Planning your meals: what we are eating this week

There are so many reasons to get organised with planning your meals. It saves money and time when you know what you are going to cook each day. I also find that it helps us to eat more healthily and prevents food waste.

As I have been losing weight with Slimming World, it is even more important to plan the food in the house.

I tend to have a vague idea of breakfasts and lunches and make sure we have mostly non perishable ingredients for these. We keep the bread in the freezer anyway and take slices out as we need them. They take about 10 minutes to defrost. This prevents mouldy bread, especially when the weather is as warm as it has been.

My youngest daughter is home for the week (the one who Marie Kondo’d the food cupboard!) so I need to make sure I put the shopping away in an organised manner or I will be in trouble…

With all these good things in mind, here is my meal plan for this week. We have a busy social weekend for once!

Saturday

We have been invited to a party in the evening but food wasn’t mentioned on the invitation, so we are assuming it is drinks and nibbles. We will have an early dinner from Simply Cook. It’s called Moqueca de Peixe, and is apparently a spicy fish stew. It sounds nice, as most of the meals have been from the Simply Cook trial packs..

This contains fresh tomatoes, which will come from the greenhouse, and we will have some runner beans alongside it.

Sunday

Out for lunch to celebrate Mr S’s niece’s 7th wedding anniversary. I was shocked at that number!!! Where on earth have seven years gone? It only seems 5 minutes ago. Does this mean I am officially old?

We will have jacket potatoes and tuna with salad for tea if we are hungry, but a big breakfast as we aren’t meeting in the restaurant until 2 pm.

Monday

The courgettes are still coming, although more slowly now. Nevertheless, we will have courgette and tomato eggy bake, because it is delicious and will use some of our tomatoes too.

Tuesday

Simple baked chicken with roasted beetroot, carrots and potatoes, chard and gravy. All the veg except the potatoes will be from the garden.

I used to hate beetroot. Now that I know that the pickled stuff or the cold, boiled version on your salad aren’t the only options, I love it. I was planning to make soup, but can’t stop eating them roasted, so not sure there will be any left!

Incidentally, our carrot crop was rubbish. We used some heritage seeds that came out of a gift box and they just didn’t germinate. However…. two did! Look at these purple beauties. We will be roasting those up with the beets.

It’s a great shame they constitute the entire carrot crop though!

Wednesday

Aldi skinny sausages with new potatoes, chard and runner beans. It’s good to plan in something really easy and this won’t take any time.

Thursday

A spaghetti sauce made with tomatoes, courgettes, celery, garlic, peppers and maybe a bit of bacon. I generally replace onions with celery these days as I find they are better for my digestion.

Friday

Always an easy day for food. Today will be omelettes with bits and bobs thrown in them, air fried potatoes and grilled tomatoes.

Growing our own food is saving us a lot of money at the moment. Now that I am self employed and working from home, it is easy to pick and prep them as I go. This means they are always super fresh.  We are very pleased with the veg patch this year.

Are you planning your meals? What’s on the menu this week?

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.