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 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…