Meal Plan Monday #52

Hello Monday! Yet again the start of another week. How are you finding things? I really want to see some different people now, I’ll be totally honest. Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband and my boys but it would be so good to see someone else. Monday would normally be the start of the working week yet I’m at home – safe – again.I miss going food shopping – sending my husband is not the same – and just having that routine back in place. It’s so strange to have taken that for granted.

Food shopping and having a meal plan has been in our household for so long. I’m continuing to fill out my meal planner, just need to be able to get shopping again. Also, my husband definitely spends more than me and he also buys more snacks! Not that him and the boys mind, but I have noticed an increase in the number of snacks we have at home. And of course, this costs extra.

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 under £80 this week for a family of four. We are definitely spending more money on food at the moment but that’s because we’re all just at home all of the time so we’re here for all meals. It does make a difference! Plus it is still difficult to get some non-branded items still where we shop. Hopefully this will change soon! All the branded items are more expensive and it makes a noticeable difference to the end amount.

This week’s meal plan looks like this:

Monday – slow cooker beef goulash

Tuesday – roast chicken thighs, potatoes and salad

Wednesday – spaghetti puttanesca

Thursday – baked salmon, rice and broccoli

Friday – spinach and ricotta pasta

Saturday – pizza + 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 love the slow cooker goulash – make sure you check that out as it’s so tasty. Having that with sweet potato mash so it helps soak up all the sauce 🙂 yum!

Being at home means we are definitely eating more; we’re all home at lunchtime for a start so that’s more. Plus both boys seem to be asking for snacks almost constantly! So I need to ration the snacks I have upped our grocery budget to take into account the fact that we’re eating ore and buying more branded stuff in the short term. Breakfasts are straightforward as we tend to eat the same, but lunches might need to be more varied. We shall see. It depends on what I can get in the shops, to be honest. I can see lots of baking in the future – our favourite being lemon drizzle cake. Both boys are also loving the mini flapjacks at the moment so they have those quite often.

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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. Thankfully we seem to be able to get the basics again, which is always helpful. At one point it was really difficult to get pasta and spaghetti but not at the moment 🙂 I hope it stays that way!

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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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