Help! We need some new meal ideas!

[sammysam]

Please help me overcome our meal boredom! We always end up rotating the same old meals over and over and are getting fed up with them all! I need some inspiration! I'm veggie, dp isn't and dd has meat or veggie-I always cook one meet version and one veggie-using quorn, tofu or just veggies.

Typical meals are:

Spag bol
Thai green or red curry
suasages and mash
quiche, new pots and salad
Fish pie and veg
creamy chicken/quorn thing and pasta or rice
Chilli
Other mexican-ie fajitas
pasta and veg sauce of some kind
Risotto (dp has gone off this as is too gacky (sp?)!)
Veg stir fry and noodles
and now my mind is blank

So wht else can we have?
What are your tried and tested best meals?
If i have to cook and eat these again i think we'll all go crazy !

What about like an irish stew (veggie option for you), put all meat and veg, incl pots in to a casserole dish and then serve it in a large yorkshire pudding, my family love it.

ps lunch is not bad at the mo as i've gone soup crazy and make a different one every other day-its mainly evening meals (although lunch ideas would be welcome )

Lasagne?

ooo singyswife-that sounds good! What do you make the sauce with?

Lasagne-great idea-haven't done that for ages! Used to do a really nice roasted veg one......

What sauce? For the stew, just veg oxo cubes and some cornflour. Sometimes add a touch of brown sauce for extra zing. Like I said my family love it

This is one of our favourites. I normally do it with chicken breast but tofu or quorn would work equally well, as would just veggies. Basically you need:

chicken breast (or not)
veggies
cherry tomatoes
feta
curly kale
herbs/spices

Just cook the chicken, veg etc in flat oven dish, add the tomatoes and feta, cook a bit more then turn oven down and put the raw curly kale on top of dish and pop back in oven for 10-15 mins. The curly kale will go crispy and is really yummy!
You can use whatever spices you like but I generally use mixed herbs and cumin. rosemary is good too.
Can add potatoes to make it a proper one dish meal.
Olives also go well in it

My family love Chicken Thighs with a piece of Smoky Bacon wrapped round, then roasted. You can put cheese between the Thighs & Bacon.

Noodle dishes? Chow Mein etc is easy.

I have a 6 week meal rota, my family eat meal (except for beef) and I am vegi - I concentrate on their meals over mine, espcailly as I am often at work late so my partner does the cooking, having a rota also cuts down on the food bills as you know exactly what you need to buy each week - the meals are also planned so that each week they will have pasta, noodles, rice, potatoe, fish, lamb, pork and chicken, here are the meals that I plan and if you want any recipies just ask, also some of the meals are cooked up in large batches and frozen, all meals are home made apart from one or two - these have and * next to them:

fish cakes
lamb stir fry with noodles, green beans and black bean sauce
chicken nuggets
sausage, mash, peas and onion gravy
chicken casserol
mozerella pasta (cold pasta)
roast lamb
fresh tuna steaks with noodles and chili
sausage casserole
chicken parcels wrapped in palma ham
bacon and egg with chips and beans
spag bol
scampi *
savoury rice
fish* and chips with coleslaw
chicken and noodle stir fry
lamb chops
pasta carbonara
chili with rice and sour cream
chicken salsa wraps
torilla (spanish omlette)
salmon and rice
pork stir fry with noodles
chicken kieves
fresh filled pasta * and sauce
shepherds pie
pizza *
jacket spuds
sweet and sour prawns
risotto
wagamama chicken
roast pork
oily fish such as sardines
paprika chicken
chicken catchiatory
spanish stew
stroganoff
japanese udon noodles with prawns
pad thai
chicken ramen
quiche
kebabs

please excuse the spelling - it was never one of my good points - come summer the menues change and we eat a lot more salads with couscous etc

hope this helps

forgot to add, I also make up loads of diffent types of meat balls such as pork mince with pine nuts and bourson cheese, turkey and chicken with bacon and seasame seeds, lamb with parmasan and rosemary, I make them small and cook them all up then freeze them, for a snack after school or to throw them in with a pasta sauce, they are very convenient, just zap them in the micro to warm up straight from the freezer

Cannelloni -

Lightly fry a tin of spinach and crushed garlic. Stir in a tub of cream cheese and use to stuff cannelloni tubes.

Tomato sauce - I use a jar of Dolmio-type, but add some fried Peppers, onions and mushrooms (all chopped small). Spread a little sauce on the bottom of the dish to stop pasta sticking, add pasta, pour rest of sauce over (and in between tubes).

Make a bechamel sauce (cheese optional) and pour over. Add grated cheese. Bake (45 mins ish)

Roasted stuffed peppers:

halve peppers (inc stalks), scoop out seeds.
Grease shallow dish and put in peppers.

Fry some chopped chestnut mushrooms, stir in some chives, and fill pepper halves. Crumble feta over. Top with a mixture of parmesan and breadcrumbs.

Drizzle with oil and roast for 45 mins.

I'm not vegi, but for calorific reasons, have it on its own with salad (and sometimes potatoes), whilst serving it with lamb chops for DH.

I make pork in cream and mustard sauce which is super quick and OH usually has a quorn escalope thingy.

Pork steaks, fry in butter and a dash of oil until browned.
Remove from pan to a plate, and add a splash of marsala, use a wooden spoon to scrape the bottom of the pan.

Add a spoonful of dijon mustard and also grain mustard and stir into the marsala. Add half a small carton of double cream, stir well and bring to simmering point.

Add the pork steaks back in and simmer until the meat is cooked through and the sauce is thickened.

If you use the thin ones then they take almost no time at all.

I haven't put quantities down because I always make it up as I go along.

Sammysam, sounds exactly the same as our menu, except you left out take-away curry, fish and chips, with DD having left overs of something else from freezer!

fish fingers chips and beans. Cant beat that.

Thanks everyone for your ideas-we've had a few different meals now-but then stupidly sent dp out to do the shopping and back to th same old as he couldn't be arsed to think not like him at all!!!

anyway all the ideas are great and i'm going to make my way through all of them!!
Sorry for the late reply-dd hates me being on here so only can when i manage to get her to fall asleep (usually on me!)