meal planners - typical week menus and costs please...

[darlingbud]

I'm really trying to watch the pennies & I know there are a few people on here who pla the weekly meals to keep a tight budget.

I was wondering if you woul mind telling me what a typical weeks recipes are and approx how much it costs you weekly.

Where do you shop?

How much are you spending at the moment & how many in your family? And where are you shopping?

Sorry, I can't give you a weekly meal plan, but I do get all my meat, fish, fruit & veg from my local market. It saves us at least 30-40% on supermarket prices - eg 1kg fresh salmon £5, 9 chicken breast fillets (very decent size) £6, 36 large eggs £2.00 that kind of thing. It might be worth checking out your nearest local market & shopping around for stuff.

ukparents have some good ideas

My menu this week is :

Tonight

Lasagne, garlic bread, roasted peppers with creme fraiche

Tomorrow night
I leave this free to give us option of take away, meal out or something from freezer

Sunday night
Spaghetti bolognaise

Monday night
Chicken Korma, Cous Cous and Naan Bread

Tuesday Night
Tuna pasta bake, corn on the cob

Wednesday night
Bangers with sweet potato mash and vegetables

Thursday night
Chicken Stir Fry

Friday
Tesco aberdeen angus steak pie, roast potatoes and peas

I only tend to plan the evening meals then just buy lots of bits and pieces for lunches, snacks etc

If you look under the archived posts there was one really excellent thread which I printed off as I plan to use in a couple of months. There were loads of ideas and one poster (I think it was prufrock?) had some brilliant ideas.

We spend btw £40 - £50 a week on shopping at Asda. What we get varies but here's this week:
Monday - roast chicken (you can get 2 frozen ones for a fiver)
Tuesday - leftover chicken with pasta, sweetcorn, broccoli and mayonnaise
Wednesday - spagbetti bolognaise
Thursday - stuffed pasta with sauce and broccoli (or any other veg)
Friday - turkey curry (we buy frozen turkey breasts when they are on special offer) with uncle Ben's curry sauce jar or similar
Saturday - tuna pasta with sweetcorn and mayo
Sunday - either roast another chicken or have stuffed pasta or curry again

we also always have in the fridge fish fingers or battered cod so we can have it with mash and beans on a night when we haven't got anything in. We always have baked beans, pasta, potaotes, tinned tuna and tinned sweetcorn in so we always have a meal available

Will try the market - I quite fancy a market day now you've said what prices you find things for.

I usually shop at Morrisons as they have quite a few offers.

There are three of us - me and dh and our 2.5 dd.

We spend around £80 a week (at Tesco) for our shopping, around £40-50 of that is for the meals, the rest if nappies, yoghurts, juice, milk (£8 worth for the week!), and other 'extras'

That's for 4 of us.

what is the roasted peppers and cremem fraiche recipe peckarollover?

Our weekly meals go something like this:

Friday night - pizza (from supermarket)
Saturday - nearly always at grandparents - free meal!!
Sunday - Sausage and mash with carrots/leeks
Monday - smoked fish and rice + tomato/leeks/mushrooms
Tuesday - lentil sauce and rice (make loads and freeze for kids!)
Wednesday - chicken casserole + rice
Thursday - lamb chops + chips (fishfingers for kids!)

That's about it! Any kind of casserole/sauce we make we freeze some aswell so there's always something in for the kids' lunches/tea. We love rice which is why it features so heavily! It's tons cheaper to plan a week's food like this and just buy the ingredients for the meals - we always buy organic/free range meat which is more expensive, but planning meals means we can afford it, and some weeks we have the lentil sauce meal twice and save on the meat!! Or breaded fish instead of smoked - cheaper..!

darlingbud - Im no chef so its actually just mixed peppers sliced and tossed in some olive oil and garlic roasted til they go "nice" and a dollop of creme fraiche on top!

here's a week's worth of meals at ours:
MON - spag bol (from freezer - usually make about 4 meals' worth in one go)
TUE- salad, tuna, new potatoes
WED - tagliatelle with smoked salmon capers, creme fraiche, dill (mnet recipe!- offcuts for about £150-£2, make lovely sarnies for lunch with the rest...
THU - risotto with bacon and onions
FRI - roast chicken with ratatouille
SAT - chicken with ratatouille again, or other dish with leftover chicken
SUN - chilli con carne from freezer