Yay i just cut nearly £70 off my food shopping by meal planning!

[CharleeInChains]

I meal planned this week and rather than spending £150 on food i spent £80! I know that is still alot for a family of 4 but to me its awesome to save that amount!

All my meals are from my new Jamie Oliver book just to try out the meals in it.

We are having

Today - Pork and Veg Kebabs with homemade chips and salad

Sun - Beef and Ale stew with Dumplings

Mon - Piella with chiken and white fish (no shellfish)

Tues - Chilli with Rice

Wed - Homemade beef burgers with salad

Thurs - Smoked Pollock keddigree

Fri - Take away!

I know that's meat or fish every night although we eat alot of fruit and veg we love our meat!

Well done, Charlee.

well done!

think dh was dropping hints about meal planning....will leave it to him though as he's the cook!

Haha im being all smug round the house now is a 'im a domestic godess' kind way!

Fab saving!! & they all sound very tasty too.

Could I be a PITA & ak you to post the beef & ale stew recipe if you have chance? Someone else said on another thread they'd tried that and it was deeeee-lish

is it the ministry of food book

I am very tempted with it

Yes 'Jamie's Ministery of Food' its fab! but i am a Jamie-stalker-aholic so there you go!

Jamie has put in a basic stew recipe than added a section with various meat/booze/herb combos.

Basic Stew

serves 4-6

2 sticks of celery
2 medium onions
2 carrotts
olive oil
1 heaped tsp of plain flour
400g tin of chopped tomatoes
Salt and Pepper to season.

And for the Beef and Ale

3 fresh/dried Bay leaves
500g diced stewing beef
500ml Guiness or Stout

Preheat Oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6. Trim celery and roughly chop same for onios and carrotts.

Put all Veg and chosen herb (bay) into a pan with 2 lugs of olive oil and fry for 10 mins. medium heat.

Add your fluor and meat, pour in booze and tomatoes.

Stir and season.

Bring to the boil then cook in the oven for 3hrs with lid on, remove lid from dish for the last half hr.

Remove and stick or stalks of herbs and serve.

charlee please move in to my house! i am hopeless at this. How did you start - is this a new jamie book? does he provide meal plans? There are only 3 of us and I reckon i spend about £200 a week just "popping in" to my local tesco/waitrose/m&s - the problem is we live in central london with no car.

ok i will buy the book 10.00 in book people

it looks like lots of good basic recipes which i need and can pass on the dc's

fab, I will be adding ingredients to my shopping next week to try out. Thank-you!

Is the book worth paying £10 for?

Lol! Yes it's the new Jamie Oliver book from the series he's showing on channel 4 at the moment.

There isn't meal plas in it but they are very simple to do.

Go through your fridge and freezer and see what you have in there.

Make any meals you can out of that then plan a specific meal for each day of the night. Wrte down the ingredients and only buy them!

It's hard to do i can go in for nappies and come put with 5 bags full of goddies!

You can make bulk meals to and freeze hlaf of them. Ect.

I am fairly new tot his there are alot of other mumsnetter who are pro's.

Yes i would happily pay £10 for all of Jamies books.

good reviews on amazon as well