Making a weekly menu plan
It’s Day One of our Festive Prep Tenner Week, and we’re starting it off gently by looking at our food reserves and making a menu plan for the next seven days. There are reminders of the current Tenner Week schedule and the Tenner Week rules too, if you want to check back with those.
Focus your efforts on using up whatever you already have, and preventing food waste. If you have any fresh foods that can’t be frozen or preserved in some way (salad, for example), make a point of using them up first.
Also think about healthy eating, especially having your five-a-day of fruits and vegetables.
Remember to make a note of evenings when you’re likely to be extra-busy, out, or home late. Choose quick, easy to prepare meals for those times, or plan to make double portions the night before and reheat the leftovers.
Factor in:
- Breakfasts
- Snacks
- Lunches
- Dinners
- Drinks
As it’s November, you might want to focus on warming meals, such as stews, casseroles, curries, pies, toad in the hole, chili or bangers and mash.
It really helps if you write out your menu plan and keep it somewhere visible in the kitchen. Makes me look forward to some good home cooking every evening, and reminds me to use certain ingredients up in time as well.
What’s happening here
After doing a Sunday Stocktake yesterday, I ended up writing out a medium sized list of food and made a quick menu for the week that has a mixture of simple meals and slower-cooked dishes to fit round work and social stuff. We’re having a speedy supper of cous cous, grilled veggies and grilled halloumi tonight which should use up some vegetables before they go completely past their best.
I’m also hoping to have a no-spend day today, which should be easy enough because I have loads of work to be getting on with, and it’s always easier at the start of the week.
What are you getting up to? What’s going onto your menu plan?
Got my menu planned and today looked in my store cupboard (mostly emptyish). I’ve made some buns for little monkeys after school snacks. Have to buy milk today, but that is all.
I have made our menu plan for this week – no extra food needed, we have enough in the freezer / fridge to last us the week. Managed to use up the wilting salad for lunch today and tomorrow, even added it to the kids ham sandwiches for school to save wasting it. No spend day today – and an added bonus is that I have enough fuel in my car to last a couple of weeks. So far, so good……..
I completely agree, we have a whiteboard with our meals for week on. Plus I only shop for exactly what we need, no unnecessary extras!
Well somehow I managed to not see that it’s tenner week! But it’s cool, I have a rough meal plan worked out using freezer stuff. I’ve had a no spend day so all is well…good luck everyone ??
Hi Vicky – snacks are definitely something worth remembering! Good idea and good luck with the budget.
Hello Jo – loving your zero waste approach, very thrifty. Nice to know you’re OK for things like petrol too, because it’s one less thing to worry about.
Hi Rebecca – what’s on your menu this week?
Hiya Nikki – you must have been really busy in the last few days, although if you mostly follow by Facebook they’ve been limiting my fan page posts by a ridiculous amount. Glad you found out in time and are joining in 🙂