Need to sort my life/ try not to judge

[Shithole101]

So last weekend I posted about my house being a shit hole. Everyone was so lovely and supportive I gpt loads done thank you to everyone. I still have stuff to do but ots not to bad . I bane decided that I'm just gpung to kind of slap dash and keep it ticking over. Then every other weekend when my youngest go to their fathers I'm going to have a proper deep deep tidy up.

Anyway I'm trying to sort my life out a bit. Be more organised so I can manage better. One of the really bad thing I do is . Have at least 4 take aways a week. This is costing alot of money leaving me short of money. I also keep allowing meat to go off. I know the answer it to freeze it but I don't. And even if I do. I then end io with take away because I did not take meat out of the freezer.

So today I did manage to save some meat the chicken said use by 4th but it smelt and looked OK. So I made a basic chicken curry. And also had nandos rub so done that as well. Mince beef went off on 3rd but that was also OK so I made spag bol and chilli.

So I'm looking for ideas of things I could cook and freeze. Also is there any tips on how to store /freeze and generally anything that comes to mind that could be helpful.

The Batch Lady website is a really good place to start.

It's really helpful to try and meal plan for the week.

Make a list of all the meals/recipes you like (I have a list on my phone) then each week before going shopping, decide what you're having this week and buy what you need. Check the dates on things so you cook them in the right order and things don't go off before you get chance to cook them.

Have a look at the "what's for dinner" threads on here for inspiration.

Make sure you have plenty of containers to put your batch cooks in, and get a sharpie so you can label things rather than ending up with a freezer full of random shit that you can't remember cooking.

If you end up with a pile of random veg in your fridge, chop it up, fry with garlic and a couple of tins of tomatoes/some chilli flakes and liquidise to make a healthy pasta sauce.

Even though I'm veggie I'm not anti-meat, but perhaps some veggie meals would help because the ingredients might keep longer?

Macaroni cheese is nice in winter and freezes OK.
Or how about portions of veggie chilli?
If you keep in tortilla chips you can heat up the chilli and have it with tortilla chips and sour cream.

I really wouldn’t be using out of date meat, especially when cooking for a child.

The taming twins website has loads of easy and quick recipes. Many, but not all of her recipes are using a slow cooker and many only take 5/10 mins to make which is perfect. It does often mean sorting things out ready the night before or spending time in the mornings. If you make enough for 4 then you can freezer half or eat the same meal two days in a row. I prefer to use freezer food bags, label them with a permanent marker and freezer them flat on a baking tray and then you can stand it up in the freezer. To deforest get them out the night before and put in the fridge. I stand it up in a loaf tin.

The other things you can do are super quick things like baked potato, tuna pasta bake with a jar of sauce.

Try meal planning with 7 meals for the week or 4 if you’re going to cook once and eat twice. Then when you get your food shopping work out which day your going to eat each meal on and freeze anything you need.

I keep a checklist in the kitchen of all the jobs which need to be done on a night time like, check what’s for dinner tomorrow, get enough uniform, make snack/lunch for school, make up youngest medicine, put a load of washing in the washing machine, put a load away.

Good luck.

I like to batch cook a load of mince in a very basic tomato sauce and freeze in portions, then when it's defrosted I'll add seasonings to suit whatever I fancy, so I might add a chilli seasoning mix when reheating on the hob and have it with nachos or rice, or add an italian herb mix and have it with pasta.

I also buy big trays of chicken thighs or pork loin steaks, put them in ziplock bags with a marinade or rub and freeze them. The night before I want to eat them I move them to the fridge then when it comes to cooking I just pour them onto a tray, on another tray I'll do broccoli or cauliflower or corn on the cob and put it all in the oven on gas 6 for 20-30 minutes until cooked.

Have you thought about replacing your takeaways with decent ready meals? At least it's proper food. Just as easy, and much cheaper

I did try it but no one really liked them the portions are really small as well .

OP, I say this with kindness, but have you been the GP?

Do the zip lock bags seal well? I'm wondering if I could freeze meals do they are flat? So they thaw out faster ? I don't want them to leak though

Invest in a slow cooker if you can. I batch cook mince or stew in it. Then keep enough out for two days and freeze the rest as soon as it's cool. Definitely label. I've been caught out before! I have a plan for the week. I usually cook a chicken on a Sunday morning or do a slow cooker batch then. I strip the chicken as soon as possible and make a curry or serve with roast potatoes etc. Saturday morning I'll make a huge pot of lentil soup. Saturday night can be a treat or takeaway night. Friday I use up what's in the fridge before I shop on Saturday.

They do, I get the Lidl ones and haven't had a leak yet. You can also sometimes find ones called 'pour and store which are great, they have a flat bottom so make it easy to pour soups/sauces in, then seal and flatten.

I tend to put the bag into a bowl, fill it, then squeeze out air, seal and flatten.

Once you get into the swing of freezing stuff in batches, one of my favourite tricks is to have a Tupperware box in the freezer and as fruit starts to reach the end of its life I peel/chop it and throw it in the box. I usually have a couple on the go, one for citrus fruits and one for other. The citrus fruits are great instead of ice cubes, the 'other' box can be used to make smoothies or as crumble/pie filling. I also freeze whole bananas, they can be blitzed from frozen for a quick banana icecream or added to smoothies/pancakes/cake mix while still frozen.

I do have a pressure multi cooker . That has a slow cook function on it. But it seems rubbish. Also have the 2 drawer air fryer .

I did not lable today as the pen would not write. But I only have chill, spag bol and curry anyway .

I'm hoping to batch cook on a weekend. At least 4 meals each a week. The other 3 days I don't care if I end up throwing chicken nuggets or what ever in the air fryer. As 4 days of proper meal will be a big improvement for me .

Don't buy meat and find more vegetarian recipes? I'm not kidding, I had the same issue and realised that vegetables don't go off in the matter of days, if for some reason I don't cook the recipes I had planned.

Thank you so much. I keep throwing bananas out because they go over ripe then I gey fruit flys . Even fruit in the fridge starts going of kids are not intresred really. Can I freeze any fruit? Apples,pears, oranges ... grapes ?? I know I can freeze Berry fruits

That won't work for us. Thank you though

Can I cook spaghetti and keep it in the fridge, if so how many days can it stay in there?

It would be a weird thing to do, never heard of anyone doing this and if you did I would imagine overnight max but I wouldn't even do that, personally. What would be the point?

It sounds like you don't know much about basic food preparation (asking about days to leave cooked pasta etc ), is there a reason for that?

I don't think it's safe to be cooking meat with these issues going on.

Yes you can freeze all fruits, if you take a look in the freezer section next time you're in the supermarket you can get bags of berries, smoothie mixes with tropical fruits, orchard mix with stone fruits and apples.......

You might want to separate them out a bit depending on what your kids like but apple, grape and berries would be lovely thrown in the blender and made into a smoothie with a bit of apple juice. Or apple, plum, nectarine and berries makes a delicious crumble.

Buy fresh pasta from the fridge section, it usually has about a month on the best before date so is good for an impromptu quick meal and it only takes 3 minutes to cook so it's perfect for a very quick meal.

Boil up a pan of water, 3 minutes to cook the pasta, drain it, back in the pan, a cup of milk, big handful of cheese, whatever seasoning you like and stir. Mac and cheese in 5 minutes.

Can stew and freeze orchard fruits (apples, pears etc).
Can freeze grapes the same as berries but they don't really go back to how they were before if that makes sense, so better to only freeze if you're going to use either hot or in smoothies.

Can freeze bananas - either whole and use for banana bread, or slice and can use for smoothies (my blender couldn't cope with a whole frozen banana!).

However, if I may, it sounds like you are doing a weekly food shop of what you feel like you/your family should be eating, rather than what you actually do eat, and are then doubly wasting money on wasted food and on takeaways because you either don't feel like or don't have the energy to cook the food you already have.

Why not for a couple of weeks try just buying what actually gets eaten, and frozen/easy versions of what you get as a takeaway? It will be significantly cheaper to get frozen ready meals of pizza/curry/chinese etc of your usual orders than carry on the way you are. Is it healthy? Well not really, but probably better than the takeaways and the portions will also be more controlled, and it sounds like the healthy food isn't really being eaten so there's no point pretending it will be.

Then buy the raw ingredients to make one meal in bulk - and make a whole load of lasagne or whatever, and freeze that. Do a different thing each week. Once you have stocked up on a range of the home cooking the ready meals can be phased out. But give yourself some grace period and ditch the takeaway habit.

If you are missing not having certain things, you can add them to the list for the next week or pop out and get just that thing, but your current situation is a bit ridiculous.

If you're having four takeaways a week, maybe switch to two ready meals as suggested above and two home cooked at first, it would be less drastic of a change. Then you can add more batch cooking in later.

I just googled it says pasta can be frozen. I just thought it might be possible because you often see ready meals with pasta that are either fridge or frozen.

I have done things like gusto recipe books or sometimes I Google. It might be linked to my learning difficulties not sure . But you could tell me how to make a sauce. If I made it tonight, tomorrow I will have forgotten. Even if I have cooked something several times I still have to look it up.

Oh, I see what you mean. I thought you meant just plain pasta.

I have problems organising things too.

One thing I do is make a list for every week and I plan breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack for every day.

The list is on my phone so I write in bold something that I need to buy, like this:

Monday
Yoghurt and berries
Leek and potato soup leeks
Macaroni cheese cheese
Apples

Tuesday
Porridge
Ploughman's sandwich chutney
Stir fry noodles, garlic
bananas

and I do that for the week.

Then when I go shopping, I look at the list and remember all the things I need to buy. I make a list in the same note with everything I need to cook plus all the other things and I tick them off so I've got everything and not too much extra.

I know its ridiculous. That was the point of my post because it can't go in like that it's just silly.

The over the top take aways are due to stress and lots of stuff I have going on. There are times I cant even go in the kitchen for 5 mins. There's been alot going on . But I don't want to make this thread about that. Things are starting to get better and I want to try and keep on that positive path as best I can . For at the moment that's starting to cook meals. And batch cooking so if its not a good day I know I have meals in the freezer that just need heating and its not some crap take away.

And thank you I will definitely freeze the fruit. It would be nice to have fruit crumble etc now that it's getting colder. Kidsvlike Smoothie as well. Thank you .

We have been there too. I have a very high-stress job and have periods where I have no energy or time to do anything once I finish work.

We tend to have a few low-fuss staples in the freezer ready to go for nights where minimal effort is required - chicken kievs, meatballs that we can fry with some tomato sauce and do some spaghetti, baked potato with tuna or beans, chicken bits or fish fingers that we can have in a wrap with some salad.

Once a week on a WFH day I'll chuck something in the slow cooker that will do us for at least 2 nights - usually either a curry or a stew. I like those stew veg packs in winter where you get a sensible amount of veg rather than a kilo of carrots and a whole bag of onions etc. I chop them up, chuck in a stock pot and a stock cube and let it do its thing.

It gets easier but get control of the situation first and look after yourselves.