Reverse Meal Planning

Suffolk_lass

Hmm. Time to look at electric tariffs again as mine expires in a month. We now have the refitted and functioning solar system with one 10kw battery charging up overnight. I'm just not that organised to use a supercheap period. This morning I have the oven on, gently warming a bucket of honey, a heater on to warm that room, so it flows better, the dishwasher is rinsing and warming jars, the dishwasher ran a whole cycle this morning as Mr forgot to set it last night (9.6p/kwh overnight) - at least the panels are generating and the battery is being depleted - I am drawing over 4.2kw currently! - just under 1kw from the panels, just over 2.5 from the battery, 600w from the grid! - I could turn the electric heater under my desk off but it is lovely and warm, and my fingers are not dead!

I cunningly redeployed the slow cooker casserole dish into the oven, as that was on, and melted the plastic handle on the lid last week. Hmm!

I shall stick to simple food today. Bread made yesterday with soup and a salad this evening!

zafiro1984

We had our usual visitor at the weekend. I try to plan ahead but it doesn't always work out and I end up freezing what I can in the small freezer under the fridge. It can get a bit chaotic in the three small drawers so on Monday in an effort to be frugal I emptied everything onto the worktop and sorted out what (or as I like the think - planned) what meals I could make.

Quite pleased with myself:- so far we've had for lunch:- toasted ham sandwiches - a bit frugal on the ham but I stretched it with cheese. LO butternut and parsnip soup, I had a couple of slices of brioche bread so that made eggy bread today. I've still got some LO roast lamb leg and the bones - not enough for a tea but I'll use the slow cooker and turn it into soup this evening ready for tomorrow's lunch.

Tea has been - Monday - a bit of the ham with some cooked chicken thighs, turned into a pie, I had frozen in ice cubes some Campbells concentrated chicken soup, so made the sauce using that. veg added out of the main freezer. I found four unused sausages, so with roasted carrots, butternut squash, onion and potatoes I made a Yorkshire pudding type of tea yesterday. The only effort I had to make was making onion gravy, the rest cooked itself. Tea tonight is salmon that somehow escaped my attention and hid in the bottom drawer, DH will have chips, I'll find some veg to go with mine. DH always has to have a pudding:- too sweet a tooth. LO crumble on Monday, Tuesday was LO choc cake with custard, Tonight is a couple of LO orange and sultana buns reheated in the microwave with more custard.

I've still got quite a lot of bits and bobs still in the freezer but It's starting to have some space and the best thing is I've not really visited he main freezer this week, a win win week

Suffolk_lass

My fridge is rammed. My body is bigger. I need to go light but the food needs using. I am going for baked salmon tonight, with simple, plain steamed veg, and a minced beef ragu in a pasta bake tomorrow. I did do a main chest freezer dive on Monday and brought all sorts in. I just need to keep plodding away. I have two pots (one and a half really) of soup in the fridge - courgette. My favourite for lunch with a slice of buttered toasted hm sourdough

fionaandphil

Salmon is obviously very popular this week - maybe the brighter days. We too are having some leftover salmon tonight, for us cooked up with pasta to make a fishy carbonara. DH and DS also have a sweet tooth so I am thinking more apple crumble to use up the apples we are still working through from last summer - they seem never ending despite sharing with family, friends and neighbours. I like to think our freezers are clearning but I would be lying 😄

zafiro1984

Tomorrow is the start of a new week so I'm trying a new strategy. In the small freezer under the fridge I'm left with just a few bits and bobs, nothing too exciting . So my new strategy was to "shop" in the other freezers for five different meals, plus five desserts and five lunches. I thought five would be a good number as I will probably have LO's and by lateral thought I may be able to make five into seven meals. Also I have loads of frozen veg having taken serious advantage of the 15p offers over Easter.

Here goes;- Lunches… Out came HM duck pate thanks to the half price duck livers from Mr Sa.., two lots of pre made veg soup, some cooking bacon - to be teamed with eggs or a topping on soup, already have a bit of cheese in the fridge. and bread of course. I'll see how far that goes. I also got out some biscuit dough, and unbaked buns.

Tea:- More thought went into this, tonight will be chicken in breadcrumbs which has been in the fridge 2 days so need using. Out came a venison hock, a small beef roast, sausages, 2 pieces haddock, and pork mince. dessert:- A fruit compote made last Christmas, some fruit granita (may be miss-spelt), premade apple/bramble crumble, premade pear and choc pudding (curtesy bbc good food) and ginger icecream.

I'll see how that goes, the freezers are so full I need to stop making things and start using things, hopefully to also save on the pennies

Suffolk_lass

We used to divide our freezers up @zafiro1984 so that the one in the kitchen is for opened packets (peas, spinach eg), rectangular take away boxes of ingredients (pressure cooked chick peas eg) and butter - oh and any bread for toast and ice cream. I have a few portion-sized bags for two of us in there so that is my go-to for most suppers

The chest freezer normally has meat and bread (shop bread) - no bread in there now as I make it but several bags of fruit due to turning off the commercial freezer

The fridge freezer (aka beer fridge) in the little cardboard lined tool-shed has ready made ((home-made leftovers) stuff like soup or uncooked wellingtons, pots of chilli, and so on, plus one drawer of raw chopped rhubarb (not used over winter)

The upright, commercial one in the pig shed (!) has all the garden produce - only this is off currently and there is a carrier bag in the bee freezer full of ziplock bags of plums and blackcurrants

The bee freezer normally has frames of drawn comb, to prevent wax moths getting productive and is there for standby. As I say, with the big commercial one off it's all a bit haphazard. I was going to put that one in the workshop but we bought a truck with the money to replace the pig shed so all delayed at the moment.

So after a day teaching, I got home at 4.30 yesterday, and cooked a mince-based sauce. I finished off the rinsings of a large tabasco bottle - whoops - it was a bit fiery - so I padded it out with a cheese sauce and made two dishes with more pasta than I originally envisaged. The other one is in the fridge, for an easy, post bee-day supper. I flaked both the salmon fillets into a creamy pea sauce and we had that with pasta last week (too much pasta but so good and quick!

EssexHebridean

I'm continuing the salmon vibe this week with salmon pasta on my plan for later in the week.

Freezer 2 is frustratingly close to being empty but I'm really not convinced I'm going to manage to get enough out of freezer 1 that the remaining dribs and drabs can transfer across there to allow for defrosting before we head off for our camping trip. It might be possible to do a little more tetris - but whether it will be enough is a whole other question.

I've got lamb to take out for tomorrow night's tea - will be had with couscous I think. That should also see off some roasted mushrooms.

If the dates are long enough on the yogurts we have then the last pack of TGTG hot cross buns could come out and act as puddings for tomorrow/wednesday…

The salmon pasta will definitely deal with some frozen veg, plus some of last year's pesto - in fact I may even throw caution to the wind there and simply use the remainder of that.

Must also check the fridge and see if there is anything forgotten in there.

EssexHebridean

Gah - well we are NOT going to manage to get freezer 2 emptied I don't think - I had a little trial run moving stuff to Freezer 1 last night to see what might work, and it's the bits of turkey carcass that are in there waiting for stock making that are the biggest issue - I will have another look after I'm done with cooking tea tonight, but my suspicion is that it will be a no.

Suffolk_lass

Only you can decide if the pieces of turkey carcass remaining are too much to process this evening versus the cost of running the freezer while you are away versus scrapping them. I know you hate food waste, so I think I know the answer!

EssexHebridean

They definitely were, last night was all about packing the car, getting as much water on the garden as possible and the various other things one needs to do ahead of going camping for a week! However, this morning when I was getting the cold packs out for the coolbox, I had a bit of a juggle about with things, and managed to squeeze everything that needed to stay frozen into freezer 1. Freezer 1 is as packed as a very packed thing, but F2 is switched off and has sufficient newspaper stuffed underneath to absorb anything that runs out of it as it defrosts!

In the interests of exactly the no food waste thing, all the spare fruit has been stashed into the cold box for eating while we're away, too, and a couple of bits of cheese which might not be in such good nick when we get home have also found a corner in there - I'll be searching out some nice bread to have with some of that tomorrow evening I think!