A simple meal plan for a busy week

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With one thing and another, last week’s meal plan went to pot a bit. I was helping with the election counting postal votes and ended up working an evening, which I wasn’t expecting. Mr S was also out for dinner another night, so I made myself something simple instead of what was planned.

So this week’s simple meal plan will include some of the meals we never got round to eating. That’s how life is sometimes! You need to be flexible. As long as we eat the perishable items it doesn’t matter if we don’t stringently stick to the plan.

This week, we are still eating some plant based meals, but keeping food light and healthy. Christmas will be here soon enough and is generally a time of over indulgence. I did publish a post about surviving a Slimming World Christmas recently. I will be aware of what I am eating as I don’t want to put on a lot of weight, but I am not being super strict.

I also have a lot of niggling little tasks I want to get done before Christmas (like get the decorations out of the loft and put them up, do the wrapping, properly plan and buy the food, etc). So I am sticking to a simple meal plan for a busy week.

This week’s simple meal plan

Saturday

We still haven’t had the Simply Cook* beef Massiman mix. If you remember, I was going to try to make a veggie version using Quorn and mushrooms instead of beef. So we will have that on Saturday with some green beans from the freezer.

We did end up using the pulled chicken mix instead. It was delicious! We made it with some free range chicken breasts, but I am wondering if it would work with jack fruit. This has a similar texture to meat but a totally different flavour. I think it might work quite well, so perhaps will give that a go next time.

As usual, I adapted it slightly to use what we had. You are supposed to serve it in a bun with a home made coleslaw. We had wraps and a carrot salad, as I can’t eat cabbage. We also had normal potato wedges instead of sweet potato wedges. It worked well and was really tasty, so I will buy that one again.

If you are interested in trying Simply Cook, you can get a recipe box for just £3 here*.

Sunday

I bought some cod fillets reduced the other day and stuck them in the freezer. So we will be having them with parsley sauce, mashed potatoes and broccoli.

Simple but yummy, and I never can resist a yellow sticker bargain.

Monday

Vegetable Vietnamese noodle soup, otherwise known as ‘Pho’. I will probably do my own thing, but base it on a recipe such as this one.

Sometimes I put chicken or prawns in this soup, but as we are cutting back the amount of fish and meat we eat I will focus on the veg.

Tuesday

Chick pea, spinach and potato curry, using this recipe from the Aldi website, with rice. It looks tasty and uncomplicated. I will use some of the frozen chard that we grew on our vegetable patch instead of spinach.

Wednesday

Red pepper and butternut squash sausages with air fried potato chips, peas or beans. I bought these from Aldi I think but have yet to try them. Hope they are nice!

Thursday and Friday

I have quite a lot of peppers in the fridge. One will go in the pho, but I will make a tuna penne with black olives, and chop up a pepper in the sauce to use another one.

I will do my usual trick of making enough for two days so dinner will be sorted on Friday as well.

If there is salad we will eat that with this. If not, some vegetables from the freezer. I always keep green beans and peas in there, plus have some home grown veg too.

My simple meal plan is just that – simple! It may not be the most exciting week’s eating, but I think it is pretty balanced, healthy and budget friendly.

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