Reverse Meal Planning

rtandon27

'Linner' yesterday afternoon was a cheese and ham toastie - quick & easy, more of a snack than a meal!

Last night's dinner was primarily made up of the remains of our weekend roast pork and pan roasted sprouts.  OH fancied boiled baby potatoes (which I can't stand - lol) but there was a pack of microwave rice kicking around, and some mystery gravy from the freezer which turned out to be the sauce from a pre-xmas curry.  We were both happy with our choices and finished up what I'm hoping is the last of our cooked festive leftovers. (We still have cheese and charcuterie but all with long enough dates that we don't have to look at them for a while)

Tonight our broad theme is 'chicken' and I'm hoping to use up some chicken drums from the freezer and pumpkin from the stores & turn it into a tagine with some olives from the fridge.  We have already had one squash go off, so I'm guessing it was not cured properly at source.  I'd love some couscous with the tagine, which OH loathes so I'll need to find out if he wants rice or pita to go with it.  If it is rice, then I'll forgo the couscous otherwise will make a batch and keep the extra for packed lunches.  No clue yet what green veg we'll have alongside, but we do need a few essentials from the store so will see if anything screams 'eat me' whilst we are there.

This morning's breakfast was decidedly humdrum but a staple in this house - pimped up porridge topped with fruit and honey.  Chia, flax, sultanas & walnuts mixed in before zapping in the microwave with a splash of milk and some water.  Filling, but not exactly exciting after more than a week of festive nosh 😉

EssexHebridean

Haha - there is a certain amount of come-down off the christmas and new year food isn't there! I usually do porridge on a Friday morning and I used to quite often toast seeds to top ours with but haven't done that for a while - perhaps this week...

zafiro1984

Well, Christmas and New Year are over, Family and friends have been and gone and I'm left with fridges full of leftovers not to mention loads in the freezers - things I made which we never got around to eating. Household budgets have been done for 2024 and I'm determined to stick within them.

 Next job is 'bottoming out' everywhere, I think they used to call it 'Spring cleaning'. First room to be tackled is known as 'the pantry', but strangely enough there isn't a morsal of food in there, it's full of all my cooking gadgets, from spare fridges, cider apple presses to humble pie rings. I think at my age it's time to assess what I use and get rid of the rest - eBay calls.

Back to reverse meal planning. I'm going to start with the least attractive food so tonight the leftover pastry will be put to good use with some crinkly apples and the three egg yolks (leftover from meringues) will do custard. There's still a piece of turkey and gammon pie made with the Christmas leftovers so we'll have that with a few chips and salad. 

I'm glad to be back

rtandon27

EssexHebridean said:

Haha - there is a certain amount of come-down off the christmas and new year food isn't there! I usually do porridge on a Friday morning and I used to quite often toast seeds to top ours with but haven't done that for a while - perhaps this week...

🤣 In an effort to spruce up the porridge that will grace our table for the foreseeable future, I gave in to a 75% off bargain of Christmas fruit and nuts.  The only differences I can see is the addition of cranberries and some sort of sweet spicy glaze on the almonds.  Hopefully 1 pound well spent!

Primrose

Chopped apple and sultanas is my easy way of tarting up porridge.   I find  Bramley  apples dissolve into the mixture more easily than dessert apples. 

joedenise

There was more chicken than I thought left so the last of it will be going into tonight's dinner of Spanish rice - like a risotto with chicken and chorizo.  So although it wasn't a particularly big chicken, only about 1.6Kg, managed to get 4 good meals for 2 from it.  No stock though as DH binned the carcass!

marionmgcars

tonight I cooked leftover veg to have a healthy dinner.  Partner was “starving” so had a yogurt and then burger and coleslaw as could not wait !!!   His loss as my dinner was very tasty and healthy.  Plenty leftover, so will defrost sausages and that’s tonight’s tea organised .  

Suffolk_lass

I actually discarded the remnants of the turkey stock. I had to; I picked up a frozen turkey crown that was reduced in my pre-New-Year drinks dash round the SM (none of it got drunk!) and filled the intended freezer with said crown. When reheating the stock it showed definite signs of decay. DH knows me so well he commiserated! I will need to plan in the use of that Turkey as it is a large one.

In the meantime we have almost finished the Christmas Brie. Still got blue cheeses and a vintage cheddar but these might be left for DH as my mouth is beginning to ulcer up due to too much sugar and cheese with rind. Time to cleanse down the diet methinks. Back to simple soups and meat and veg meals for a couple of months, reducing the carbs to help shift the Christmas wadding that is hanging around. It is good for both of us to do this

joedenise

I was quite disappointed not to be able to make stock as today's planned lunch is spicy carrot and lentil soup so would have been nice to use a HM stock rather than a cube or stockpot.  Still have some carrots to use but they'll last a few more days yet so need to decide what I'm going to do with them.

EssexHebridean

Making the stock is definitely one of the highlights of having a turkey, for me. I must remember to soak the next ham I cook overnight though as once again the cooking liquor from that is somewhat salty - I'll get away with it by letting it down with the addition of some commercial stock using a stockpot, but it would have been better not to have had the issue in the first place. 

SL - I sympathise with your loss of your stock too - I didn't get as much turkey stock as I'd hoped as by the time I reached the stage of using the free backbone for that purpose it had developed that "Hmmm I'm not sure whiff" - we all know that one I'm sure  - it would probably have been fine but it's not a risk I'm going to take! I did at least get a big tub of chunks of meat from it which were cooked and partly used/partly frozen, so a win regardless. 

MrEH has been requested to get tonight's sausages from the freezer to defrost - I intended to do it last night but got distracted. I will need to get out tomorrow's burgers and buns tonight, those can defrost in the fridge. My hope is that by the other side of the weekend I will be able to start shifting stuff from freezer 2 back to freezer 1 - although I think we will be a way off a full transfer so I may just begin to accumulate space at the moment. Once we are at the stage of F2 being empty and off again and there being some space at least in F1, we can consider whether we buy a whole lamb again in a few months - my feeling is that we probably will as long as sufficient savings can be made on other grocery shopping over the next few months to allow this.