Reverse Meal Planning

Mrs_Cheshire

Hi all, hope you've all had a lovely Easter. It's been pretty quiet here which was needed after a busy half term. 
The meal plan is working fairly well for using up stocks but is offering some flexibility for when plans change suddenly. This week I'm hoping to have 
Chicken stir-fry and rice (we were given a pack of stir fry veg yesterday which needs using), we've got everything else in stores. 
Somerset Pork & mash (using up another sachet) will put this in the slow cooker as I need a quick meal tomorrow night. 
minced beef fajitas, wedges and salad ( using up the salad veg)
pasta bake & garlic bread ( probably using some of the fajita mix) 
Pesto pastry tart (using up small bits of veg, a smoked sausage and any left over cheese), served with new potatoes and any green veg. 

rtandon27

Saturday we used up some cheese and potato pierogis which were lurking in the fridge - close to their use by date & some leftover cabbage and onions from earlier in the week.  Good cold weather stodge!

Sunday we ended up making Thai chicken and veg curry and rice, with plenty of leftovers for me to have for brunch this morning and also tomorrow.  OH has stuck to his very boring eggs on toast.

Today my OH made leek & cheese orzotto from a Waitflower recipe card - we substituted the peas for finely sliced runner beans as this is what was in the freezer.  Fitted in nicely with our Meatless Monday theme.  The recipe made use of the last two leeks, so have added this to our veg wish list for tomorrow's shop.

Tomorrow's broad theme is something with fish and/or Tuesday tacos.  I'd like fish finger tacos, but may save that as an easy meal for next week when I'm back at work.  We also have some budgeted for Staycation dining as an option, but looks like the only sushi place in our small town is closed on a Tuesday as is the nice Sushi place in the closest large town.  We may have to 'settle' for fish & chips, the upshot being if I send the OH they sell us the senior's special & we save about 1/3 off the full price and it's a lot more reasonable than sushi to start off with!

Mrs_Cheshire

zafiro1984 said:

Had a good search through the cupboards today, looking for items I could use in biscuit making.
We always like to finish lunch on a something small and sweet, a couple of biscuits suit quite nicely and as I hadn't any left in the biscuit tin and there was nothing on the order coming later today I thought I'd make some instead of nipping out to the farm shop and getting a couple of packets. 

Did quite well, marg/butter in the freezers, sugar in the pantry, the hens are laying, some sultanas, raisons, choc chips, mixed spice, stem ginger, concentrated orange squash, a couple of pks of SR flour, plain flour, syrup, vanilla, bi carb, plus quite a lot of other things which I didn't use but now know where they are. I had so much in stock because I didn't do my usual amount of cooking over the festive period so I was able to put some of it to good use this morning.
I made biscuit dough and froze it in portions that make about 10-12 biscuits, (8 different varieties of biscuits, 54 pks in total) - that should last quite a while and there is still more stuff I could use.  

It only took a couple of hours to do and freeze but I did need a cup of tea afterwards.

The biscuit dough sounds interesting - do you have a recipe? When you say 54pks - did you make 54 portions with 10-12 biscuits in each? 

joedenise

The freezer door must have been left slightly open overnight as my self defrosting freezer had loads of ice on the fronts of the drawers and "snow" all over the food so had to get everything out and check.  Fortunately the only things which had defrosted was a pack of chicken thighs and 2 packs of 4 slices of bread (frozen last time we went on holiday so they didn't get wasted!).  The bread will be used for lunch today to make a tuna mayo sandwich for each of us.

The chicken thighs I chopped into bite sized pieces and marinaded in yoghurt and spices overnight and tonight will be turned into a butter curry.  This was one of this weeks planned meals anyway so just a change of day for the meals!

Tonight was supposed to have been pork shoulder steaks so will get those out this morning to have tomorrow night instead.

Suffolk_lass

phew, that's a relief @joedenise! could have been a lot worse.

We have two large portions of chilli last night and I've made a pie for this evening with the chicken pickings. I've also used the last of the carrots in making stock. I will get a small bag when I go into town. I need to get my tyres checked. I hope it's just the valves but they seem to quietly lose air at the front

joedenise

I'm mightily relived @Suffolk_lass; would have hated to have lost everything - I'm just glad I spotted it when I did!  Fortunately if I had lost the lot it would be mainly bread stuff although there are a few HM ready meals in there which would probably have been OK in the fridge for a few days so again not wasted.

Hope your tyres are OK and that it is just the valves.  Tyres are expensive, especially when you're not expecting to need them!

JIL

joedenise said:

I'm mightily relived @Suffolk_lass; would have hated to have lost everything - I'm just glad I spotted it when I did!  Fortunately if I had lost the lot it would be mainly bread stuff although there are a few HM ready meals in there which would probably have been OK in the fridge for a few days so again not wasted.

Hope your tyres are OK and that it is just the valves.  Tyres are expensive, especially when you're not expecting to need them!

Bread can actually be refrozen, it may affect the quality but wont cause any issues.  

EssexHebridean

Yes, bread refreezes perfectly well - we freeze a second time fairly often and I've never noticed any difference in quality at all. 

SL fingers crossed for the tyres being OK - it could be the seal onto the rims perhaps, and some places are happy to remove and re-seal in my experience, so fingers crossed one way or the other you can save the cost of replacing the tyres completely. MrEH will be getting a couple of tyres done on his at the weekend so we have this joy to come! 

Friday saw a bit pot of slow cooker curry being made using the SC function on the instant pot - lamb chump chops from the freezer including some bones I'd previously cut the meat off which added even more flavour. That blipped away to itself while we were out on Friday afternoon then got divided into portions when we got home - that fed us on Friday night and there are three more lots in the freezer so plenty more to look forward to!  I made a big batch of pasta salad again - this time I divided the pasta/veg section into two to start with - then added half a tin of pink salmon each to our portions on Saturday - we then repeated this with the remainder of the pasta on Monday so that worked really nicely. The salmon was from a previous Lil's BOGOF offer as well so quite the bargain. I bought the two hams I had planned to get on the easter offer - those got cooked on Monday and then glazed - one with marmalade (using up a mini jar of dundee marmalade that we have had for a while - it was shredless so neither of us were volunteering to have it on toast!) and the other with treacle and mustard. The hams were then split into two and wrapped separately with three bits being popped in the freezer and one in the fridge for eating this week.

A late arrival home last night meant that couscous fit the bill nicely - and we had a slice of the marmalade ham each with that, plus plenty of sauteed veg. I'm thinking pasta for this evening - I will possibly do our good old staple of sardine and butterbean pasta I think as that's quick, gives us a portion of oily fish each, works well with freezer veg (which is basically what I've got!) and is relatively quick to throw together. As a spin it will get a dollop of the jarred pesto in it as the sooner that is used up the sooner I can get onto the wild garlic stuff from the freezer.

Mrs_Cheshire

Primrose said:

When my OH wasn,t on his current diet we used to make garlic crouton by freezing the crust ends of loaves until we had  a reasonable number of them.

then cut into small cubes, mixed with olive oil, crushed garlic,  sprinkled  dry herbs and roasted in oven until crisp.  Delicious but fattening! 

I like the sound of this, may try it for the kids to pop in soup to bulk it out a little

Mrs_Cheshire

Had a lovely meal yesterday using up a sachet that I'd had for ages - Somerset Pork casserole. I cooked it in the slow cooker for a few hours and then hubby reduced the sauce by popping it in a pan on the stove whilst the mash was cooking. I used a pork fillet, 2 small apples, 3 large carrots and an onion which did 4 adult portions. 
The 2 kids that ate it enjoyed it and said they would happily have it again. I'll try it again with a cheaper cut of pork to see if slow cooking makes it tender as the kids are fussy about chewy meat particularly pork!