As I said in last week’s meal plan post, I planned a lot of our meals around what was in the freezer. That worked really well. However, I still have to clear a little more food out before I can defrost it, so will carry on eating from the stores this week.
It makes sense to use and replenish the food in the house. I like a healthy store cupboard and to have food in for unforeseen events. There is a useful post here about making family meals from store cupboard essentials if you are the same.
Meal planning saves a lot of money. No more scratching our heads about what to eat, before phoning for a takeaway. We can plan for quick and easy when we know we will be busy or slow and scrumptious if we want something a little more special. On top of that, it’s quicker to get round the supermarket when you write a list based on your meal plan and it massively reduces food waste.
By the time you read this, we will be on our way home from a weekend in Norfolk. I organised it as a surprise for Mr S’s birthday. So our meal plan will start on a Sunday this week.
Eating from the stores meal plan
Sunday
I’m not sure exactly what time we will arrive home, but I expect we will need a quick and easy dinner. We have chips in the freezer, so I think fried eggs, chips and peas will do the job perfectly.
In fact, egg and chips is one of my all-time favourite meals!
Monday
Monday is usually a busy work day for me, catching up with sending out the post, going through emails and filming a new YouTube offering will fill my day. (I am trying to get into a routine of publishing a YouTube post every Tuesday. If you haven’t subscribed to my channel yet, please come and have a look – I would hugely appreciate the support.)
Anyway, dinner will be simple and filling. I will make a macaroni cheese and perhaps bulk it out a bit with some mixed frozen veg and some bacon.
Tuesday
Lentil shepherd’s pie, as we have red lentils in the larder that have been there a while. I also froze some mushrooms that weren’t going to get used before we went away, so will chuck some of those in too. We will eat this with some shredded cabbage.
I will save a portion of this for Thursday, when it will be just me here for dinner.
Wednesday
We still have some of the large pack of salmon in the freezer, so we will have one of those each with a jacket sweet potato and some frozen broccoli.
Thursday
Leftover shepherd’s pie with veg from the freezer.
Friday
There are a couple of portions of chicken casserole in the freezer, so it is time to eat those up! This will be nice with creamy mashed potatoes, carrots and a can of sweetcorn.
Saturday
My daughters are coming to stay overnight. Yahay! One lives locally so I have seen plenty of her, but the other two are in London and Brighton so we haven’t seen much of them due to the pandemic. They will both do a quick covid test before they come, to be on the safe side.
As we are celebrating one of my daughter’s birthdays, we will have a takeaway for a change and I will make a birthday cake.
How nice to build a little normality into this week’s meal plan 🙂
What are you eating this week? Are you having a clear out and eating from the stores too?
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.
Chrissie says
I have done a meal plan just for me, my weight has sky rocketed and I feel awful, I am a lone vegan in the house so I have done myself a meal plan for weight loss.,breakfast, lunch and dinners, calories all worked out to come to 1400 a day , 14 days rotation of meals, all low call tasty versions of most of my favourite things, this should make it easier to stick to and I won’t be bored, quite a few meals can be prepared 3 days ahead and refrigerated which should help me keep on track.Some of my meals can have some meat or fish on the side for him indoors and he always appreciates a slice of bread and butter on the side.
shoestringjane@outlook.com says
Don’t feel awful – not many of us haven’t gained weight over lock down. We both have too so starting cutting the junk out this week
Judy Tieger says
I have watched and subscribed to your YouTube channel. Very enjoyable as are your blogs, which i I have been receiving for some time now.. I also watch another frugal channel from England and she recommended you. Her channel is called Frugal Jo.
shoestringjane@outlook.com says
Thanks! Yes, I am a fan of Frugal Jo too
Kim Carberry says
I hope you had a lovely weekend.
Egg and chips is such an underrated meal. So simple but so good.
Great meal plan. x
Katy Stevens says
Sounds like you’ve got a great week of meals planned! Hope you’re well. Thanks for linking up!
Sarah - Mud Cakes and Wine says
How wonderful you can have your daughters over we all need some normailty back. I love lentil sheppards pie it works so well
Vivi says
I have a good tip for people who just cannot stick to a meal pan, or for whom designing the plan is just too much effort. Instead of planning out meals in detail for a week, just write a list with everything that needs to be eaten soon – perishable veggies (especially salads), dairy products (especially opened packs) and fresh meats and things like leftover rice or cooked potatoes go on top of the list, and then the long-storing vegetables (especially if they’re already starting to go off, like germinating potatoes or wilting carrots – which by the way can be rehydrated by putting them in a bowl with cold water for half a day; then they’re turgid again and much easier to peel), any dry goods that are nearing their use-by date (especially nuts, dried legumes and wholegrain products, which can go rancid) and any frozen things you want to get rid of to make space in the freezer (same with veggies that take up bed space in the garden when you’re doing pot-seeding and succession planting). Then when you want to cook dinner and everyone you need to feed is actually able to stomach more than vegetable broth, you look at this list and try to combine things into meals, from as high on the list as possible. You could make a habit of looking through the list during ad breaks in your evening TV entertainment, so as to plan meals for the next couple of days. I find that it’s very satisfying to look at the list a couple of weeks into the system, when lots of things are crossed out and you can see how much you’ve saved in time instead of forgetting it at the back of the fridge. I also have a rough-and-ready system of differently shaped bullet points, exclamation marks and underlinings to remind me just how urgently an ingredient needs to be used up. (I.e. if something will spoil within a few days or if it will survive another couple of weeks but not much more.) Things that are relatively long-storing but will be used so rarely that they might go bad anyway, like the opened bags of nuts or seeds in the baking cupboard, go in a special side-section of the list, so I’ll remember to consider if I can add them to a meal – e.g. hacked peanuts strewn over an Asian-style stir-fry.)
Of course, this approach requires some creativity and an encyclopedic knowledge of the contents of your non-perishable food store, because you’ll have to add ingredients to your meals that are not on the list, but I’m pretty sure anyone who lives on a shoestring budget will know what they still have in the larder and what they’ve run out of at any given moment. (I keep a small wipe-able whiteboard on the fridge with a list of things that I’ve run out of, adding non-everyday, non-perishable ingredients, like e.g. spices or baking supplies, as I use them up, which makes assembling the shopping list easier, especially if the shopping trip or online order is made by someone who is not the main cook in the household.)
Kim Cooper says
Delicious week of meals planned. Have a great week
x