Hi everyone,
If you’re one of the lucky ones with one baby who naps during the day (like me!), you have the time to do some chores and go to the toilet by yourself sometimes. Today, after doing all my chores and while Alaska has her morning nap, I chose to meal plan for the week to save some money on our groceries. It’s very easily done and doesn’t take long at all but saves so much money and reduces food spoilage. What could be better?
1. Inventory.
The first step is to take an inventory of everything in your fridge, pantry and anywhere else you keep food. Write it on a piece of paper (or on your phone, tablet, laptop; whatever you prefer). Star the things that will be going off soon to make sure to use them first.
2. Plan out the week.
Grab another piece of paper and write each day of the week along the top and under each one write what meals you need to plan ie. Breakfast, Lunch at home, Lunch to-go, Dinner, Supper, Snack etc. If you lead a busy life like us, it’s likely that the meals you need to make will change each day.
3. Find recipes.
This is the (somewhat) difficult part. Find meals that you could make out of the things in you already have and little or no added ingredients. Whatever you need to buy as an extra, jot down on your shopping list. The difficult part is finding recipes your family will love and ones that won’t break the bank and still taste amazing. For me, they can’t be very time consuming either.
4. Match days of the week and recipes.
After finding recipes, match them up to the days you will make them on, remember to bare in mind the ingredients that are running out of date soon as well as cooking times each day. For example, on Tuesdays I’m not home most of the day so I pick recipes that are extremely quick to make or make them on Monday and reheat.
5. You’re done!
Those 4 steps weren’t so hard, were they? Well done!
My meal plan for week one:
| Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday |
| Porridge/cereal | Fry up/porridge | Porridge/cereal | Crumpets with butter | Crumpets with butter | Paninis |
| Pesto pasta with courgette | Cream cheese bagel with spinach&tomato | Pierogi ruskie with onions | Pizza | Knedle | Sunday dinner |
| Veggie tortillas/Casserole | Spinach and ricotta canneloni | Prociutto wrapped chicken drumsticks with potato croquetes | Spaghetti meatballs | Leak and potato soup with garlic bread | Chicken korma |
We do our shopping on Tuesdays and that’s why my meal plan starts on Tuesday. These dishes are mostly made of ingredients we already have and so my shopping list for the meals comes down to:
– Bagels
– Naan bread
– Mushrooms
– Ricotta cheese
Those four things came down to £5.44 which is great for such a variety of healthy dinners for a week for the two of us. I also usually make an extra portion and freeze it to have a healthy ready-meal when there’s no time to make a dinner and we’re hungry.
Of course, after adding Alaska’s nappies, Infacol, my Coke, Liam’s energy drinks and some frozen pizzas for emergency dinners, our groceries bill came down to around £40 but we will still have more than enough food for the week!
I hope my tutorial works for you guys and I’d love to hear what meals you’ve planned for your families this week!
Take care,
Klaudia
xo
Waiting for Alaska...she's here! 