Reverse Meal Planning

EssexHebridean

Morning all - and welcome Wendy! 

My beef stew yesterday ended up making enough that after the big bowl we each had for lunch, I've got an ice cream tub full stashed in the fridge for use probably on wednesday in place of whatever else was on the meal plan. I'm pleased as it was not the biggest piece of shin, but did seem to create quite a lot of meat when I diced it up. 

Having looked at the Agile electric pricing for today I decided to get the tatties for tonight boiled and mashed yesterday evening, meaning I can micro reheat tonight. That leaves me just needing to cook the liver, onion and bacon on the hob tonight - and at 43p/kWh you can bet your life I'll be cutting stuff small! whatever accompanying veg I go with will be microwaved along with that mash I think.

At the moment although we have the marmalade oranges they've been stashed in the fridge as it doesn't look likely that the electric through the start of this week will be cost effective to make it. Need to think what MrEH will do about lunchtime rolls as well - theoretically he needs to make them tonight but it may be we take the view to simply make a loaf overnight instead.

zafiro1984

I don't usually use beef but for a red meat stew I season the meat with plain flour, which also thickens the 'gravy' add a carrot, onion and a celery stick, bayleaf, sometimes a little thyme, I also use worcester sauce and a stock cube. Rarely, there maybe the dregs of a bottle of red wine which also goes in and occasionally I'll add a fraction of a chilli to give a bit of heat. I cook it in the Ironheart long and slow. As well as using it as a stew I'll add bits of other things eg mushrooms/vegetables and turn it into a pie, or top it with mash potato. A little can go a long way.

i've been catching up on the 'dumplings' and from what everyone says I'll put atora on my list for shopping, that seems to be the way to go.

This weekend has been a bit of a disaster regarding reverse meats, due to visitors, lots going on and little time, however nothing wasted or thrown away. So starting last night this coming week will be full of leftovers and hopefully an empty fridge by the end of the week.

Yesterday tea:- quiche, using cooked bacon bits, leftovers from a soup garnish plus mushrooms. There was a tiny bit of cream left so used it with the eggs and milk, it made quite a difference, followed by 2 buns with custard.
Today, pate/toast for lunch
Tea, I'll remove the skins on some sausages and use the meat as the outside of a scotch egg instead of pork mince, followed by the remains of a crumble  

rtandon27

Loving all the talk of stew - we don't have any red meat in the house atm, but if any happens to be on sale on Friday, I may just have to stock up and work it into next week's meal plan!

Last week's meal plan went well!  I'm surprised that we stuck so well to the plan and made in-roads into the freezer stores!

• Monday - perogies with cabbage/onions & sour cream - OH has asked if we could please stick to green cabbage as for some reason the red does not do it for him 😂  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but purple is what came in the veg box so that's what we will be eating for the foreseeable future!
• Tuesday - Salmon & rice & pak choi - I absolutely love this meal and would be happy having it three times a week if salmon was not so eye wateringly expensive! Am keeping an eye out for sales of wild salmon filets and we will freeze them, now that there is more room in the freezer!
• Wednesday - chicken & leek & mushroom pie - this is the meal that keeps giving - it made six generous portions - so next time we need to plan to freeze two portions!
• Thursday - pork mince & pepper& green bean stir fry - we skipped this meal and ate seconds of Wednesday's meal as all the ingredients were from the freezer & can just stay in there until another time
• Friday - Pizza - pepperoni & green olives & red onions - added wedges and it was true comfort food! - leftovers were had saturday lunch
• Saturday - Food Truck - if we feel well enough to venture out - poutine is great cold weather food! - went to the food truck but skipped the poutine, I had whiskey-maple wings and deep fried pickles instead, OH had a monster burger and fries - to be fair the portions are true over the pond size and we only ate half of each item, the rest was turned into lunch on Saturday
• Sunday - Roast pork & root veg - leftover meat will be portioned out for other meals - Peurto Rican Assado - so tasty - this is our third time making it, slow cooked and juicey with gorgeous crackling - also made a giant cauli cheese to go with and while the oven was on, also baked crustless mini-quiches for my breakfast for the days I go into the office this week. - We've already portioned out the remaining cauli and slices of pork for easy win no fuss meals this week!

So this week, the meal plan starts with what is already cooked and goes from there - our theme days have been shifted around accordingly...

• Monday - Chicken instead of Veg day - the last of the chicken pot pie with cauli cheese to go along side
• Tuesday - Meat instead of Fish day - seconds of roast pork and cauli cheese
• Wednesday - Veg instead of chicken - in theory a veggie & rice stir-fry but we do have some pieces of pork that could find their way into this meal!
• Thursday - Fish instead of meat - papilotte parcels with white fish, prawns, beans and cherry tomatoes - something sweet for dessert as this will not be a filling meal!
• Friday - Waitflower yellow sticker hunt - we have a small list of things to top up as well - if all else fails it will be store-bought pizza and wedges from the freezer
• Saturday - breakfast at the garden centre to use up our two free monthly coffees - if their kitchen remains closed we will go on the hunt for a breakfast bap and get the coffees for take-away. - dinner will be bao & gyoza from the freezer along with udon shelf stable noodles from the stores.
• Sunday - Roast Chicken and veg - the chicken will be rubberized and leftover meat will be portioned out for other meals, bones saved up in the freezer for the stock pot.

Breakfasts this week will be mini quiches instead of chia puddings, as I fancied a change! - also the added benefit of upping my protein and adding more veggies.

I must remember to use up our sweet potatoes (both purple and orange), our last pumpkin, a butternut squash, purple cabbage, purple carrots and some languishing parsnips!  They are all long-storing veg but tbh we are ignoring them in favour of veg we collectively like more!  May do a small batch of purple kimchi and see how it turns out!

EssexHebridean

Cabbage, carrot and red onion into coleslaw RT, just saying... ;-) 

Spendywendywoo

Eek, made beef stew as a meal prep yesterday but I didn’t have enough space in the SC to add the dumplings… I’m hoping these will cook by themselves in the oven 😬😂

Think we need a bigger SC now I’m batch cooking… any recommendations, please? X 

rtandon27

EssexHebridean said:

Cabbage, carrot and red onion into coleslaw RT, just saying... ;-) 

Haha - OH has put his foot down - no more coleslaw & no more purple veg 🤣🤣🤣 - as he does 95% of the cooking I'm going to be looking for interesting cooked veg recipes, not sure how to disguise the purple?!?

JIL

My Irish mother in law made many stews, had to be frugal with 8 children. She used a very small piece of meat and added mince, which she pulled from the pack, in small balls and added to the stew. However the mince we get here, never really worked. 

Having tried the package saving mince, now being sold in the supermarket, this works nearly the same. My father in law is impressed at my new efforts to recreate one of his old favourites. Such a shame my mother in law's dementia doesn't allow her to remember.

They were never keen on dumplings, it was either potatoes in the stew and soda bread or something called boxty, which to me was very like potato scone.

Suffolk_lass

OOH Boxty! - some great ideas for me there @JIL! I'm using the remnant of the pretty small pork shoulder this evening as a substitute for bacon in the French Peas dish that @joedenise put me on to. I could see Boxty working with that (although I recognise it is traditionally a breakfast dish) - DH is going to be hungry this evening after the last 24 hours coughing. No, I don't know why he doesn't stick with a course of medicine that gave him a decent night's sleep either.

@Spendywendywoo I have three slow cookers. I picked the third one up on Faceache MP for a fiver and it is identical to the 2nd one(different brand, but identical to the Crockpot) from the Indian food electrical shop for £25 after Mr Sl dropped my irreplaceable ceramic round dish when he opened the car door without assuming the contents might have moved in the intervening 400+ miles. The original one has a metal base that doubles as a frying pan. I never see any like that any more. Personally I would go for a 6.5L Morphy Richards if you were short of space in the pot (but have plenty of cupboard space as it is enormous!) - and definitely check out Faceache or the Bay of E - there are always new/used once for about a third the price of new - a quick look at £20-40 for a new one there

EssexHebridean

Sending #ThoughtsAndPrayers for your coleslaw-less situation RT! 

The liver and bacon last night was absolutely delicious - I did my "usual" and added a splosh of Worcester sauce, a splosh of balsamic vinegar, and plenty of ground allspice and the flavour was lush!  Ended up doing baked beans with it as frankly those were going to be the easiest thing to heat in the microwave alongside the mash - worked fine! 

I'm now turning my attention to this evening's couscous options, and am currently fancying a bit of a change about on this by switching the couscous for sachets of rice/grains. I'm also veering towards making the veg to go with mine raw rather than cooked, for a change - if so that will be mushrooms, peppers and probably carrots for me - with MrEH getting the benefit of the remining broccoli - he'll cook his no doubt when he gets in from rugby training. (And I am just waiting for his flipping rugby boys to wimp out of training again tonight, meaning I end up having to rethink this!). If so then he will get the remaining 4 rashers of streaky bacon and I will use some feta from a pack that I got very reduced in Lil's a while ago. It's still got plenty of time left on the date but might as well get used. Might add a chunk of chorizo chopped up finely into the mix there as well for a bit of added texture and flavour.  

Spendywendywoo

Ooo thank you @Suffolk_lass, I’ll have a look this evening. My current SC is MR and it’s served us well  It still works (3.5l) so will keep it for smaller preps but the switch at the front is hanging off a bit, hence why I don’t trust it whilst I’m not in the house lol. 

Today’s meals are all from stores…other than the coleslaw that I, going to purchase on my lunchtime walk! I was going to buy lettuce but really fancying coleslaw now. 

Cereal
ham and coleslaw sandwich, home made veg soup
Sausage and mash or sausage bacon and eggs… depends what the others fancy as have all ingredients in 😀. I’m hoping bacon as I want to use the potatoes to make a homemade leek and potato soup for the rest of the week….. 🤗