Save money by planning your meals

I publish weekly meal plans for many reasons, but the main one is that you can save money! If you buy too much food on your grocery shop you can end up throwing some of it away. If you buy too little, you are likely to find yourself making extra trips to the shops.

Meal planning helps you stick to your budget. If you have your whole week’s food planned (or even your whole month’s food for those of you who don’t mind deciding that far ahead) you are far less likely to give into fast food, a takeaway or convenience food on your way home from school or work.

At the moment I am doing far less cooking than usual because I have two slipped discs. I think this is a pretty sound reason to use a few ready made products! However, I am still planning dinners for the whole week. I am going back to working mornings next week so I am keeping it simple.

This week’s meal plan to save money

Saturday

I had an unexpected bonus from work this month so we are celebrating and having a Chinese takeaway. It is exceptionally rare for us to do this. But even mega tightwads have got to push the boat out occasionally!

Sunday

We have some smoked salmon trimmings in the freezer that need eating so I will be making this fancy but easy looking smoked salmon and spinach fettucine. Except we don’t have fettucine so I will use spaghetti! This will be eaten with salad and a ready to bake baguette from Lidl.

Monday

Cashew nut and vegetable stir fry and noodles. Toasting the cashews makes this simple and healthy meal really delicious.

Tuesday

First day back at work, so I am keeping dinner easy. A pork chop for Mr S and another of the Linda McCartney cheese and leek plaits from Tesco that I had last week for me. I really enjoyed them and will be buying these again. We will have potatoes, broccoli and carrots with this.

Wednesday

Omelettes with baked sweet potatoes and frozen corn on the cob. Maybe some salad too if there is some in the fridge that needs eating up.

Thursday

Mushroom stroganoff with rice. I will base it on this recipe from BBC Good Food.

Friday

My favourite creamy coconut lentil dahl with chapatis. This is an amazingly cheap and comforting dinner, and all the feedback I have had from readers is that they love it too.

Sometimes I shift things around depending on my energy levels and mood, but generally stick to the meal plan. Do you meal plan to save money? For more on meal planning to save money, see this post.

As usual, I am linking up with Katy Kicker. If you want more ideas on meal planning and saving money, take a look at her blog.

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