Food Planning : Large Scale

suki1964

PipneyJane said:

MrsLurcherwalker said:

As I've found over the past few weeks you can do ANYTHING with chapatti flour including making crumbles, pastry, cakes and proper yeasted bread! the bread doesn't rise quite as bread flour would and got dry after 3 days (I made rolls) but tasted fantastic and I also made flatbreads which were lovely with curries and chilis.  This all from a pack I found at the very back of the store cupboard dated use by 2017!!! It's still good, no bugs, not stale and tastes lovely!

YES!!!!!

It can’t be said more often.  You don’t need 3 different types of flour in your home, just bread flour, which is what chapatti flour/atta flour is.  Americans use “all purpose” flour for everything: bread, cakes, pasta, etc.  The only reason Britons don’t do the same with plain flour is that home grown winter wheat is lower in gluten than American or Australian wheat, so gets sold as plain flour or mixed with baking powder and sold as self-raising.

- Pip


ETA:  from experience, most chapatti flour will make perfectly good bread loaves.  I’ve only ever had one sack - T0sco Value, IIRC - that didn’t rise well.  

Well there you go, you learn something new every day

I knew we imported most of our bread flour from America because of the gluten problem but I never knew "chapatti " flour was bread flour. Ive seen it as cheap as chips but never bought it thinking it was just that, chapatti flour. Lol I don't half feel daft

Still I know now and I shall replace my 3 different types of flour with it when I need flour again

suki1964

Happy Sloth, thats an impressive list of stores you have there, well done for getting it all together, and as you say, now is the time to be using it

I will go back and re read your lists later and see what suggestions I can come up with but for the cauliflower and broccoli that needs dealing with now, a popular dish around these parts is cauliflower and broccoli bake - you can use a jar of cheese sauce and top with breadcrumbs, its fine as a main dish for lunch, or serve with a sausage - meat and veggie

You can make a lot of pasta bakes with the sauces you have and using small amounts of veggie sausages or veggie chicken stirred through it, Chuck in a tin of sweetcorn, use up any bottom of the fridge bits

Swede, I would boil, mash, and mix with mash and use as a topping for some of those tins of meat or even as the topping for veggie shepherds pie - you have loads of beans and lentils 

Basically with two vegetarians in the household I would cater as a family for them so you eek out what meat protein you have for as long as possible, using meat as a kind of side dish rather then the main attraction

But I shall think on some more and come back

joedenise

I didn't know about the chapatti flour either!  DH makes a lot of bread and has about 4 or 5 different flours which he uses.  I don't use flour much at all as I avoid things like pastry and yorkies most of the time.  I probably make pasties 2 or 3 times a year and yorkies about the same.

Happy_Sloth

Thank you so much for all your help. 

I just look at the lists and get overwhelmed. I know where are no-where near starvation i can blatantly see it's quite a lot of food but i have no idea how long it will last.  I guess i'm just trying to set my mind at ease by knowing i'm going to make it last as long as possible and make the best of it. 
  
Right now im worrying myself to death.. i'm not sleeping and im having frequent panic attacks... i've tried to get help and support but i keep getting treated like a tax dodging scumbag. I know i have let my family down by my choices of career. We would not be in this boat if i had stayed in full time employment or if i'd realised what my accountant was suggesting wasn't the only option. I can't even seem to get a job ... any job i'm applying for loads but keep getting told i'm over qualified or don't even get a phone call back, i'm honestly feeling useless right now. 

greenbee

Take a bit of time out from the job hunting to get yourself sorted out at home with the meal planning, including precise plans as to when you need to buy how much milk, bread and veg. Meal planning on this kind of scale can be daunting, so go back to your veg/fridge and set the family a challenge to each come up with the most interesting plan based on that (in the order that it needs eating) and economical use of your stores. If you give them the calorie/protein requirements per person per day as well it'll keep them all very well occupied and be a good educational challenge. Our education system really doesn't include enough education around nutrition and cooking, and this is an opportunity to focus on both. 

boultdj

I've just got a bag of the chapatti flour the 10 kilo bag in wholemeal, it's on offer at the moment at Tesco for £3.50, I've got a lot of sausages in and can get eggs easily, it was just flour I was having trouble getting, so seen that, did a bit of reading to see what I could do with chapatti flour, which as the others have said is a lot, so toad in the hole is back on the menu here, a sausage each chopped up into quarters goes a long way.

PipneyJane

Happy_Sloth said:

Thank you so much for all your help. 

I just look at the lists and get overwhelmed. I know where are no-where near starvation i can blatantly see it's quite a lot of food but i have no idea how long it will last.  I guess i'm just trying to set my mind at ease by knowing i'm going to make it last as long as possible and make the best of it. 
  
Right now im worrying myself to death.. i'm not sleeping and im having frequent panic attacks... i've tried to get help and support but i keep getting treated like a tax dodging scumbag. I know i have let my family down by my choices of career. We would not be in this boat if i had stayed in full time employment or if i'd realised what my accountant was suggesting wasn't the only option. I can't even seem to get a job ... any job i'm applying for loads but keep getting told i'm over qualified or don't even get a phone call back, i'm honestly feeling useless right now. 

And breathe!

No, you aren’t useless.  Nor did you make the wrong decision at the time you gave up working for someone-else.   Your accountant gave you their best tax planning advice based on their knowledge at the time.  Very few people could have foreseen the current Virus-induced crisis.

On the job hunting front, please don’t get disheartened.  The market is considerably tighter than pre-Virus-unemployment figures would have you believe and have been for a long time.  Just keep going, keep updating your CV and keep applying.

(I feel your pain. I spent pretty much all of 2017 job hunting.  I must have applied for hundreds; I think I averaged one per day.  While I spoke to multiple agencies, I actually only had 6 “real” interviews with employers, not agencies.  When I did change jobs, they found me via LinkedIn. In my field, everything tightened up once the Government’s approach to Brexit became visible.  Things have got worse, not better since then for qualified staff.)

- Pip

Happy_Sloth

We are ok now... while all the support is in place, but i'm under no illusions.  My Mortgage on it's own, is more than my husband earns, if the mortgage break ends we can't afford to pay it... this is my dream house. We bought it as restoration project.. my mum and sister thought we where crazy, buying it because of how neglected it was.... i have literally invested my my blood sweat and tears into it.  I plan to die in this house... it would crush me to lose it.. 

Ok final list of food... Large Basement Freezer.  

I have to admit i do feel better going through it, im almost embarrassed about how much food i have and the fact i am worrying. it's the not knowing that is killing me... sure i have loads of food for the next 6 weeks but what about the next 6 months if my business doesn't pick up?  

As i said I've always been a bit of a prepper i work off having a large amount of food on hand at all times, rotating and replacing as i go so ...i realise there is quite a lot here.   

Random 

• 1 loaf of bread
• 3 cheese pizzas 
• 2 Parkin Cakes
• 2 bags of frozen berries (from the garden)
• 1 Ginger Cake
• 1 toffee pudding 
• 1 small strawberry Gateau 
• 1 small chocolate Gateau  
• 12pk of 2 american style pancakes 
• bag of profiteroles

Vegetarian

• 1 pk of sausage rolls 
• 10 bags of nuggets (each does about 2 meals) 
• 5 bags of mince (each does about 2 (3 if i stretch) meals)
• 4 pks of 8 sausages. 
• 5 pks of meatballs  (each does about 2 meals) 
• 3pks Chicken style pieces (each does about 2 meals) 

Fish 

• 14 salmon peices 
• 3 old looking bits of white fish (only good for fish pie or something now i guess) 

Meat 

• 1 gammon joint 
• 1 chicken breast joint 
• 4 lamb chops 
• 7 pks of chicken thighs (usually make a curry or something with enough leftovers for a 2nd meal) 
• 1 pk of shredded crispy chicken 
• 2 pks of burgers
• 1 pk of Chinese style rib steaks 
• 6 pks of meatballs (2 meals ish in each pack) 
• 7 pks of 6 sausages 
• 6 pks of breaded Chicken 
• 3 chorizo rings 
• 4 pks of bacon 
• 3 small bags of Chorizo 
• 9 cartons of Minced Beef 

Veg 

• Mushypeas 
• Leeks
• Kale
• Parsnips
• 3 x Carrot and Swead chunks 
• 4 x Onions 
• 2 x Butternut
• 4 x Carrot
• 2 x Broccoli and Cauli 
• 5 x sweetcorn
• 3 x green beans 
• 3 x Carrot and swead Mash 
• Peas 

 

Happy_Sloth

Ok so lists are done and now i don't know what to do with it.... How do i plan it all out?  I'm not expecting a full on meal plan for every day but an idea on how to 'ration it'  and ensure i don't reach the end trying to mix lentils with jam because there is nothing sensible left?  Also any ideas on an estimate on how long it would last. 

Little wins 
I used some Oats, Apples, Raisins and golden syrup yesterday and made flapjacks with the worst looking of the apples. They are almost gone because apparently my eldest really likes them, but i can always make more. 

I also took the old yogurt pot, from the tub of greek yogurt i finished yesterday morning for breakfast, rinsed it out with some UHT milk and managed to make more yogurt.  I isn't great yogurt as it's abit runny i don't think there was enough starter but it's fine mixed with Oats with fruit on top for breakfast. 

-taff

I think putting all your carbs in one list, along with veg, then meat,/fish/protein etc will give you more of an idea.

If you do each meal with carbs/protein/veg of some kind then you can work out how to use each thing and how long it might last. So if it's 35g [orwhatever it is]  of rice/pasta per portion, add up your weight, divide by that much and you know how many meals you can get from it.

You have time to work this stuff out because your potatoes need using first Spanish omlette will also be good for breakfast or lunch, soup from your veg [ cauli could virtually be brocolli so you could do a soup with a bit of both, or the slimming hit of cauli rice [? - not sure about that one...] Rostis are another one, grate in an onion for a more hash brown flavour...