To need your help in how to food shop?

[Totallyuseless31]

I always used to shop for just the ingredients we needed when it was just me and DP, and carried this on when we had DD1. Now we have DD2 who has a big appetite, DD1 has started school and has friends round, I had flu and could not shop or cook planned meals for a week (DP works late shift). I had no emergency food apart from baked beans. A week of baked beans is not good. How do I shop so I have spare food in? So if DD has friends round I can always have something made for tea that's nice and healthy. And if DD2 wants yet another snack. Or I'm too ill to shop for a week. I worry about buying spare food and it not getting eaten and it going off. I hate waste and always meal plan tightly, but I think that has too change and I need help with this.....

When posters say they 'zap' something like lasagne in the microwave: does it mean defrost in the microwave and then put in the oven to heat up?

We do an online shop twice a week for perishables but our staples that we always have are:

Cupboard:

Dried pasta
Rice
Cous cous
Tinned tomatoes and or passata
Tinned mackerel
Tinned tuna
Tinned chickpeas
Tinned fruit (usually peaches)
Eggs
Pesto

Fridge:

Milk
Cheese (cheddar, grated hard cheese such as parmesan or grana padano and usually mozarella)
Broccoli
Carrots
Onions
Baby new potatoes
Butter
Sourdough starter
Lardons/cubed pancetta (keep for ages!)
Ready to roll puff pastry

Freezer:

Lots of meat (we raise our own lambs so always have some of that), usually at least lamb, minced beef, chicken pieces, sausages and bacon
Peas
Sweetcorn
Spinach
An emergency fresh pasta sauce tub, carbonara usually
Butter
Flour (I keep it in the freezer to keep it fresh)

My turn to meal for my kids if we're low on supplies is pasta with tinned mackerel, broccoli and pesto. They all love it and it's really healthy too. Visiting kids often aren't quite so keen so for them I'll usually do sausages (I buy the kids the skinny Richmond ones - they cook straight from frozen in the oven in about 20 mins) with pasta/new potatoes and broccoli. Or I'll make a cheese sauce for some pasta and chuck some pancetta and peas in it.

Mince can be cooked straight from the freezer too so as long as you always have that it, and the onions/tinned toms/dried pasta in then you can always rustle up an emergency spag bol :)

Hi op don't forget you can freeze ham and cheese, I've always got a stock of both in the freezer.

I often find that the on the day stuff from the deli In Tesco have large bags of hand cut ham for a couple of quid sitting in amongst the other yellow label stuff. I always buy my cheese in huge blocks when they are selling it off, works out a lot cheaper.