Healthy and frugal: this week’s meal plan

To help me reduce our grocery bill, I am planning as many meals as possible this week. I don’t want to buy more than we need or waste anything, and I want to cook meals that are healthy and frugal.

Meal planning really does help lower the food bill. It may seem a faff and time consuming to do, but in fact takes me around 10 minutes. Ten minutes that then saves me a lot more thinking time and means we always have all the ingredients in that are required.

This weekend my daughter has come back from university for the first time since the pandemic started. It’s just a flying visit. She lost her job because the shop she worked for went into administration, but the new owners have asked her back to help them shift the old stock. This is great news as it is at least three months work, possibly more. It will give her breathing time to hopefully find something else.

So I will plan her into our meals for the weekend. I am giving her some of the food from my stores to take back to help keep her costs down. She needs to be healthy and frugal too!

It has been so lovely to see her. Archie was ecstatic too!

Healthy and frugal meal plan

Saturday

Pork chops with apples, mustard mashed potatoes, kale and gravy.

We will also have a late brunch – eggs, bacon, hash browns, tomatoes and mushrooms.

Sunday

We are all out for lunch. Darling daughter will be with her dad, as it’s father’s day, and Mr Shoestring and I will have lunch with my dad, who was 89 this week! Happy birthday, Ron!

As my mum is making pizza and salad, but I am not eating gluten, I am going to roast some chicken thighs and take them along. I am forever tweaking my diet and I don’t want her to think I am a pest!

For dinner, we will try another Simply Cook* mix. I still have a ton of chicken breasts in the freezer that I bought yesterday, so we will try the chicken saag curry with brown rice.

Monday

Another Simply Cook recipe. This time we will have the Grilled Halloumi* salad. I love halloumi anyway, but this marries it with pesto, which is quite delicious.

We will use some of the home grown lettuce to make a salad alongside this. Got loads of it, but need to be sowing some more now to keep a succession going.

This recipe also calls for courgettes. Ours are on the way, but not quite ready, so I will buy some. From next week we will be eating home grown, though.

Tuesday

Cod with good, old-fashioned parsley sauce. I will cheat and use a packet because, why not!? We will have new potatoes and broccoli with this.

Wednesday

Spaghetti bolognese. As I am not eating wheat, I will make courgetti with mine. I might also go for some keto garlic bread as we have mozzarella that needs using up. I use this recipe.

Thursday

Beef Massiman. This is another Simply Cook* kit that has been hanging around in the cupboard for a bit, so I will use it up. This recipe calls for sirloin or rump steak, but I will make it a bit cheaper with some frying steak I think.

Friday

Jacket sweet potatoes with omelettes and salad. The usual end of week easy tea!

Other meals

As I no longer eat bread, lunches tend to be based around eggs, salads or home made soup. Occasionally I have porridge for breakfast, but got out of the habit of eating it when I was on a low carb diet. So now I tend to go for full fat Greek yogurt and berries. Perhaps I will revert to porridge when the weather is colder!

I tend to snack quite a bit, usually on nuts, cheese and oatcakes and the odd bag of corn chips.

I am experimenting with cutting sugar and wheat completely from my diet rather than going fully low carb or keto now, as I said last week. It appears to be helping with my fibromyalgia symptoms but, if I am honest, not as much as doing full keto. But it’s an experiment, so let’s see how we go for a few weeks.

When I found a packet of chocolate hobnobs in the cupboard last week, I admit to cheating! I can’t have things like that around as I just can’t resist for long. This week I will make some more keto chocolate mug puddings and might even try the peanut butter version.

I am also intending to make some low carb oat cookies. Not quite hobnobs, but still….

So that’s my healthy and frugal meal plan for the week. What are you eating?

I am joining in with Katy Kicker’s meal planning linky. Check out her meal plan this week too. You can see more of my favourite food ideas and recipes here. 

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