Weekly food shop boredom

[Pinkluster]

I buy and cook pretty much the same thing week in week out and I am bloody bored of it, so come and tell me what you buy, where you buy it and what budget you have.
I also need some inspiration for packed lunches and dinners.

I click on Seasonal Vegetables on the Waitrose shopping website. Nice to eat seasonally.

This was us, we tried gousto and it was a game changer. Did it for 6 weeks and now we have a load of recipes to use again. It's £35 a week for 2 people for 4 dinners. Plus you get good discounts for first few weeks of joining

It’s a real mix here. We get a veg box which makes a big difference to good boredom because it forces you to use what’s in it.

What are your regular meals now and what else do you think you might like to try?

On our meal plan this week is tofu noodle stir fry, smoky aubergine chilli with jackets, sweet potato curry, pizza (possibly homemade, probably freezer), greek spinach filo pie and cannelloni.

I hear you OP!

We are veggie so I make:
Quorn chilli
Quorn sausages with mash or as toad in the hole
veggie pies (pukka pies do some great ones)
Stir fry (DD won't eat this so has something out of the freezer)
Chick pea and sweet potato curry (delicious recipe out of Sam Stern cookbook)
risotto with leeks and courgettes
roasted veg pasta (recipe out of Bosh! vegan book)
Baked potatoes with beans and cheese
Pasta with pesto and sun dried tomatoes
cauliflower, broccoli and pasta cheese sauce bake

I do lose the will to live sometimes tho

Thank you all, our regular weekly meals..

Spaghetti bolognese
Chicken and rice with veg
Some sort of curry
Roast on a Sunday
Sometimes we'll have hotdogs maybe a burger when dc have after school activities alot of pasta dishes and really just the basic general meals, we do eat a lot of meat which in trying to cut down on so trying to incorporate more fish.

We also have a veg box delivery which forces us to try new things. We use Oddbox and I tend to keep lots of storecupboard staples so I can use up what arrives on the day it comes then base the food shopping around it. This week for example the box included potatoes and aubergines, I had lentils and other spices/tinned tomatoes in the cupboard so made a vegetarian moussaka. At the very worst I make a vegetable soup/whack it in some pasta or a risotto. We got it to force us to eat more vegetables and try new things which it definitely has done....also got artichokes this week which I've never used to still need to come up with a way to use them.

We reached this point OP so gave Gousto a try and it’s great!!

Jamie Oliver is great for veggie recipes if you’re trying to cut your meat down. Loads on his site, and the book “Veg” is a good one. I got it from the library. Also the bbc good food site has loads.

You could turn leftovers from your roast into a pie very easily with ready made puff pastry (or cook more specifically for the next meal).

Good thread op, im the same

Another thing I’ve done when I’ve been bored is to buy/borrow a cook book and try one thing a week. That’s generated some new favourites.

We tried out Hello fresh and it seems a treat to be able to have a week or two without wondering "what to have" every week! I am in my Nans mindset ATM Sun /Roast ,Mon/ small roast(leftovers) Tues/ Sausages and so on

I must start getting a fruit and veg box again…

Our boring weekly meals are:
Pasta with cheese sauce bacon and peas
Spag Bol or meatballs and spaghetti
Chicken thighs with rice and either stir fry veg / Chinese sauce or fajita mix and tortilla wraps and salad
Pork - sausage and mash, gammon and chips, medallions and mash
Friday is pizza and chips for kids curry for adults
Saturday varies
Sunday will be roast usually

Other things we have are shepherds pie, lasagne, toad in the hole , jacket spuds no salad and freezer nights would be pie and chips, chicken burgers, chicken gougons and rice and roast veg

Another vote for Gusto! I get a box about once a month to try new things and I've made a lot of things again from the recipe cards.

I'm always curious about threads like this. Is it that you genuinely can't think of anything else to have (surely not, the choice is endless) or do you think 'I'll make X, Y or Z but DH/DD/DS won't eat it?

@BarbaraofSeville I think it's a mixture of everything really, it gets quite easy to pop into Tesco and pick up the usual as I know dc will eat what's cooked and goes into their lunches.

I often walk around the shop for hours thinking about what I'm going to cook that week and come out with a few different, but it's mainly just the same basic stuff.
I think I might buy myself a few cook books for some inspiration, we go through fruit and veg like it's going out of fashion so maybe a veg box and giving gusto a try could be worth it.

@clary

I hear you OP!

We are veggie so I make:
Quorn chilli
Quorn sausages with mash or as toad in the hole
veggie pies (pukka pies do some great ones)
Stir fry (DD won't eat this so has something out of the freezer)
Chick pea and sweet potato curry (delicious recipe out of Sam Stern cookbook)
risotto with leeks and courgettes
roasted veg pasta (recipe out of Bosh! vegan book)
Baked potatoes with beans and cheese
Pasta with pesto and sun dried tomatoes
cauliflower, broccoli and pasta cheese sauce bake

I do lose the will to live sometimes tho

Get yourself a copy of Zaika (vegan Indian) it has a huge variety of recipes and they are all amazing Also, nigellas golden egg curry!

I copy ideas from Mindful Chef - they do recipe boxes but also list their recipes online (luckily for me) so I pick from those and add ingredients to my Sainsburys deliveries. Found some great ones over the past few months.

@Pinkluster I feel you! I was just saying to OH yesterday that everything seems so repetitive now, what we eat, what we cook etc. We even talked about how we needed to get some new cereals in for the cereal cupboard because we’ve been eating pretty much the same bunch of stuff for months and months now.

I do the bulk of the cooking so I’ll admit I can be lazy and whip up what I know is a ‘safe’ option for the family. I don’t venture into unknown territory and cook new dishes for fear of them turning out horrid. I should really expand my recipe book though as it’s getting so boring now.

The food/recipe topic on MN can be really good for some inspiration. I definitely find I need to have a meal plan before I shop otherwise I’d probably wander the supermarket for ages too.

We’re pescatarian so we have fish two or three times per week and vegetarian the rest of the time.

Meals we eat: pan fried fish with baby potatoes and roast veg, seafood pasta, tray bakes, curries, veggie tarts/quiches, halloumi & veg fajitas, bean & veg chilli etc.

Tray bakes are great for easy family meals.

This roast veg lasagne is always popular here.

If you like chilli this burnt aubergine chilli from bbc good food is great as is this eathealthyeathappy.com/killer-vegan-chili/ one.

We started using Gousto for exactly this reason and now have a whole folder full of new recipes.
Some weeks, the Gousto recipes don't jump out or I'd just be choosing things we've had before, so I skip a week and flick through the recipe cards we have.

If anyone would like 60% off their first box (and 30% off their first month of boxes) here's my referral code (I get £15 credit if used)

https://cook.gousto.co.uk/raf?promocode=DANIE41896657&utmm_source=iosapp

@Worriesome as I wrote my last comment I thought to myself we must try some new breakfasts too
It's usually the same boring cereal, toast or porridge for the dc during the week, but on weekends I try and let them have a treat so we'll do pancakes/waffles and eggs maybe a bit of bacon, It's all just getting a bit tedious.

We tend to eat the same things but cooked in different ways as my husband only eats certain things . So Smoked haddock , we have straight with rice and roast toms / peppers , in a fish pie , leek and haddock risotto, tomato and haddock cheese bake - so that’s a different haddock meal for 4 weeks having it once a week . Same with mince - cottage pie , chilli , chilli bake , bolognaise . You get the drift . I must say that since lockdown / starting online shopping I cook much more / more variety and we hardly have any food waste

Having extra herbs& spices, different kind of sauces and condiments makes making variety of food quite easy. For example, for chicken dish, I can make Chinese/Japanese/ southeast Asian/Italian/French/Caribbean etc. from what I already have at home, without going for extra shopping.

We're boring too.

Sunday roast chicken dinner
Monday use up leftover chicken with salad and chips or new potatoes
Tuesday have athletics so share a pizza with salad (3 of us eat one pizza)
Wednesday chicken curry
Thursday another athletics day so I have a salad and DH and DS share a pizza again
Friday fish cakes and new potatoes and salad (fish cakes don't have potato in)
Saturday cottage pie made with turkey mince

You are probably judging us for eating pizza twice a week but we share one standard Sainsburys one between three of us so have less than one whole one each a week.

It's really difficult to find things we all like. I don't eat red meat and ds will eat cooked veg but doesn't like salad. But we have very little food waste which is good.

@Pinkluster totally! I’m thinking of getting cereals such as sugar puffs and weetabix minis just to have something to be excited about for breakfast. We usually have Frosties or Lidl own brand weetabix.

White bread is also becoming boring, I’m going to switch to brown, get some beans in and maybe even pancakes.