Reverse Meal Planning

rtandon27

Dinner tonight was completely from the stores - broccoli & mushrooms & lardons from the freezer - gnocchi & thick cream both shelf stable from the cupboard - super tasty & quick, fried up in a pan with the cream for sauce with some dried grated cheese on top for extra flavour.

joedenise

Definitely using up stuff today!  Making a Spanish omelette for lunch with bits from the fridge and we'll have LO boiled bacon from yesterday with chips and beans and maybe some pickles as well - everything in stores or fridge.

Suffolk_lass

Make do day - we had courgette soup, then the end of a loaf of dark rye bread with hardboiled eggs, homegrown lettuce and cucumber and probably had this too late. It meant we were not hungry by 8.30pm so we shared a pot of shop-bought hummus with veg sticks, using up another cucumber, and then had some fresh and frozen berries stirred through a dollop of reduced (35p) extra thick cream.

I picked up a special buy pack of steaks after someone on here referenced them (see one, want one moment!) and have frozen two, keeping three out because our son will join us for supper one evening this week (a warm one!). I also bought steak burgers but they are all repackaged into twos and packed in my re-packed freezer (freed up a third of it!). I read through the fast 800 site yesterday, having resolved to lose two stone as soon as possible.

ailz95

I had a supermarket delivery on Saturday evening.  All meals planned out - but - they managed to deliver at least 1 item short for each meal.  So now I'm listing what I have got and going through cookbooks, the internet and my brain to use them all.  The only thing I'm not able to factor in is 2 packets of beansprouts - well 1 I can, but not the other.  We're vegans and DH isn't fond of vegetables!

joedenise

I've found that you can freeze beansprouts and they're fine to use in a stirfry at a later date.  I generally only use half a pack at a time and freeze the other half for another day.

Using up some veg from the fridge for lunch with sweet chilli noodles - chopped/grated veg stirred through cold noodles and then sweet chilli sauce stirred through.

Will be making a veg biryani for dinner tonight as well which will use up some more veg.

rtandon27

joedenise said:

I've found that you can freeze beansprouts and they're fine to use in a stirfry at a later date.  I generally only use half a pack at a time and freeze the other half for another day...

Thanks for the tip!  We stopped buying fresh beansprouts and switched to tinned as that second-half of the pack never got used!  OH loves them, so great to know they freeze successfully.

Dinner last night was a pack of tortellini from the fridge, pasta sauce from the store-cupboard, mushrooms from the freezer & spinach from the veg box - didn't realize the spinach pack was 4X the size of the usual one, so now will need to work it into the rest of the week's meals to use it up.  Dessert was a 'light' cheesecake pot, a sale item that came with yesterday's grocery delivery.  Totally unrepeatable - give me the full-fat version every time

Suffolk_lass

rtandon27 said:

joedenise said:

I've found that you can freeze beansprouts and they're fine to use in a stirfry at a later date.  I generally only use half a pack at a time and freeze the other half for another day...

Thanks for the tip!  We stopped buying fresh beansprouts and switched to tinned as that second-half of the pack never got used!  OH loves them, so great to know they freeze successfully.

I'd never tried freezing beansprouts - that's great. Upon reflection, I suspect they are like courgettes; fine to cook with, but probably not great when defrosted in salads or grilled 

We had jumbo sausage and homegrown salad with shop-bought coleslaw for supper. I need to play tetris with my new chest freezer - I've got so much veg to freeze for winter!

joedenise

No definitely no use for salads, they're a big too soggy for that!  They're fine in stirfry.

Must be great being able to grow lots of veg.  I can only grow in pots so only grow a few things.  This year I'm doing courgettes (we've had quite a few so far, there's some in the fridge to use up and loads more still growing), butternut squash which are covering half the garden the way they sprawl!, French beans, peppers.  My neighbour gave me a much bigger pepper and I think it's a cayenne rather than a bell pepper judging by the colour of the fruits!

rtandon27

Monday evening while playing fridge tetris, I prepped the swiss chard, cavalo nero & a lonely courgette for the freezer - in hindsight I should have done the same with the leftover spinach - I'm surprised how well the frozen leafy greens cook up, a quick fry in the pan with some onions or on their own, and you'd never have known they were frozen!

Last night's dinner was white fish in watercress cream sauce with mashed potatoes - the watercress needed a lot of picking over to remove woody stems - think that the season for that may have come to an end!

Tonight's dinner adventure is a new traybake recipe that will hopefully use up some languishing store-cupboard ingredients - almond butter & almonds.  Will report back on results - I'm always dubious when we veer away from our tried and true recipes - lol - but OH likes the cooking challenge & the 

Suffolk_lass

We had a plate of runner beans with butter and grated cheese just to get on top of the produce glut. I froze half a dozen bags of produce too with tomatoes and dwarf beans in the main.

Our neighbour's son borrowed a hammer yesterday and when he returned it I asked him to bring his ferret round to look for rabbits. None in our burrows but they are clearly using them as a bit of a pit stop (or were until two male ferrets visited and left their deterrent musk) in the old warren, and feeding on my plants. Veg beds are mostly protected but astrantia and campanulas are clearly delicious (just stumpy stalks left!). 

I have steaks out ready to cook but sadly our Son has developed a cough so went for a test yesterday (he's in a front-line key worker role) and won't be coming for dinner after all this week. I will freeze one to go with the other two I froze when I shopped on Monday. Fingers crossed all is well for him