Reverse Meal Planning

zafiro1984

I'm still on leftovers.
Before Christmas I emptied the kitchen freezer into a Sains bag and put it in the chest freezer to make room for Christmas leftovers. I'm almost at the end of said leftovers. Tonight found a carton labelled 'Turkey bits, add to soup' so making soup is a  job this evening for lunch tomorrow.. Also found leftover casserole, probably pheasant, so I'll do something with that for tonight.

Between Christmas and New Year I made a plain and simple apple crumble, put it in the Ironheart, forgot about it and it turned out to be what we call an 'Alfred'  (King Alfred who burnt the cakes)  After careful assessment of the situation I said nothing but quietly binned the topping, froze the underlying apple and tonight we are having apple snow, with cinnamon and cream - not what I would call reverse planning more like rescue planning.

I too am aiming to spend very little this January. So how about this:- I returned some wine last November to a well known supermarket - it was bought online, a special offer, but obviously they has run out so substituted a different one at a higher price. I got a bk credit for the difference, followed by a coupon for the difference. At this stage it was Christmas and I hadn't worked out that they had made a mistake in my favour. The helpline was useless and kept telling me they were correct,  so who am I to argue.... Three days ago I looked at my coupons and found not only the credit for the wine but also another coupon - sorry we haven't seen you for a while'  minimum spend £75.  So with my savvy/business hat on and taking advantage of offers and deducting the coupons I have just spent £77.83 but saved £81.19 - how are they going to deal with that!!!!

rtandon27

Last night, future me thanked past me for having the forethought to batch cook a winter soup!

After the first commute of the year which was a challenge to say the least - we reverse engineered dinner around cream of mushroom soup, crackers, cheese, salami and sliced roast beef. Afters were clementines and a banana.  Nutritionally balanced enough for a throw together meal, but today will have to feature some green veg!

joedenise

Going to make a shepherds pie with the last of the roast leg of lamb from the weekend.  All the meat has been removed from the bone and will be minced later.  Will have it with some green veg from the freezer.

rtandon27

JD - you've made absolutely amazing use of that leg of lamb!

I crave lamb & love it but there is nowhere nearby that sells it at affordable prices & the OH has to avoid iron rich food, so we tend to to a lot of chicken & fish with the occasional roast joint here and there.

Our Mr.S round up arrived in the e-mail today & I was pleasantly surprised to see that milk, mushrooms & bananas are our top three purchases!  No UPF's in the lot!! - Eggs would have been one of them, but they are ALWAYS out of stock and we tend to get ours either on 0li0 or from Brrrland.  Brrrland amazingly has very good quality fruit/veg/meat/eggs given that their mainstay is frozen food.  They also have amazing frozen fruit which if picked up on the 3 for 5 deal is cheaper than all the grocery stores.

joedenise

We don't have lamb very often as it's so expensive but picked this leg up in Sainsbugs when it was on half price special of £6.50/Kg which made it more affordable.  If I'd had the freezer space I'd of picked up another one!

They had beef on half price offer as well at the same time but couldn't get that as well due to lack of freezer space!  I really miss having a chest freezer!  Just have the fridge/freezer and a small under counter freezer.  Original plan was to replace the chest freezer with 2 under counter but couldn't find outdoor freezers which would fit into our outside cupboard where the chest one lived previously!

EssexHebridean

That's a good tip on the frozen fruit RT - thank you. we have a "Warehouse of Food" on one of our local retail parks these days - I understand it to be a sort of giant Brrrland. I do pop in occasionally but might need to do so again next time I'm looking at fruit! i get fish from there sometimes too as their prices there are often good. 

Zafiro - loving that rescue mission on the apple - well done!

My plans to cook sufficient veg last night to throw some into a tortilla tonight were scuppered by us both being famished and a lot of the veg shrinking more than expected in the cooking, too. Yes - it all got eaten. The tortilla has now turned into a bacon and cheese omelette and will have some jacket potatoes added I think - that'll fill the gaps. Oh, and probably some broccoli alongside too for green-ness. 

We have lamb quite a bit in our house as the chap who attends our local farmers market does some very reasonably priced bits and his quality and welfare standards are good. once we have some proper freezer space again we'll probably order another whole lamb from him actually - that always works out well. 

joedenise

Still using up stuff from cupboards and freezer to avoid any more shopping before our holiday so for tonight I've got some beef in gravy which was frozen when we last had a beef joint.  I'll also be roasting some carrots and parsnips from the freezer - these were from the 15p veg wars before Christmas.  Will also roast some potatoes and do some green veg from the freezer including some Brussels we got in a TGTG bag just after Christmas so a pretty cheap meal all round!

I always find that when I cook extra veg for another meal we invariably end up eating it so usually end up having to do something else!

rtandon27

Our elusive chicken Tajine did not materialize yesterday for dinner - third week in a row I've put it on the meal plan & it has not happened!

Instead we had roast chicken drums with bbq sauce, baby potato roasties, red cabbage with apple from the freezer and a cucumber/tomato salad.  Tasty & once OH remember to turn on the oven🤣🤣🤣, cooked in under an hour.

Tonight's dinner plan is burgers with salad and the rest of the roasties - let's see if I get back from work on time to even feel like eating!  Some nights my pillow is the only thing I'm interested it!

zafiro1984

I love lamb and used the last of a half price leg which had been frozen to make Scotch broth. I'm sure there are plenty of recipes out there but I  actually stuck to what appeared to be a 'proper' Scotch broth one. I was amazed at how much barley, split peas and lentils it used. It tasted quite good and certainly was filling.

Tea was some deer loin that needed using up. I estimated there should be enough for the two of us plus a friend who is staying for a few days. I got it wrong the meat shrank and there was only enough for two so I fained a sensitive stomach and drank water. DH was not convinced but kept quiet, Friend has just gone to bed so I've just eaten a 150gm bar of chocolate and drank a glass of Bailey's!!

It would be interesting to know just how many of us are cooking completely from scratch. I have to, not because I want to but as we have become older we seem to be less tolerant of processed food especially DH 

Suffolk_lass

zafiro1984 said:

I love lamb and used the last of a half price leg which had been frozen to make Scotch broth. I'm sure there are plenty of recipes out there but I  actually stuck to what appeared to be a 'proper' Scotch broth one. I was amazed at how much barley, split peas and lentils it used. It tasted quite good and certainly was filling.

Tea was some deer loin that needed using up. I estimated there should be enough for the two of us plus a friend who is staying for a few days. I got it wrong the meat shrank and there was only enough for two so I fained a sensitive stomach and drank water. DH was not convinced but kept quiet, Friend has just gone to bed so I've just eaten a 150gm bar of chocolate and drank a glass of Bailey's!!

It would be interesting to know just how many of us are cooking completely from scratch. I have to, not because I want to but as we have become older we seem to be less tolerant of processed food especially DH 

What are you like!?

I woke DH last evening, slumbering at 6.15pm(!) and sent him off to his bike club meet, so I just had cheese and Matzos crackers. Felt sick (too rich) and left it too late to eat for me (same principle as UPF food really), I had to go and sit quietly for ten minutes in the bathroom at 01.30, just to give my digestive system a few moments with me the right way up, IYSWIM. Radio very interesting at that time...