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.

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!