Meal plan for the coming week

• Wed – pizza: homemade pizza base with mozzarella cheese and pepperoni already in the fridge ready for the topping. No additional cost as no extras required
• Thu – potato & leek bake with sausages (about £3.50 in total)
• Fri – kedgeree (everything is in the freezer/storecupboard)
• Sat – At friends for a BBQ!
• Sun – Roast lamb, new potatoes and veg. I already have half a leg of lamb in the freezer as it was on offer over Easter so I don’t need to buy this. Obviously will need to buy fresh vegatables as an accompaniment and something to make for dessert.
• Mon – chicken with noodles (£4 in total)
• Tue – tortellini and garlic bread (everything in freezer)
• Wed – pizza again. Need the mozzerella cheese and some toppings (about £2.50)

Fortunately there are at least two days which I don’t really have to buy for. On Wednesday’s we always tend to have pizza (homemade!) since this is the night when I get my groceries delivered and it’s just a nice easy meal that takes no time to prepare (the breadmaker does all the hard work) and I also have the meat, which is the biggest cost, for the roast dinner on Sunday.

Shopping List

• new potatoes
• white potatoes
• leeks
• sausages
• chicken breasts
• mozzerella

Amazingly, all the ingredients that I need to make these dinners will only cost me around £10. On top of this I need to add my usual weekly items, like bread, milk, fruit and vegetables – this usually tends to increase the bill somewhat and this week is no exception – total bill now is just under £40 which is a whooping £30 of extras!

Having said that, the extras include cereals for breakfast, foodstuffs for lunches, a few storecupboard replacements (rice, spaghetti, port) and the whole lot was under £50 which was what I was aiming for so I’m impressed. I know that next week will be slightly more expensive as I need to stock up on washing powder and dishwasher tablets…

I always try to plan my meals which means that I always tend to buy what I need in order to prepare the meals for the coming week. The problem is, that over the last month or so my food bills have really crept up, so that last week the bill was just over £100 for the weekly shop for four people (2 adults, 1 child and 1 toddler). I used to get away with a bill between £40-£50 a week although admittedly 1 week out of 4 it might reach £80 as that was the week that I would stock up on storecupboard items and the other weeks would tend to be the fresh product – meat, vegetables, fruit, etc. but still now I am averaging £80 a week instead of only once a month!

In an attempt to get back down to more usual levels (and also more affordable since my budget assumes the lower grocery cost) I have decided to go through my paperwork, through those recipes that I have torn out of magazines – you know the ones – the ones that not only look tasty but also state that they are cheap and good for budgets

The problem with my “paperwork” is that there is so much of it, spanning over far too many years, that it is taking some time to go through. Especially since I am working through them, scanning them so I still have the recipes, and so that they are much easier to search through, so this is taking some time. So much so, that this list is more of a work in progress – as it all is….. – and will be added to as I come across more recipes for a budget. However I do need enough for the week ahead. In this vein, I will also try and list my meal plan for the coming week.

This makes a normal 1lb loaf cake, which is about 10-12 slices depending on how thick the slices are

Ingredients

• 100g (4oz) butter, softened, plus extra for greasing (£0.39)
• 75g (3oz) light muscovado sugar (£0.14)
• 2 medium free range eggs, beaten (£0.49)
• 150g (5oz) dried figs, sliced (£1.19)
• 125g (4 1/2 oz) wholemeal self raising flour (£0.17)
• 1 tsp mlxed spice (£0.12)
• 1 tbsp golden syrup (£0.10)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 1 60″C /325′F / Gas Mark 3. Thoroughly grease and line the base of a 1 lb (19x10x5cm) loaf tin.
2. Cream the butter and the sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and mix together thoroughly.
3. Mix the figs into the flour to coat evenly. Fold this and all the remaining ingredients into the creamed mixture. Spoon into the prepared tin
   and level the surface.
4. Bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a rack. Serve in thick
   slices just as it is, or toasted.

Generally all of these items are in my store cupboard, it’s only the figs that I need to buy in specially to make this. However I’ve just done a quick search and if I had to buy everything in from scratch this would cost an amazing £8.78 – however or course there would be quite a bit left over. The cost of the usuage is in brackets after the ingredients in the list above, for small amounts I have assuming that I used a tenth of the total weight, and the “real” cost is £2.60. If this is something that is to be made for a snack at lunch for the working week, it is really tasty and healthy – as far as cakes go – plus you know what has gone into it. THere are things that you can buy ready-make in the supermarket, but sometimes it’s nice to make things yourself

Aha! Just having a look at the nutritional content of some breakfast cereals and realised that I was looking at the

per 100g

data instead of the per serving…. idiot!! Ah well, it also means that I have consumed less fat AND less calories than I thought I had – BONUS

I remember a conversation that I had with an old colleague some time ago (as a bit of background, he is a very dedicated athletic who is trying his best to get an Olympic place in London 2012) as he was monitoring the food that he ate as tried to reduce his body fat to improve his performance. He said that he was surprised at just how much fat that he actually ate even though he thought that he had a healthy diet – obviously so being the athlete that he was.

Over the last few days I would now have to agree with him, if you break my food intake down into protein, fat and carbs, about 25% is through fat – this astonishes me, as I, like my old colleague, thought I ate reasonably healthily….

Fortunately as I have been keeping a food diary I can establish where the fat intake actually comes from so that I can plan to reduce what is sensible to reduce. It would appear that I should be consuming just under 50g of fat daily and 10g of that is coming from my breakfast which really surprises me as 4g is from my semi-skimmed milk but an even higher 6g comes from my HEALTHY muesli!

I think that I am going to start buying proper skimmed milk for my breakfasts (that’s going to mean 3 different types of milk in the fridge now as my little girl is still on the full-fat blue top) and review my breakfast cereal to see if I can improve on the fat content.

A further 6.5g of fat comes from my salad dressing (extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar), now I’m not sure if there is an alternative to this as I love this dressing on my salad but I’ll have a look around and see what’s out there….

Generally the rest of the fat tends to come from vegetable oil used when cooking dinner and the spread used on my sandwiches at lunch. As I want to look for alternatives to sandwiches (not everyday though as they are convenient) my consumption may improve but I was thinking of houmus and pitta bread and there is still fat in that so I’ll have to have a bigger think…

Using My Daily Plate to keep an eye on the calories that I consume (and expend) is actually a real eye opener. It have calculated that I need to consume around 1,400 calories a a day in order to lose a lb a week. Based on everything that I have eaten so far today (and knowing what I will be eating for dinner tonight) I will consume 1,600 calories today – this means that I’m way over on my intake so have had to look into their database to see what exercise I can do (and realistically will do) in order to meet the deficit.

Fortunately I had planned to do some cleaning tonight and change the bedding so this should eat up (no pun intended!) around 90 calories, and then I will also be getting hte shopping delivered so will need to do the carrying and putting away, probably another 40 calories. I also started off the mixed fruit last night so I can bake a teabread tonight – soaking the fruit in some tea overnight – apparently baking uses up around 50 calories for 20 mins work.

This leaves me with 20 calories that I need to burnoff, but obviously I need to plan to burn more since this is all probable calorie burn! I have the top that I am knitting for my mum (which was going to be for her birthday but since that’s two weeks away now and I have barely knitted 2 inches that’s just not going to happen so it has now been moved to her Christmas present!) so I thought I could spend some time on that – aparently knitting burns around 80 calories an hour so it will be time well spent on both counts

I’ve been updating my budget recently and although I doing spend excessive amounts of money on food I don’t think that I am spending the money wisely if that makes sense.  I like to think that our family eats quite heathily however I had a shock when I stood on my MIL’s scales at the weekend and found out that I was 129lbs (9st 3lbs) – now I realise that this is not overweight, in fact it is actually alright for my height of 5ft 5ins BUT I have ALWAYS, ALWAYS weighed exactly 8st – no more – no less…

I was diagnosed with an overactive thyroid at the end of December 2008 after losing a stone within about a week (I looked positively awful) and was put on tablets to suppress the amount of throxine that my body produced.  Over the last year or so I have been taking then and now my throxine levels are reducing to I have had my dose reduced with the aim to come off the carbimazole in the next few months.  I have always had a sneaking suspicion that these tablets have been leading to my weight being more than it naturally would be (as they are effectively slowing down my metabolism which has always been naturally quite high) so I can attribute some of the weight gain to the tablets I am on.  Having said that I think that blaming a few lbs on the tablets is one thing but over a stone is just me kidding myself…..

So, along with training for the marathon which is at the end of May I have decided to keep a much better eye on what I eat, so much so that I have joined the My Daily Plate website so that I can track the calories that I am eating so see how heathily I do actually eat.  Some of it is quite shocking it has to be said, it’s only when you actually log that you have just eaten 2 chocolate biscuits that you realise how much fat (and calories) you have just consumed!!

Obviously this has led me to consider what food I actually put in my internet shopping basket as the fewer convenience foods that are in the house, the less I can eat (albeit this goes for my family as well but it would stop my DS from raiding the pantry – I swear that he devours 4 bars of chocolate in one go as he leaves that wrappers as evidence so he can’t deny it!!)

I’ve been perusing the internet for inspiration but admitedly get sidetracked, however I have found a couple of sites which I will refer back to (even if not for the recipes):

Aggies Kitchen

just looks delicious, at the moment she is looking a more vegetable based dishes which apart from being healthy and increasing fruit and vegetable portions, also helps with the budget as I wouldn’t be paying for more expensive meat. I have tried to have 1 veggie meal a week but I am lacking in inspiration and my veggie dish of macaroni cheese has sausages in it for my OH?!?

Jenn’s Menu and Lifestyle Blog

contains photos of practically evey meal that she has ever eaten, I swear… this is a great site as she also gives approx calorie counts.

I need to do some more digging around but at least I have made a start, just need to finalise a list for next weeks meal plans as I have already placed my order for this week!

I pulled my finger out and planned the weeks meals well in advance this week, actually it was quite hard because I wanted to add in some new dishes but couldn’t find any inspiration so had to give up! I want to start preparing more food from scratch but I don’t seem to find the time, for example I want to start making my own bread (I own a breadmaker so you wouldn’t think that it would be too hard would you?) but I don’t like the bread that it bakes so I just want it to prepare the dough and I’ll turn it out into a bread tin and bake it in the oven – I just need to buy a big bread tin since I only have a small one. I also need to start making flapjacks and cakes (fruit of course so there’s practically no butter/fat in them) but just need to organise myself. I make a lovely treabread a few weekends ago and was very impressed that it lasted the first half of the wee for lunches (ie. it was big enough to not be eaten in the first two days) but think it would be more practical to make two at a time so they last the whole week but need to buy another small loaf tin… as you can so this is increasing the amount of kit I need in my kitchen!

Anyway to the meal plans:
We usually have pizza on a Wednesday as it’s the easiest thing to have after I’ve been shopping as I get home late, then have to put everything away, but I’m expecting my delivery (2nd week of delivery in a row!) any time up to 9pm and so Wed has to default to tortellini as it’s about hte only thing we have in and the pizza will be deferred to Thursday – also need to start making our own pizza’s again as they tasted great and I have loads of tins of anchovies in the pantry!

Wednesday – Tortellini
Thursday – Pizza
Friday – butternut squash risotto
Saturday – Hamburger (homemade) and chips
Sunday – Roast chicken w/ roast potatoes and veg
Monday – Chicken curry with left over chicken
Tuesday – Carbonara w/ garlic bread

I also need to start planning lunches as they always get forgotten about, I’ve ordered some salad so I will be able to have salad for lunch towards the end of this week (which will help with the calorie intake) and need to start making up some cold pasta dishes – unfortunately I don’t have the means to warm food up at work which is a shame since I have LOADS of frozen soup in the freezer. I’ll looked at buying a Thermos flask to bring warm soup into work but I’m not sure how effective they actually are at keeping food warm as I don’t want to spend £30 on something that doesn’t actually work…

Ok so I’m a little behind as I am already at the end of the 13th!  Still I’ve managed to plan a list for almost 2 weeks and in theory the shopping bill – excluding the price of the salmon and the fruit and vegetables is around £50 so maybe around £70-80 for the two weeks isn’t too bad.

As always this is not necessarily the order in which everything will be eaten but it’s a reasonable guide:

• Tue – Sausages in cider and mash (sausages from the freezer)
• Wed – Lemony roast chicken couscous
• Thu – Sweet and sour pork (pork from the freezer)
• Fri – Lasagne and rice (all from the freezer)
• Sat – Meatloaf with cabbage and mash
• Sun – Warm poached salmon, new potatoes and green beans
• Mon – Tortellini with tomato sauce
• Tue – Salmon and spinach pasta (with leftover salmon)
• Wed – Chicken curry with rice
• Thu – Salmon fishcakes and chips or wedges (with leftover salmon)
• Fri – Paprika chicken and pea, potato omelette

Fortunately I have quite a bit of meat in the freezer which I really need to get used up.  I also have a duck in there that I really need to do something with…

Finally I need to come up with a desert for Sunday dinner – I’m thinking of something warming like rice pudding or maybe a sponge pudding.  I think I might opt for the sponge pudding with golden syrup as the leftovers will go down a treat on Monday.