Reverse Meal Planning

EssexHebridean

This evenings curry used the cooked chicken from the freezer, along with the last piece of butternut squash.  The accompanying daal was the rather delicious BBC Good Food Sweet potato, red lentil and spinach, the full recipe quantity of which provided a helping each for this evening plus two more double portions for the freezer. I was originally planning to make flatbreads to go with it as well, but ended up just going with rice as it was simpler. 

rtandon27

Your Friday fakeaway sounds absolutely lovely EH.

We had leftover oven roasted bbq chicken from Wednesday, steamed baby potatoes and olive oil sautéed sugar snap peas lightly seasoned with lime zest, alt and pepper.

I'm trying hard to keep our price per head between 1gbp & 2gbp tops, so was particularly proud of this one! The sauce was leftover from another meal so I'm counting it as a free half bottle, snap peas and potatoes free off of 0li0 and the chicken for both of us just over a pound as it was half a yellow sticker pack a bargain at 2 for the lot. So around 50p a head of actual spends out of this months budget and reverse planned to boot!

Suffolk_lass

We had a take-away last night, wanting to be able to concentrate on the rugby. A local chef has a food van he takes locally. He's destined to receive some of my homegrown chillies as I think I have either 3 or 4 large ziplock bags of them in the produce freezer. He will pop by when he remembers, to collect them!

Today we are having roast chicken (3 of 6 in the freezer). I have to admit I could not really see the difference in the freezer space after rummaging for it. My month of working through it may need to extend into November too!

joedenise

It's great to be able to save some money by making use of your freezers.  I only have a fridge/freezer plus a small under counter freezer but find it really helps to use up stuff from there when I'm doing my menu plan as it certainly saves some cash.  I try to add at least 2-3 meals a week from the freezer, either complete HM meals, HM sauces or previously bought ingredients such as mince, chicken thighs etc.

I tend to menu plan a month at a time so I find it really helpful to use the freezer although having used quite a lot of food from them they don't really seem to be going down very much!  Doesn't help of course that when I cook something there is invariably another HM ready meal to go back in.

Another week and I'll have to start thinking about doing my November meal plan!  I don't know where the year is going to.

Primrose

Timing of Defrosting he freezer always a problem here. You think you,re making progress then another lot of batch cooking refills it.  And in winter you always need a full freezer in case snow or ice prevents you getting out to the shops, especially if you,re elderly.
How  does everybody cope with this issue?

Suffolk_lass

I periodically get it all out, pack it in ice chests/cold boxes or wrap it all in towels and defrost, inventory (a futile thing here) and repack it as quickly as possible

rtandon27

Our freezer is frost free, but once a month I pull everything out, shift around contents and try and prioritise things that have been there a while or are missing labels!

Most of what is in there are ingredients and each drawer has a theme of sorts - meat, dairy, veg etc. I keep a list of our homemade ready meals, but try to keep only 6 of these in there at a time (3 days worth).  We also have at least one store-bought pizza and a few burgers and rolls for quick fakeaway meals.

When (reverse) meal planning, I try to deal with what we have in fresh and/or is too abundant also incorporating bits from the freezer.  I'm lucky that OH does the great majority of the actual cooking so I get to plan and he executes said plans - 😆

Last night's dinner was more of the cream of celery leaf soup from earlier in the week, and cheese and onion toasties. This was followed up by a small frozen pizza as I was famished again 1.5 hours later!

Tonight's Meatless Monday meal will be butternut and cabbage gratin preceeded by a bowl of soup. OH declared he was fine with meat being absent from meals as long as I didn't harp on about it 😅 - it's very male logic so I'm just going to go with the flow!

EssexHebridean

It was a Farmers Market weekend here so our freezer is currently delightfully rammed! Purchases included a half shoulder of lamb which I cooked for dinner yesterday and is currently looking like giving a decent quantity of leftovers too. First attempt at roasting meat in the multi cooker - although it has a roast option I actually opted to use the air fryer setting instead - excellent results with the lamb being crispy on the outside around the fat and beautifully juicy and tender in the centre. One to repeat. 

Also purchased:
2 double packs of minced beef
some diced vension
a small pack of bacon bits
a pack of 4 venison burgers (two eaten for tea on saturday)
A pack of lamb, rosemary & garlic sausages
A small pack of lamb sausagemeat
A small pack of stewing mutton
A pack of smoked mackerel

Apart from the shoulder, all aside from the mince was fitted into the freezer. the mince will get divided up this evening but I need to work out where it's going thanks to rammed freezer! 

The next month has been decreed a "freezer month" so I will be looking for lots of using up of things and little of main ingredients being purchased. 

Yesterday's sunday roast used up the final 2 regular potatoes and the last sweet potato as well as the end of last week's broccoli. 

Stir fry this evening - I'll use some of the mince as that will serve as a good reminder that it needs dividing. other stuff on the meal plan for this week is:
- Couscous with some of the lamb leftovers
- spaghetti & meatballs (thus getting the last of the pack of meatballs out of the freezer)
- spicy ragu & rice (ragu from the freezer)


I like your idea of aiming for a particular cost per head on meals RT - it's something I think about occasionally but haven't for a while - and I bet some of my old favourites for really low CPH are probably an awful lot more now!

I do routinely break down individual "main" ingredients on a cost per serving basis - even if just in my head. If yesterday's lamb does what I'm hoping for then that should end up giving  me 6 separate serves - so will come down to in the region of £1.80 a serving but of course two of those will have been a sunday roast and I'm very happy for those to come in a bit higher. 

Suffolk_lass

We had the chicken roasted yesterday. It really is the simplest, most comforting dinner! Tonight I think we will either have something gratinated or chicken pie. It will depend on whether DS is coming today or tomorrow. I will text him shortly but in the meantime, pastry needs making, and washing is on

DigSunPap

Suffolk_lass said:

We had the chicken roasted yesterday. It really is the simplest, most comforting dinner! Tonight I think we will either have something gratinated or chicken pie. It will depend on whether DS is coming today or tomorrow. I will text him shortly but in the meantime, pastry needs making, and washing is on

We have really started to come into the season for hearty winter dishes. Back having a roast every Sunday is something that I am most certainly looking forward to.