Meal Plan Monday #46

Happy Monday! Although, how is it Monday again so soon!?I hope you have a good week How is it looking so far? As far as I can see, there’s nothing particularly important going on this week for us; a nice normal week of the usual routine. That should mean a low spending week! I am not even sure we’ll do anything particularly. The weather forecast isn’t great for us so I think it will be days at home. Not that it’s bad to do that! Just can get a bit cabin fever like if it’s all week…

Monday means another meal plan post which just goes through what we are eating this week so keep our food spends under budget. I have definitely honed my skills in this area for a long time now – and have even written a course about it here – so we have very little food waste and our meal plans are cheap and tasty I spent just over £50 this week for a family of four. I got a couple of extra things, like king prawns, for the freezer too as I’m trying to have more things on stand by. They were on offer too so it seemed like a good thing to buy. I track all of our spending in my February Budget planner, to make sure I stay under budget, including on food.

One of the only things I am missing on my No Spend Year so far is my takeaway coffee. And McDonalds chips! I have had a real craving for them this week. But, it has made me realise just how often I popped out for a coffee or went via the McDonalds Drive Thru on a weekend. So, hopefully this exercise will also be good for my waist line. We shall see!

This week’s meal plan looks like this:

Monday – lamb tagine

Tuesday – spaghetti bolognese

Wednesday – filled pasta and sauce

Thursday – slow cooker lamb goulash

Friday – cod in butter sauce, potatoes and peas

Saturday – pizza and salad

I do our food shop on a Sunday so I haven’t thought about what we will eat on Sunday. But I’m looking forward to the meals this week. Both boys will eat the same as us all week as well which helps. I love it when we can all eat the same meals together plus it makes it a lot easier as I only have to think about one meal rather than different things. We do tend to eat similar things week in week out. Do you do that? Guess I’m a creature of habit! I am especially looking forward to the goulash this week; it’s so nice to come home from work and have a meal ready and waiting. I keep meaning to write a blog post with the recipe – would you be interested in that?

For my lunches this week there are two options. When I’m at work I’m going to take soup, some crisps and some fruit. At home it’ll be a sandwich or cheese on toast, as the norm. Alfie will have school dinners and Charlie usually has a sandwich of some description with fruit and yogurt for afters. Breakfast in our house is just cereal; either wheetabix or shreddies with banana. Goes down well with everyone and fairly healthy + cheap! I am going to have a couple of smoothies in there too; it’s an easy way of getting fruit and veg in there too. My favourite at the moment is spinach, frozen pineapple, 1/2 banana and milk. So tasty!

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Part of our planning and budget for food means that some items are used from our stockpile every week. This is so the food we already have in the cupboards is used regularly and rotated so nothing goes to waste, but it’s also a good habit to get in to so that if we cannot get to the shops for whatever reason, I can make meals from what we already have in the cupboards. I’m using quite a few things from the freezer this week, which also keeps costs down. Plus pizza night is always a cheap one – I just get a big frozen one from the supermarket and it does all four of us -for the moment, anyway.

Using a combination of fresh and frozen food really keeps our grocery budget down. I do need to build up our stockpile a bit more though; slowly but surely. I like having things to hand and I don’t like having empty cupboards. Rice and pasta are staples in our stockpile, plus some of the other tinned ingredients are things I had in as well. Looking forward to our meals this week! Then again, food is one of my favourite topics 😉

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What are you eating this week? Trying anything new? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

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