Me

Me

Thursday 20 August 2015

Meal Plan

Hi everyone

My shopping gets delivered today so we start a new meal plan...

Ploughmans...cheddar cheese, crusty bread, pickled onions, nice crisps, pickle, a small salad, pork pie and an apple.

Stew and dumplings...in the slow cooker.

Roast chicken...with roasties, stuffing, cabbage, carrots, green beans, broccoli and gravy.

Jacket potatoes...with cheese, beans and corn on the cob.

Sausages...with macaroni cheese and peas.

Home made quiche...with home made chips, peas and salad.

Pork chops...with mash, carrots, cabbage and gravy.

We will eat these in the order that suits us. I pay attention to what's going out of date to use up first and try to eat food as fresh as possible. 

I try to get a good balance of meat and non-meat days and potatoes/pasta/rice. 

We will have a pudding each day but it is normally something light. If we have a light tea like salad, then we may have a bigger pudding. I'm really craving chocolate pudding and chocolate custard at the moment! I love the autumn when the slow cooker comes out more often and there is more gravy dinners and custard puddings :)

My thoughts have already turned to planning for the autumn months...I've started to pick up warmer clothes for Daisy at the car boot sale for pennies. 

I really am getting back to my thrifty ways...my Hoover broke last week and my dishwasher broke this week :(
I have been sweeping floors and washing up...it's a pain but I'm getting used to it. We will buy another Hoover but I may well do without the dishwasher. I desperately need to cut back on our electricity consumption and I have a feeling the dishwasher may use a lot!

Mandy x

6 comments:

  1. Hi Mandy, your weeks food menu sounds delicious! I have recently moved home and now have to do without a dishwasher and at the moment I am feeding nine people. You soon get used to doing it by hand again as it used to be a chore to unload it anyway!

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    1. Hi

      Yeah you're right...I never minded loading it because that was tidying up but unloading was a pain! Xx

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  2. Hi Mandy,
    some nice meals planned there. i am not meal planning at the moment as money is extremely tight at the minute, i am just finding something from the freezers etc every day as we are going away next week and as i will have no wages from my relief dinner lady job in September due to being off all of August i am going to have to be extra frugal and make sure i use everything up we have stashed in cupboards freezers and still some stuff in tubs in the shed and bottom of wardrobes.
    I have managed without doing a food shop now for nearly 2 months, just replacing milk, bread, bread flour, margarine and potatoes.
    I made a trip out on Tuesday to Doncaster market for a cheapo haircut (walk-in at £5) and managed to get a massive bag full of about 2 & 1/2lb in weight of assorted continental meats, 2 500g bags of shredded mozarella, 2 tubs assorted olives and some serano ham all for £7 from the discount deli stall. I had a massive pizza making session on Wednesday and made 6 large ones and 8 small ones. I used a catering sized tin of tomato puree bought from Approved foods last year, value dried mixed herbs, some wrinkly mushrooms from the fridge and a OOD tin of pineapple chunks from the cupboard and made a good assortment of different toppings. They were all individually wrapped and frozen.
    The breadmaker did the work making the dough with just bread flour, water, yeast and a spoonfull of oil.
    I have dug out the slow cooker and that will be put to use today for a corned beef casserole with dumplings (Approved food mix).
    we will be continuing to live from the cupboards and freezers for the next month or two until i get back on keel with the money as when i return to work i will only have 3 days a week (4 hrs 15 mins work a week)
    Myself, daughter and 2 grandsons go to Scarborough for 5 days next week as it was booked before we knew money was going to be so tight. We have saved every spare penny and have planned to do a load of free activities (beach, crabbing etc) and there are 3 free summer shows at the Open air theatre whist we are there. We are praying for nice weather.
    I have even unearthed all the old buckets and spades from the shed to save buying new. We will take crisps, pop and some bits from the B&B with us on our trips out (the owner is brilliant and lets us take muffins, flapjacks etc from the breakfast spread when we go out for the day, and we will just have a meal in an evening.
    If there is a money left over at the end of the week after my grandsons have a treat to bring home i will be going to the supermarket on my return to try and find some yellow stickered bargains to pop into the freezer to help with the next month which will also be a frugal one.
    I have enjoyed doing this as it has given me the incentive to clear out the cupboards to see exactly what we have in stock and also i cleared all 4 freezers to the very bottom, wiped them out, arranged stuff better and put stuff back in with the shortest dates to the top/front. I found loads of food i had forgotten i had even bought back in the day when money was not such a problem and i was working 4 hours a day with a good part time wage coming in every month.
    Its made me become less wasteful and appreciate what we have. Hubby has even said that thanks to my bulk buying and hoarding in the past we have managed really well.
    We too had a dishwasher at the old house but when we moved here we sold it as there wasnt room, i missed it on a Sunday for doing meat tins etc but other than that it wasnt too bad a loss, the hoover on the other hand i definately would miss.
    as always take care jane xx

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    1. Hello jane we too booked a holiday when money was looking healthier our income has dropped so much through the summer months due to my ebay sales being almost non existent , So we are doing exactly the same eating out of the freezer and not spending a penny unless is it is absolutely necessary , We always do free things on holiday take most of our food mainly in prepared meals ,We seem to enjoy frugal holidays more as you are not always regretting paying out for being fleeced we are going to that part of the coast too xxx

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  3. I really need to get back to menu planning again xxx

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  4. Hi myshabbychicvintagefrugal life,
    its awful when money becomes tight after not having to watch every penny. I know Mandy had the same thing happen after she finished work too, i remember reading on her blog a long time ago. I know a few other people it has happened to also and it can be quite daunting. I was suddenly made redundant last October from a fairly well paid job and we had to then manage on just hubbys wages and my couple of grand redundancy pay. When that ran out I was lucky enough to find the relief lunchtime supervisor post but like i said you dont get paid for holidays only being relief and when i return in September my hours will be just 4 hours 15 mins a week which is absolutely nowhere near enough for me to live on. Hubbys wages pay all the bills and i used to use mine for electric, gas food and any treats (days out, carbooting etc) but now he has to pay for everything. My wages from July went in on August 15th but were less than £150 which i have not touched as it will be needed for Scarborough.
    We are staying in a B&B and the breakfast is superb, everything you can imagine, assorted cereals, fruit of every kind you can imagine, yogurts, muffins, cereal bars, croissants, assorted cheeses and meats, infact full continental breakfast then there is the full English to follow. Luckily we know the owners very well as we have been going for the past 7 years and used to sometimes go every other month during the year for the weekend and then a week in August so they are like old friends and have seen my grandsons grow up. She always tells us to take whatever we like from breakfast if we are going to the beach for the day so that will be an help this time. We have decided we will manage through the day with picnic type foods and there is a small "weigh and save shop" up in town where you can buy 24 cup drinks with straws for £1 !!! how good value is that if you dont mind lugging them down to the beach as a carton of pop or a fruit shoot on the sea front is roughly £1.50 each.
    I havent been menu planning at all recently just diving into the freezer each day and coming up with a meal with whatever i have unearthed. Luckily its worked OK so far but i will get more organised after our holiday.
    My daughter is doing a carboot sale this coming Sunday to help raise a bit more money for our 5 days away so fingers crossed the weather stays dry for her.
    I do hope you too enjoy your holiday and im sure your ebay sales will pick up again soon, have you thought about carbooting instead? My daughter also advertises stuff for sale on a local face book group. Good luck with the menu planning & take care, jane xx

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