What food do you make weekly just to have to hand?

[GreyWasp]

I always make:

batch of soup for lunch (not in Summer)
a couple of loaves of bread in bread maker
sandwich filler for the kids - tuna mayo, coronation chicken etc
green juice for me (on a weight loss kick)
overnight oats for teen daughter
used to make breakfast muffins but fallen out it
Chinese style pickled cucumbers - we make a massive batch which my daughters have with almost every meal think it is a social media thing

Just has become part of my routine and does make life easier

Curious what others do

Wonderful - thank you kindly 🙂

You're welcome, enjoy!

This was our go to for a very long time.

https://www.wellplated.com/banana-oatmeal-muffins/

Sending this to DH immediately. He's obsessed with Asian food and excellent at making it! Thank you!

@DaringlyDizzy i should have said I do not bother with the sugar and i actually prefer it without

I marinate 1kg of boneless chicken thighs (in a paste I make with lime juice, garlic, chili paprika and either tandoori or BBQ seasoning)and cook them in the slow cooker. Have with veg and rice, in stirfries, in rolls or with pasta or salad depending what we fancy.

Also usually a batch of either curry chili stew or bolognese in the slow cooker most weeks.

I see a PP does boiled eggs as well - I'll leave 5 in their shells in fridge from Sunday and usually have 1 a day for breakfast or afternoon snack

Cook batches of grains (quinoa, rice, freekeh) and use them for meals in the week

Same with roasting a load of veg

I've started sometimes just chopping veg and putting into tuppawares the day the veg box comes, and then I'm more inclined to actually cook and use it all fresh if the Chopping part is already done! As some nights with two small children you just decide you cba

I would love to know what marinades you do? :)

I try and do the following each week.
Couple of different soups to have for lunches or snacks
Hard boil eggs and put in fridge for snacks.
A loaf cake or banan bread.
A large crustless quiche
Just for people to help theslsves for snacks work lunches etc. Not for actual main meals.

I always cook too much veg with the Sunday roast, so that I can make a big frittata with it Monday, nice as a snack during the week. Also make a big bread and butter pudding once a week which is nice cold, just slice it as and when, keeps well in the fridge, I always have a lot of bread and don’t like wasting it.

i make a batch of egg and cheese bites (also on a WL kick) they're low calorie, filling, healthy and so easy to reheat making breakfast takes me legit 15 seconds😂 they are also delicious so i must try not to inhale the lot as soon as they come out the oven

@mathanxiety how do you do the stock with the full chicken such that you can also do sandwiches?
I did some with chicken wings but the meat got all rubbery. How long do you simmer the stock?

You just don’t have friends that can cook imo.

My dp is very into bread and is an advisor to the bread industry and he reckons a bread in a bread maker can be great if you know the tricks etc to make a good loaf. And no, he will not share the secrets!!

@DaringlyDizzy Coleslaw varies from week to week, so no recipe I'm afraid, but it's usually 1/4 to 1/2 a finely sliced cabbage (any sort), one or two finely sliced onions, and a few grated carrots. I usually use a couple of tablespoons of vinegar, and a drizzle of olive oil, then bring it all together with mayonnaise or yoghurt or sour cream or some combination thereof.
Add seeds, herbs, hot sauce, mustard, smoked paprika, garlic, whatever to vary it. Sometimes I make it with soy, ginger and garlic (no mayo) - you can really do whatever you want, it's very forgiving! You can even use finely sliced cauliflower leaves to use them up.

I got them from the Fast 800 cookbook. I will post them tomorrow. Too lazy to move right now 😍

Loaf of sourdough. 3 lots of bread sourdough rolls for lunches. Yoghurt. And usually a homemade cake (but often my 10 year old does that).

Soup intermittently and granola every month roughly.

Egg slice, it's great as a grab breakfast on the way out of the house, or after school snack!
You can't taste the courgette, and can substitute for whatever veg is to hand (courgette, carrot, mushroom or all three). I leave out the bacon.

juliegoodwin.com.au/zucchini-slice-recipe/

Always coleslaw, fill a 1.6L box every five days.
Also always cook a double portion of rice so it can be fried the next day.

weekly:
One or two batches of soup.
A fairly basic dal
cucumber or onion salad

fortnightly:
pesto
refried beans

monthly:
pickled red onions
kimchi
mushroom pate
lacto fermented chilli and red pepper

I like to be able to make dinner in 15 mins when necessary. Other days I unwind by cooking. The trick is to find your balance.

I roast a chicken every Sunday. That does for meals during the week, sandwiches for lunch and then I make stock from the bones for during the week.

Every Sunday I make 4 home made pot noodles and 4 yogurt and fruit pots for me to take to work that week. Most weeks I make quiche/sausage rolls/cheese twists for DH to take to work with his sandwiches.

I prep any fruit that I have bought as I find it gets eaten if I wash soft fruit and chop kiwi, etc and put it in a snack box in the fridge.

If I can be bothered I might prep a couple of slow cooker meals (in the winter). This Sunday I prepped savory mince and a chicken curry - just put all the ingredients into bags and shoved them in the fridge to just tip into the slow cooker in the morning when we want them.

And I usually make banana bread as each week I have good intentions of eating a banana every day only to find there are all still there at the end of the week, going black.

In the summer I dont do anywhere near as much as I want to be out and about but in the winter I love spending a Sunday in the kitchen.

Oh and home made instant porridge. I make a batch of this now and again and take it to work with me every day. A couple of scoops of the instant porridge with some seeds (chia, pumpkin and sunflower) in and some fruit chopped on top. I can prep 4 tubs every Sunday to go in the fridge so I just have to grab them in the morning. Just add boiling water to them at work and they are lovely. Instant porridge but without all the additives as the ones you buy in the shops.

Hungry, inspired and inadequate here too!

I used to be better but I got lazy in pregnancy last year and now I have an ebf 4 month old and never seem to have time.

However she'll be weaning soon, and DH and I are on a health kick so I'm taking this thread as a kick up the bum!

I do batch cook though just not as much as I should

All of these on a random rotation/when we fancy them for the week, it's easier to cook once and have 3/4 family meals than cook every night

Bolognese sauce
Vegetable tomato sauce
Soups
Chicken stew
Beef stew
Curry
Cookies
Brownies
Chicken for salads

I used to make
Butter
Kombucha
Pickled things
Bread
Kefir
But my kitchen is too small for all the equipment/jars etc now 😩

@NeedToChangeName doesn’t the Houmous texture go a bit weird after freezing?
@Frenzi how do you make instant porridge, please?
and for those of you who cut up/prep fruit, how long do you find it lasts? Our fruit is always going off :(

We don’t have a regular Sunday ritual but most weeks we make a sweet and a savoury snack from packed lunches (eg cookies and cheese straws). Often also some kind of bulk dish for packed lunches eg chickpea curry (and maybe freeze a couple of portions to vary it a bit). Usually keep some pre-made (by us) tomato sauce, stock and sofrito mix in the freezer.

As needed, also usually make own bread, pizza bases, flatbreads, Houmous, guacamole, tzatziki, pickled cucumbers; sometimes mayo, pesto when herbs are in season. Probably other stuff I’ve forgotten….

Jumping in here to answer.

I roast my chicken and strip all the meat off it Then I tend to make my stock in the slow cooker. Put in the carcass with an onion, celery and carrots. If I buy fresh herbs and dont use them all I shove them in the freezer (whole) and then throw them in the slow cooker too. I then put it on low for up to 24 hours. Then strain through a colander and then again through a sieve.

Very often I will buy a chicken and butcher it rather than cook it. (It is so much cheaper to buy a chicken and butcher it than it is to buy the individual bits like legs, breast, etc). Then I either roast the carcass for 30 mins before putting it in the slow cooker or I just shove the raw carcass in.

Sometimes I keep the stock in the fridge (if I am likely to use it within the next four or five days), sometimes I put it in the freezer and sometimes I make it into stock cubes (a couple of ways of doing this but the way I usually do it is to put the liquid in a pan and boil/simmer it until it reduces down quick thickly and then put it into freezer cube trays, freeze it and once frozen pop it out into freezer bags to keep. Then use in boiling water and gravy or add straight (frozen) to casseroles, etc.

Occasionally I will blitz the chicken bones and veg in a food processor and add them to the stock and simmer it all down to a thick paste and freeze them for stock cubes.

I do a similar thing if I cook ham - cook the ham in water with a load of veggies, remove the ham to use and then use the stock - treating it the same way as I would the chicken stock.

I fancy having a go with beef but need to source some beef bones from somewhere. I assume the butcher will have some if I ask.

I roasted a tray of veg and cooked up some quinoa to have it with it and roasted chickpeas .... Then never ate it 🙈
Absolute waste.. I'm not home in the day. Nobody else likes it. I haven't time in the morning to pack it and too tired the night before...... but I know it's a great idea.

The instant porridge is so easy.

500g porridge oats (I zuzz half of them up in a food processor so they look like ready brek as I prefer the consistency but you could leave them whole)
60g milk powder
1 tsp salt

Literally just mix them all together and put them in a jar. Then each evening (or Sunday if I am prepping for the week) I put a big scoop in a plastic tub with a lid on, add a teaspoon or two of seeds and a handful of chopped fruit. Then when I am ready to eat it I just add as much boiled water as I want to, let it stand for about 5 minutes and eat.

It is the simplest thing ever but you know it isnt ultra processed.

Fruit wise I bought one of these

Snack Tray with Lid and Handle, 8 Compartments Divided Serving Tray, Portable Snackle Storage Boxes with Forks Spoon, Multi-Purpose Clear Snack Containers for Travel Picnic Movie for Food Fruit Candy : Amazon.co.uk: Home & Kitchen

I prep the fruit every Sunday - usually strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, kiwi, melon, pineapple, etc and it lasts most of the week in the snack box. I will probably do another one in the summer that has salad stuff in it.

For my homemade pot noodles I usually buy a fresh bag of stir fry veg and put them in plastic pots on a sunday and the one I take to work on a Friday is fine.