Eating on a budget: this week’s meal plan

Day one of Frugal February! My no spend January may be over, but I intend to continue to be as frugal as possible. This means eating on a budget, so this week’s meal plan reflects that.

I want to eat as healthily as I can without breaking the bank. However, I don’t want loads of fussy food that takes ages to prepare.

Lots of fruit and vegetables, a little meat and fish and plenty of cheap, filling carbs like brown rice, pasta and potatoes should do the trick.

I buy most of our food from Aldi, which always helps anyone eating on a budget. The food is good quality as well as being excellent value.

I have mentioned in a previous post that I popped into Iceland last week to buy some fish and meat. It’s not often that I do this, but I happened to be passing. There is a lot of convenience food in there, which I tend to avoid, but you can buy plain basics, which are good value. I bought enough to keep us going for most of February.

My eating on a budget meal plan

Saturday

I wasn’t organised enough to make the planned chicken jambalaya in the slow cooker that was on last week’s menu, so I will have another go this week. This recipe is one from a book I was gifted for review, Feed Your Family For £20 a Week: 100 Delicious Budget-Friendly Meals You’ll All Enjoy* by Lorna Cooper.

It’s a lovely looking book and the recipes are straightforward family food.

I did cook the chicken hash recipe from this book as planned last week. It was really delicious, but there is no way it would feed 8, as suggested. More like three at the most!

Sunday

I am out all day today at a blogger’s workshop in London. Dinner is going to be something super easy as a result. Probably omelettes and jacket potatoes with some salad.

Mr S can put the spuds on before he comes to pick me up from the station!

Monday

Home made soup with cheese and bread. I will probably make pea soup, as it’s really nice and super quick to make.

I also need to use a bread mix I picked up on a whim a while ago in Aldi. If I have time I will make this in the morning, as it will be nice with the soup.

Tuesday

Mr S’s favourite – spaghetti bolognese! However, I will be using a tip from the Feed Your Family for £20 a Week book and replacing some of the meat with lentils.

The idea is to make a large batch and freeze half. I am all for a bit of batch cooking, so will do this and have another meal ready for whenever we need something quick. I am interested to see if the portions are more generous on this one.

Hopefully there will be salad left to eat with this, but if not I bought frozen corn on the cob when I visited Iceland.

Wednesday

Smoky chicken with chick peas and rice. This is a good way to stretch the amount of chicken needed in a recipe. It also contains my favourite smoked paprika.

Thursday and Friday

Spaghetti cheese casserole, which will make enough for tonight, tomorrow night, and possibly even lunch on Saturday. I don’t mind eating the same thing more than one day in a row, especially when I am working all day. I will make it with pasta rather than spaghetti I think, since we will have had spaghetti once already this week.

I like food that saves time and money, and often deliberately cook enough food for two nights.

If you are interested in trying the recipes from Lorna Cooper’s book, come follow me on Instagram. I will be running a giveaway in the next couple of weeks and have two copies for my winners.

As usual, I am linking up with Katy Kicker for her meal planning linky. For more of my frugal food ideas see here.

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