Reverse Meal Planning

rtandon27

It's not January yet, but spurred on by all your tales of 'use-it-up' - I did a couple of freezer dives yesterday!

First to be used up was a pot of roast chicken chunks - half went into a roll for OH for yesterday's lunch and the other half in a packet of micro-rice for my lunch.  The pieces were originally destined for chicken noodle soup, but there are so many pots of roasted root veg soup in there that it was more prudent to use up the meat before it got freezer burn.

Second use it up was for dinner.  A leek and sausage pasta that was properly labelled but at the bottom of a drawer, it appears to be the oldest thing in there (09-Dec-23) so I'm well pleased it's now been had for a fuss free meal!  It wasn't spectacular so probably why we'd not made the effort to finish it up.

A bag of shredded cheddar has gone into the freezer as it keeps much better at the slow rate we use it up.  There is so much other xmas day cheese that is already open and needs using that we won't miss any that gets put into the freezer.

So conclusion is that our net space is one freezer storage box & we've still to do a freezer audit & meal plan.

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ETA - lunch today was simple - ham, fried egg and cheese on toast & dinner was part freezer dive (gyoza) and part fridge clean up - cheese & ham & grapes with left over xmas crackers/biscuits.  If we are still hungry later it will be yakitori chicken skewers.  We've also decided to forego this week's grocery delivery, picking up the few things we actually need from Waitflower while continuing to use up what we have in the house!

redofromstart

Last night was air fryer cooked processed food from the garage freezer. 

For the last few months we have had a Monday night meal of jacket potatoes, with beans, cheese and sausages.  No sausages left but I did remember that we minced quite a lot of cheap pork which make nice porkburgers and is in the spirit of the challenge.  

The new fridge freezer is in, and I have transferred the expensive meat joints over - I stocked up on half price joints before I knew we had a freezer problem. I can carry on running the outside freezer on an extension lead for a few hours of fast freeze every day till I either rehome or use up the expensive stuff. There are plenty of ice bags in there, and I have transferred stuff into insulation bags inside the freezer itself.  The outside electrics sadly will not be a quick easy fix.

I have left some gammon out to defrost to cook tomorrow (was meant to cook for visitors on boxing day but really wasn't up to cooking) and will use the turkey crown later this week as that is rather bulky.  There is a also a leg of lamb taking up a lot of space.  Might see if either step son wants it as there is only me who likes lamb really. 

rtandon27

Well today's freezer dive was interesting - found a container of what was once lovely parsnip ginger soup - but once we warmed it, we discovered an odd taste!  OH spotted that the container had a crack in it which must have leant itself to freezer burn of some sort.

Second round of diving & we fished out the last of the H&B ginger veg chicken broth which we scored in bulk on 0li0 several months ago - it is currently warming & both smells and tastes amazing - have added some dried soba noodles of questionable age, but they too smell and taste lovely - so we are warming ourselves up on a dreich damp day with what would probably cost upwards of 6 pounds a bowl in the big smoke! - for freeish - as all the ingredients were in the house and already paid for - if I were to replace the fancy noodles (which I'm not going to) at today's prices they would equate to 85p for the two of us.  So soup at 7% of the cost of eating out - a 93% savings.

I think if I continue to remind myself just how much we are saving by reverse planning our food, it will seem more of a challenge than a chore!

MissRikkiC

I’m definitely in for the challenge RT. I used Decembers budget to totally stock the freezer in order to keep January low cost so count me in. 

We are now done with entertaining and festivities for Christmas etc. I have stripped and prepped in portions the Turkey (similarly to others, meat for sandwiches, meat for curry etc) and still got loads of Ham too. Haven’t frozen that yet as I thought it lasted much longer? I’ve made veg boxes up from cheap veg and am grateful that one of our chickens has finished her moult and is laying again so we’re at 2 eggs every 3 days now. 

We have eaten most of the cheeses we had (and definitely have no crackers left) so I will now freeze that (having learnt that I can!) and tonight we have used the remainder of the double cream (and thick cream) for dauphinois potatoes which were delicious. 

Just some YS custard to go now which I think I might just warm up and drink as a before bed treat 😆😆😆

redofromstart

We both thought that the pork patties were much nicer than sausages and we have agreed that this should be the default going forward. I think there are 4 or 5 more bags of HM mince in the freezer so that is a win.  

One of the gammons is defrosted ready for later, and I have some full sugar cola to make the nigella version, haven't made it for years so I did actually look at the original recipe. There is some demerara sugar in the baking box, will sub the mustard with Dijon and see what I have to use instead of treacle for the crust.  

EssexHebridean

Afternoon lovelies! A quiet NYE here following being out for much of the previous two days, including a relatively late-back one yesterday having headed into that there London to meet pals. Yesterday’s lunch used some of the ham, the remaining stuffing, a blob each of bread sauce and cranberry and made very delicious indeed sandwiches (YS’d bread, obviously!) Today’s lunch was stir fried veg in the spirit of “there is still an awful lot of it in the fridge!” with some very nice smoked mackerel bought from the fish man at the farmer’s market. I threw a single pack of the ready to wok noodles in with the veg and it made a “just enough for lunch” portion each. 

This evening is going to be picky bits - there is a dip that’s a day over date, and I want to get the majority of the pre-made bits from the freezer used I think as thanks to low prices electric overnight we now have a slow cooker full of tasty poultry stock needing portioning and freezing.  

We did call into Al’s earlier having been tipped off by a local pal that they had excellent reductions - and indeed they did. Jars of fresh pate for 24p (nice clip top kilner style jars too!), cheeses already well reduced and then a further 50% off…thick cut sliced chicken perfect for lunchtime rolls at 50% off…we will cope with the freezing issue - and regig planned things in order to use some bits sooner, the cheese will keep just fine, and as I happened upon a large lump of very nice cheddar that is now in the rotation to be used next too. We have also just had a conflab about whether to get a couple more pieces for freezing…

The plan for later on is to have a full brainstorming session to get a “pick n mix” list of meals for the next month together… 

rtandon27

@redofromstart - mmmmmmmmm - ham cooked in cola - I'm coming to yours for dinner! - set an extra place please 😉

Dinner last night was a planned staycation delivery done with coupons - a meal deal - XXL pizza & two sides plus a free third side! - OH had the two sides for dinner yesterday & lunch today - I had the other side and a slice yesterday for dinner & a couple of slices for lunch today - There is still an entire tupperware full of slices for later today & we still have xmas crackers & cheese & fruit to finish up.

Breakfast today (mid-morning) was coffee & cinnamon bun at the garden center - coffees were free (again with coupons) and buns were affordable seasonal fun!  It appeared that the entire retired population of our town was also making use of their free coffee coupons as the place was packed!

Our small top-up shop was abandoned as Waitflower appeared to be catering for the apocalypse!  My short list can be had later in the week, before I return to commuting and it will save us getting an on-line order until later in the month!  Money saved will be carried over to April to fund the inevitable council tax increase.

I've still have not produced that freezer audit list, but I have rearranged things that live in there to live into the appropriate drawer! Cheese drawer has morphed to include pre-prepared assorted soups & frozen bones for the next stock pot.  Vegetable/fruit drawer has both cooked veg & uncooked ready for meals as well as a mystery bag of sharp currents.  Drawer with portioned out meals needs to be shuffled & plans made to eat the contents.  Meat drawer has good amounts of mince, meat, chicken, fish & sausages ready for meals that need quick protein added to them.  Top drawer has ingredients such as pastry, curry paste, herbs, lemon & lime ready for use.  Ice drawer seems to be housing copious amounts of basil in olive oil - ready for making pesto or stirring directly into pasta.

MissRikkiC

Ham sliced into sandwich ham and chunks of ham which will most definitely be used for carbonara on a CBA night. Frozen for now as I’m getting nervous having cooked it 10 days ago. 

Mince from the freezer tonight for chili for the children, a duck leg and a cooked and shredded duck leg for the grown ups for NYE. I did buy a few extra bits but to utilise what was in the freezer in aid of Chinese foods. 

I also purchased a 6 pint carton of milk today, I usually get a 4 but I know a 6 will be used in time and so makes sense. Not sure why I don’t always do that! 

Happy NY everyone. 

EssexHebridean

@MissRikkiC I’m there too on the ham - I was going to do mine tomorrow but having read your post I decided to just go and deal with it. Slices sufficient for two main meals for us both, plus one lot for lunchtime rolls one day, and a tub of chunks/tazzy bits which will get thrown in with pasta and sauce at some stage. 

MrEH has already disrupted my meal plan by informing me that the rugby team are training on Thursday evening…sigh! I’ll cross through that pasta bake in favour of something which will work better cooked separately, then! 

The cheesey conflab reached a consensus that it was worth buying more of the bargainous cheese - by the time we headed back the Cheddar had all gone, but we got two chunks of a nice looking aged Red Leicester which will do perfectly well… another £3.18 spent but sneakily that of course just squeezes out of the December budget…! Somehow I was left with pennies over £4 in the grocery account for the  month. 

JingsMyBucket

Some good using up going on in here! Well done everyone. I was craving raw vegetables for dinner today so decided to have a “salad dinner” where I took various jars and bits out of the fridge so we can have a nice spread of options. I pulled out the waning arugula, sliced up some tomato, pulled out the sliced ham that needs to be used up, a couple small bits of cheddar and Manchego cheeses, whole sour pickles, mustard, etc. I also went to M & S today and got YS hummus and some olive ciabatta.  Mr. Jings and I split one of the ciabatta and the remaining three are left for this week. Olive oil, salt and pepper were drizzled/sprinkled on the salad and hummus as required. It was a good meal and we cleared up a bit too. But there’s still sliced ham and cheese left! A bit of arugula too. They can all go into a wrap for my lunch tomorrow. 

We had homemade peanut butter chocolate banana bread topped with vanilla ice cream for dessert. There’s enough left for two more slices of banana bread in the cake tin. 

Tomorrow I’m going to use my cheap holiday broccoli to make broccoli cheese soup for dinner. I’ll throw in some frozen cauliflower rice to use that up and a container of cream in the fridge. Oh and the opened Roquefort cheese that’s polluting our fridge 😂. We have some old stale bread on the counter that I’ll likely turn into garlic croutons to top the soup. Let’s see how many servings we get out of this soup; hopefully there will be a couple servings for the freezer. 

I also pulled some sausages out of the freezer to have alongside the soup tomorrow for an extra hit of protein. We’ll likely have fruit for dessert. I don’t want to eat ice cream two nights in a row. 

I think I’ll try roping Mr. Jings into a food inventory this Saturday so we can do a proper meal plan for the next couple weeks. Thanks everyone for contributing and have a happy new year!