me as I forgot there was half a tray of the things lingering in the fridge and I have the arborio rice and parmesan on hand.  Plus I love some carbs.

Realised last night that I've worked my way though all of our chopped tomatoes in the house so need to make a note to stock up at the weekend.

joedenise

Have got a couple of chicken breasts out of the freezer which I'm going to bash down to make them thinner and make schnitzels.  Will have with some HM chips & salad.

StickyTheStickInsect

joedenise said:

I'm another who does a month's plan at a time using stuff from freezers and cupboards as much as possible.  I don't need to buy any meat this month but will need some fish.  Even so my shopping still seems to cost a lot more than most peoples and no idea how to cut it down.  Most of this is soft drinks, fruit and veg.

I’m finding this too, we seem to spend more than I’d expect, I do have two children who are lactose free so everything I cook is Lactose free too and LF milk, cheese, butter, yoghurts etc are more expensive but I’m not sure that accounts for the increased cost. I don’t know if everyone includes the same things in their grocery budget too, for us it’s food, drinks, toiletries, cleaning products, cat food and litter, laundry etc. and I can’t see how I get it down to any lower. I see in other threads families of the same size at £60 a week and we are, on average, double that.

joedenise

There's only me and DH and I only include food which will be used this month and budget £250 a month; actually managed to come in well under in January but that's a first but used a lot of stuff from the freezer.

I also have a bulk fund which I used to buy things like sausages and burgers in bulk from the butchers plus big packs of loo rolls and kitchen rolls.  The bulk fund varies but starts at £30 for the month but if there's anything left from the previous month's grocery budget some will end up in the Bulk Fund.  So really I'd something like £280 a month for just 2 of us!

It's definitely useful to be able to use stuff from the freezer and cupboards.  I do quite a lot of batch cooking.  For example we had spag bol last night so I made a decent amount of bolognaise sauce and have frozen 2 x 2 portions which will end up as something like chilli or base of shepherds pie.

You might be interested to see this:

Taken from NimleFins website. Very interesting read and suggests the UK average food shop spend per adult each week is £26.50. Well I'm spending over that and my aim for the next few months is for my weekly food spending to be average. Think our waistlines will end up more average as well lol
Average Food Costs per Week

• Per Person: The average weekly food shop is £26.5 per person in the UK—but clearly caloric needs vary by age and gender. When you add £13.8 spent on food prepared out (e.g., restaurants and takeaways), the average weekly food bill for 1 person is £40.3.

• Average Adult Man: The average adult male spends around £32 on groceries, £17 on food out and £49 altogether on food each week.

• Young, active adult man: A young, active adult man around 18 years of age whose caloric needs are 50% higher than the average person would theoretically spend around £60 a week on food (£40 οn groceries and £21 out).

• Average Adult Woman: The average adult female theoretically spends around £25 on groceries, £13 on food out and £37 altogether on food each week.

• Young, active adult woman: A young, active adult woman around 18 years of age whose caloric needs are 13% higher than the average person would theoretically spend around £46 a week on food (£30 οn groceries and £16 out).

• 2 Adults: The average weekly food bill for 2 adults would be around £86 in total—£57 spent on the weekly food shop and £29 spent on food out.

• Family of 3: The average weekly food bill for a family of 3 (two adults and one younger child) is around £119—£78 spent on the weekly food shop and £41 spent on food out.

• Family of 4: The typical family of 4 (two adults and 2 younger children) would spend around £151 each week on food—£99 on the weekly shop and £52 on restaurant and takeaway meals.

• Family of 5: Larger families of 5 (two adults and 3 younger children) spend around £121 on the weekly shop and another £63 on food prepared out, bringing the total average food bill for a family of 5 to £183.

• Family of 3 adults: Three adults (or two adults and one older teenager) would spend around £85 on groceries, £44 on food prepared out and £129 altogether on food each week, clearly with budget varying by the age and gender of the family members.

So going by that you're not doing badly at around £120 a week.

CCW007

I find it really hard to work out what we spend on food.  A few times a year I go to the butchers / Costco and bulk buy meat to pressure can.  Grocery shopping sometimes includes cat food and alcohol so hard to isolate food spend.  I don't have a regular shopping pattern and right now I want to use food up out the freezer so tracking now won't be accurate.

I do know we spend a lot on food and, having had a disappointing month on debt busting, I am going to be doing Freezer (and frugal) February so reverse meal planning is going to come into play.

Bought loads of YS veggie / vegan convenience food lately which isn't great for the diet if I'm not careful but I need to factor into meal plan.  E.g. quorn sausages casseroled or used in a pasta sauce, nuggets and homemade chips (have loads of potatoes!).  I do still eat fish and have some salmon in the freezer which is an easy low calorie meal with a plate load of veggies.  Must make more vegan meals such as daal and aubergine and tomato stew, both of which I love.

StickyTheStickInsect

@joedenise thank you 🙂
It does make really interesting reading doesn’t it, we are trying not to get takeaways at all at the moment, so that gives us a bit more flex in the shopping budget. 

I’ve seen you post elsewhere about your bulk fund and think I’ll probably try and work towards this as I often shop like this too. DH did question this month why we needed 48 cans of tuna from L*dl in one go but it was a big saving and I doubt they’ll last us the year!