Meal Planning

[cornishsue]

I desperately need to economise on my grocery shopping as feeding 7 or 8 of us each day means astronomical food bills.

I wondered if someone would run me through how meal planning works for them - as I am not really sure how to start. Especially with one child never eating pasta, another disliking potatoes, one only liking chicken and another not liking children at all!

Also any ideas for cheap food for fridge raiding teenagers (yes I once locked the kitchen overnight only to find my eldest son got a screwdriver and took the door off!!) They spend more time looking in the fridge than they do watching TV!! Any help or ideas gratefully received.

Thanks!

when all mine were at home i would spend a saturday making pans of spag bol/ curries/ soups/ stews etc and freeze 2-3 good sized family portions of each

used a lot of lentils/soya mince in my time as fillers iykwim

i buy sacks of spuds which used to last a week or 2

as for cheap snacks..i used to save the potato peelings (after scrubbing) add olive oil, salt n pepper and/or other seasonings and bake in oven till crispy/ also cupcakes used to make hundreds of them as they are cheap to make and last a couple of days

i used to also slice and grate blocks of cheese so they could put slices on cheese toasties without the usual cutting huge chunks ykwim lol

will try n think of some more x

My meal planning is really about the evening meals. Breakfast is cereal, toast, porridge or eggs... the last three being very cheap indeed. Lunch is at school for DS and a salad for me. So the planning is around the evenings. I've knocked fussiness on the head as a starter... suggest you do the same. It's definitely a case of 'don't complain, we need to economise'. Anyone that doesn't like the set meal can have some bread and butter, but that's all.

My weekly process is..

1. Check what's in the cupboards/fridge/freezer already and invent meals that use most of that up first. Most people have more than they think stored up.
2. Fill in the gaps with meals that you don't have the ingredients for
3. Take the meal list, see what ingredients are missing and turn that into a shopping list
4. Go shopping with the list and try not to buy too many things that are not on the list

For the teenagers I think the best defence is not to have snack foods around beyond cheaper things like loaves of bread and jars of jam. I stocked up on our limited selection of 'crap' yesterday - crisps, biscuits, cakes, sweets - and it came to about £20 all by itself. Fill them up with plenty of cheap stodge... bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, pulses, vegetables ... and keep 'ingredients' in your fridge and cupboards rather than too much that's ready to eat straight out of the packet. (Anyone caught vandalising the fridge IMHO should lose their pocket-money, be obliged to get a Saturday job and tip up something to the housekeeping.)

Agree with Cogito, tbh. I feed 7 people, 4 of us are adults (DS1 and 2 are 22 and 19), 2 are big, strapping teens and one is a big boy of 9, no little kids here and I spend less than £100 a week all in, sometimes much less.

I cook 1 meal and anyone who won't eat it isn't pandered to. They can have some bread and peanut butter, but that's it. I really think that you need to adopt the same approach, your kids sound old enough to understand when they are told that you need to cut back. They just need to adjust their expectations and accept reality.

I meal plan quite tightly. Breakfast is either cereal, toast with jam or peanut butter or something like pancakes/banana bread if I have made them. Lunch is usually leftovers (I deliberately make too much the night before and save some for lunch), hm soup ( a big pot does 2 days), or something simple like pasta with caramelised onions, scrambled egg rice or wraps with peanut butter and apple. For evening meals the process goes like this:

look what we already have and plan meals around that
see if there are any gaps and think of cheap meals that I can make to fill them
make a list of what I need to buy
shop using the list but be flexible, if I find something good reduced or a great offer than I can change things around a bit. (I recently found a 4kg ham reduced to £7 which I bought and used as the basis of 8 meals, for example).

I try to vary the meals so that everyone gets at least one meal a week that they really like and I try not to make anything that I know no-one will eat. I usually start with the carb and plan around that, so I usually make a couple of pasta meals a week, a rice based meal, a potato based meal, a bread based meal and then fill in the rest with whatever I have left.

I use a lot of beans, lentils and nuts and only a small amount of meat. I am veggie and the kids only get meat maybe 5 or 6 times a month, unless I get a very good deal. They have accepted this because they would rather eat than go hungry. What meat I do buy tends to be cheaper stuff like mince/chicken thighs/lamb breast etc. and I don't really use meat substitutes like quorn, except the sausages because the kids like them.

As for snacks, the best idea is just not to buy them. I always have bread, jam, peanut butter and cheese (I grate this into a bag so that they aren't cutting off huge chunks.) A couple of times a week, I bake a couple of yoghurt or banana loaves or something similar and I have apples, bananas and tangerines in the fruit bowl. Once a month, I buy some crisps and biscuits, when they run out, I don't buy any more. I don't have ready to eat stuff hanging about the house as a rule. I find that if they have to make things, suddenly, they aren't so hungry after all. If you really feel the need to have snacks about the house, try Approved Food for cheap things like crisps and cereal bars.

I'm sorry, but anyone who vandalised my house to get food would be HARSHLY punished. There is absolutely no need for that kind of behaviour, it shows a complete lack of respect for you and your home. Make sure that they eat plenty of filling stuff at meal times and then be firm about what they are allowed to eat. If they need to, they can make some toast or have a sandwich but that's about it. As I say, they just have to adjust their expectations to the realities of the situation.

I can post some of my meal plans if you like, to give you an idea of what I do.

Thats true about the fussiness. I ate things I didnt like as a child but my parents were not well off and because no alternative was ever offered it didnt occur to me not to eat up.

At the end of the day a monthly food bill for 8 people could easily be the same as a mortgage.

I used to work with a girl who constantly moaned about cooking but she was doing a different meal for everyone! I cant imagine ever doing that.

My nephew has the family convinced he can only eat potato waffles, chips, sausage rolls, fish fingers, crisps, biscuits, choc, and pop. I dont think if he was born prior to junk food he would have starved to death upon weaning.

Absolutely, Fluffy, I often ate things that I didn't really like, I still do because I would always rather have something than nothing. My kids are much the same. They know the score and mostly eat what I make because it's better than being hungry.

As long as they all get something that they really like on a regular basis, then they have to accept eating some stuff that they don't enjoy that much sometimes as well.

I have a friend much like yours, who complains about cooking and about never having any money for shopping. It turns out that she is cooking 3 or 4 different meals every night, trying to please everyone. I wonder how they would survive in an environment without all the choices that we have. I don't think that they would starve themselves, somehow.

You all have great ideas on here, I need to take note!

Sorry to hijack the thread, but I really need to start meal planning so if anyone has meal-plan examples (stressed?), I'd love to see them. My issue is sometime I go shopping, then get home and find there's nothing to make an actual meal with iyswim.

Sorry to hijack the thread, but I really need to start meal planning so if anyone has meal-plan examples (stressed?), I'd love to see them. My issue is sometime I go shopping, then get home and find there's nothing to make an actual meal with iyswim.

I remember reading something in a parenting book once and it's something we've pretty much stuck with - any child who claims not to like the meal can make themself a piece of bread and butter or bread and peanut butter plus one piece of fruit - but nothing else. That way, they still get something reasonably healthy but they don't get pandered to.

I do similar to StressedHEMum and plan mainly around the carbs -

so one night might be baked potatoes and - something
one night rice and - something
one night pasta of some sort etc

And I plan the week so that we use up the fresh vege first (so something salady on a Monday, stir fry-ish on a Tuesday, green vege-ish on a Weds for example. Towards the end of the week we'll have pasta with tomato sauce or something with frozen peas, or something using up the ends of celery/leeks/carrots used in earlier meals etc.

I feed 6 of us daily - only one "child" as far as portions go, and there are often a couple of additional hungry teenage boys at the weekend, though to be fair ds is often that hungry teenager at someone else's house!

I don't buy snacks - we make popcorn (La Karmel has a lovely caramel version), biscuits and cakes and I don't buy crisps, but did make yummy nachos from economy tortilla chips last night.

I have a dd who doesn't eat everything, though I hesitate to say she's fussy. If she doesn't like what we have, she boils pasta and makes a quick sauce with philly and passata or has pesto. I cook from scratch daily but we do eat quite a lot of chicken/fish so not uber cheap. We live in the country - I bought a whole lamb for £50 recently. Just have to remember to defrost in time....

Just wish any of mine liked jacket potatoes. Actually, I don't like them either. Bulk cooking isn't viable for me but dcs often take leftovers for lunch.

Remus -great idea about using fresh veg early in the week.

This is my plan for the week:

M: Tomato sauce/veg & pasta
Tu: veggie rice with ? (protein)
Wed: mac and cheese with ham & veg
Th: baked potato & beans & veg
Fri: out-playdate
sat: spaghetti bolognaise
Sun: roast chicken & veg

We also had a nice snack using Basics tortillas this weekend - pile of tortillas each then dipped into mango salsa (one finely chopped red onion, half a chopped red pepper, one chopped mango, one chopped red chilli, some coriander). The tortilla crisps are only about 50p a pack but are pretty decent and you get a lot in a bag.

This week our plan looks something like -

• Tuesday - veggie lasagne with salad
• Wednesday - risotto with asparagus (fresh on special offer) and artichokes (jarred - only a pound a jar in Home Bargains)
• Thursday - Shepherd's pie made with Quorn mince
• Friday - vege curry to finish off the potatoes, carrots and also using chickpeas, with rice
• Saturday - don't know but possibly homemade wedges with eggs and peas
• Sunday - either a big pan of soup or chilli, depending on what's left and what I fancy

Remus, I do much the same with the fresh fruit and veg. I use it all up at the beginning of month and then for the last couple of weeks, it tends to be frozen/tinned stuff. Also do the same thing with cheap tortilla chips and salsa as a snack, I must try your mango one, it sounds lovely.

This weeks plan is:

Sunday - wraps with mackerel pate (using tinned mackerel) and salad leaves. (salad wraps for me)
sweetcorn bake with green beans

Monday - pasta salad
creamy bean and veg crumble with cabbage

Tuesday - sweetcorn chowder, bread
carrot pie with peas and green beans

Wednesday - Cheese and potato pie
cabbage pasta

Thursday - refried bean quesadillas
nutty potato cakes with spinach salad

Friday - potato bean bake
potato soup and soda bread

Saturday - pasta in balsamic dressing with peas and onions
quorn sausage and bean bake with dumplings

Banana bread, apple , oat and cranberry bread, yoghurt loaf and rhubarb and ginger loaf (just using stewed rhubarb instead of bananas)

Not very exciting this week as we are getting quite near the end of the month for me and am in using up mode.

Here are a couple of old summer meal plans, Kitty,

breakfasts; strawberry scones, pancakes with apple syrup, malted wheaties, multigrain hoops, yoghurt with fruit, fruit juice to drink.

lunches: toasted pittas with hm tzatziki, lentils and rice with salad and grated cheese, scrambled egg rice with peas and onions, courgette and cheese muffins, chick pea burgers in rolls with salad, refried bean and cheese quesadillas, pasta with scrambled eggs and cheese

dinners:
broad bean couscous, green bean risotto, venison casserole with pink mash and brocolli, steak and veg pie with new potatoes and carrots, pasta and fish pie with peas and corn, courgette, tomato and brie pasta, potato and salmon grill

baking: seed cake, plum cake, honey biscuits.

And another:

Breakfasts; malted wheats, multigrain hoops, OJ muffins, peanut butter muffins, toast and hm jam

Lunches: savoury muffins, mushroom soup, corn fritters, potato cakes with broad beans and mint mashed in with hm salsa , tuna pasta salad, fry bread with honey and chopped fruit, buttered pasta with courgettes, onion, tomatoes and basil

Dinner: creamy chard pasta, Spanish rice with prawns, lentil and new potato curry, spaghetti and meatballs, chilli bean wraps with salad and sour cream, sloppy joe subs, Mediterranean beans and rice with cornbread pancakes

Baking: beetroot cake, butter cookies, flapjacks.

This a less summery one, but has some meat in it:

Monday: cheesy mash and beans
shredded pork rolls, corn on the cobs

Tuesday; lentil and rice tortilla wraps
hunt pie (using a little left over
pork), mixed veg, chunky potatoes

Wednesday: lentil sloppy joes
savoury rice with some more of the
pork

THursday: cream of chicken soup, bread
carrot and onion pie, with the
last little bit of pork, potatoes,
brocolli

Friday: corn fritters, fruit, yoghurt
pilchard loaf, wedges, mixed veg.

Breakfasts are banana loaf, hot rice cereal, cheese and apple muffins, oatmeal scones, cereal.

Baking is beetroot cake and syrup loaf.

I do less baking now because of my M.E., so breakfasts tend to be cereal/toast rather than homemade stuff most days.

Liking the sound of beetroot cake.

Remus, it's a bit like carrot cake only pinker.

Beetroot cake. I usually don't make icing for it.

This is a good one as well.

I've had to give up my allotment because of my M.E. but I used to make this all the time because we ALWAYS had tons of beetroot and no-one but DH like it pickled and no-one but me likes it roasted.

Fish pie (use frozen)
Spag Bol (grate in courgette and carrot)
Spag meatballs if feeling flash
Mac and cheese with peas and frozen salmon if flush
Mumsnet cheating chicken pie with mushrooms
Lamb tagine
Roasted veg and cous cous
Flavoured Rice and Veg
Tuna pasta
Red lentil and tomato soup with spinach and bread
Garlic chicken and noodles

And rotate! Need some non pasta ideas. Quesadillas sound grea!