Your favourite make ahead meals/sauces or slow cooker [vegan] meals?

[QueenOfCatan]

I'm trying to make up a few week-long menu plans including lunch and dinner which contain meals that are mostly make ahead. Lunch just me and toddler DD so leftovers to freeze would be great whilst dinner is DH, DD and I so more likely to eat more of it!

Whether that's sauces for pasta or rice or grains, things we can prep the night before and throw in the slow cooker the next morning or just entire meals that can be made at the weekend, anything would be handy!

Only caveat is low cost, so low bread content (I'm gf but we can work around most things cheaply enough, bar bread! Bloody expensive stuff! Though if you know of any good gf bread recipes I'm all for trying those too!) and preferably lots of ideas not involving too much fake meat/cheese as that's also limited due to cost (once, max. twice a week for soy products and one block of fake cheese a week!)

So far I have:

Pasta with creamy mushroom sauce (make sauce in advance)
Sweet potato and red lentil curry (slow cooker)
Leek and potato soup
Carrot and butterbean soup
Pasta with mushroom and lentil ragu (make sauce in advance)
Sausages and mash with veg (make mash ahead of time, prep veg night before)
Chilli (make ahead, serve with rice and avocado)
Slow cooker risotto
Lasagne (make ahead, serve with rocket)
Shepards Pie (make ahead, serve with veg)
Pasties with potato pastry (make big batch every 3-4 weeks, freeze until night before)
Sweet Vegetable pie with green veg (make veg mix before then just top with roll out pastry or mash)

I know that pasta with a tomato/pomodoro style sauce is an obvious one but I'm not feeling tomato sauce at the moment thanks to pregnancy, cannot wait to get back to it though as that's the ultimate easy meal!

bean balls (you can freeze them) with spaghetti. they are also good cold as a lunch

indian winter soup, you can freeze batches and then serve with rice

all the best x

Mmmm, can't wait the make that Indian soup!

*to make

If you want an easy sauce, this one is awesome.

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/really-easy-roasted-red-pepper-sauce

I buy a bag of frozen peppers and make it with that rather than the more expensive fresh ones,

A bit earlier I was thinking that I need to eat more vegetables. Mmm, I wonder if there's any good ideas on Mumsnet...

And there it is: Indian winter soup.

Thanks, sleep.

Thank you! Indian winter soup sounds great, we love soup, I would ideally like to have one soup dinner and one soup lunch a week as they're easy to make!

Madvixen we always have fresh peppers in the house as DD loves eating them whole so that's a brilliant recipe too! I never knew you could get frozen peppers though admittedly, are they whole or in chunks? We have so much chilli that some preprepped pepper might be nice occasionally!

Queen, I get mine from Tesco and they come ready sliced

Slow cooker chickpea tagine www.amuse-your-bouche.com/slow-cooker-tagine/
Chickpea and bean casserole www.wcrf-uk.org/uk/recipes/chickpea-and-bean-casserole
Slow cooker lentil stew veggiedesserts.co.uk/vegan-slow-cooker-lentil-stew-harissa/

Chickpoea meals are great, thank you! Daughter loves chickpeas, she'd have them at every meal if she could (and would snack on them if she could work the tin opener )

If she likes chickpea meals, you could make some of these burgers to freeze www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1364634/chickpea-and-coriander-burgers
And slow cooker chickpea curry www.pataks.co.uk/recipes/chickpea-curry-in-the-slow-cooker

Have you made her crispy chickpeas? Drained chickpeas mixed in a bowl with a little smidge of olive oil and whatever flavour you like such as salt and pepper or paprika and cumin. Spread flat over a baking sheet and bake until crispy. I'm sure you could find recommended temps and times online or just experiment until you get them how you like them.

You can use them as a snack food or as a fajita filling.