A family Favourite

In keeping with food topic I thought I'd share a family favourite dinner recipe.  This is what my hubby and boys like to eat.  It is a really simple, easy to cook meal which works well during the week.

Cheesy pasta night (2 adults 4 kids)

To make it quickly;
500g pasta
300ml cheese sauce (can get bisto cheese sauce granules or use low fat cheese spread gently heated with milk)
garlic clove (frozen puree squares for speed)
mushrooms (frozen chopped for speed)
onions (frozen diced for speed)
grated cheese
pesto

Boil big pan of water and cook spaghetti/pasta as per instructions.

Make up cheese sauce as per bisto instructions or heat cheese and milk in pan till dissolved.  (Alternatively make a white sauce using flour, butter and milk.  Mix tbsp. flour into melted butter then slowly adding milk and stirring.  Then add grated cheese with tsp of mustard).

Fry onion, garlic and mushrooms in a pan.  One cooked add cheese sauce plus 1tsp of pesto.

Serve pasta with sauce on top and sprinkle grated cheese.  Add more pesto if desired! To increase your 5 a day, add spinach to the sauce or also serve with salad.

Sometimes we add chopped up bacon and peas.

Food Planning

Its quite easy to write your own food plan really.  We kind of eat the same foods so its just being a bit more intentional about it really.  This is how we do it;

 

Breakfast - we have a choice of cereal, weetabix, porridge, museli and malties. I don't do sugar cereals.  We sweeten our porridge with honey and sometimes add fruit to our Weetabix. 

 

Lunches - tends to be a sandwich, fruit, cheese snack and a yogurt.  We vary the sandwich filling each day but staples are ham/chicken/egg/tuna/cheese mixed with salad or a condiment.  We also have jam, marmite and chocolate spread incase we fancy toast as well as beans in stock.

 

Snacks - tends to be fresh fruit, dried apricots (as can usually buy a big bag) raisans, malt loaf, crumpets, oat cakes, rice cakes, crackers, pancakes, crumpets and scones.

 

Dinners - when I plan out the dinners I start by doing this as my base;

 

Sunday - roast

Monday - rice based

Tuesday - veggie

Wednesday - mince

Thursday - fish

Friday - casserole/stew

Saturday - Fakeaway night (i'll cook a fake take away meal)

 

There are so many different types of meals that can be made with mince/fish/veg etc so I'll choose something I fancy from there and build up a meal from there.  Rice based means dinners like paella, curry or chicken in sauce.  Sometimes it involves cooking from scratch sometimes simpler i.e. veggie can be egg, chips and beans or fish fingers/fillet meal with new pots and peas.  Fakeaway night could well be pretend KFC - fried chicken fillets or diced chicken in your own flavourings with corn on cob, coleslaw or fries/salad.  Other favourites include pizza, Indian and Chinese.

 

I do plan in treats as lets face it, they're going to happen! During the week I get little chocolate sandwich bars/cake bars/tea cakes.  I tend to make a homemade cake during the week and at weekends I try to make a dessert for pudding.  We also get ice cream and have lots of toppings in stock.  My kids also like choc ices for dessert and these can be quite cheap too.  The children have sweetie pots (which are saved sweets from party bags/Christmas/Easter) as I don't let them eat them all in one go, so sometimes they choose something from there instead.

 

I work out the quantities we need for each meal and then double it, so that I order enough food for the month.  I try and make sure whatever the base I cover the basics of nutrition ie 5 portions of fruit/veg, 3 portions of calcium, proteins (fish x2 week, this can be sandwich filling as well as a fish based meal) and carbs, fats are used during cooking ie olive oil/butter with a treat over the course of the day.  This can mean adding in extra veg.  Making meals from scratch is a lot healthier (as you know exactly what's going in) and usually cheaper.We also take multi-vitamins and omega supplement, when aged 3 and above.  We are not a super healthy eating family, we do eat lots of carbs as they are cheap to fill out our meals.

This is a basic 2 week meal plan;

DATE	BREAKFAST	LUNCH	DINNER	PUDDING	SNACKS
SUNDAY	CEREAL	SANDWICH CHEESE FROMAGE FRAIS	ROAST MEAT VEG POTS	TRIFLE	FRUIT
MONDAY	CEREAL	SANDWICH CHEESE FROMAGE FRAIS FRUIT	FISH PIE VEG	ANGEL D	FRUIT/MALT LOAF
TUESDAY	CEREAL	SANDWICH CHEESE FROMAGE FRAIS FRUIT	SPAG BOL	HM CAKE	FRUIT/MALT LOAF
WEDNESDAY	CEREAL	SANDWICH CHEESE FROMAGE FRAIS FRUIT	CHEESE PASTA	TEA CAKE/SNOWBALL	FRUIT/CRUMPETS
THURSDAY	CEREAL	SANDWICH CHEESE FROMAGE FRAIS FRUIT	CHICKEN SAUCE RICE	TEA CAKE/SNOWBALL	FRUIT/RICE CAKES
FRIDAY	CEREAL	SANDWICH CHEESE FROMAGE FRAIS FRUIT	CHICKEN CASSEROLE	DIGESTIVE CHOC BAR	FRUIT/CRACKERS
SATURDAY	CEREAL	SANDWICH CHEESE FROMAGE FRAIS	FAKEAWAY FISH & CHIPS	ICE CREAM & SAUCE	FRUIT

 

DATE	BREAKFAST	LUNCH	DINNER	PUDDING	SNACKS
SUNDAY	CEREAL	SANDWICH CHEESE FROMAGE FRAIS	ROAST MEAT VEG POTS	FLAN	FRUIT
MONDAY	CEREAL	SANDWICH CHEESE FROMAGE FRAIS FRUIT	TUNA BOLG	JELLY	FRUIT/MALT LOAF
TUESDAY	CEREAL	SANDWICH CHEESE FROMAGE FRAIS FRUIT	LASAGNE	HM CAKE	FRUIT/MALT LOAF
WEDNESDAY	CEREAL	SANDWICH CHEESE FROMAGE FRAIS FRUIT	SAUSAGE AND SAV RICE WITH VEG	WAGON WHEEL/CAKE BAR	FRUIT/PANCAKE
THURSDAY	CEREAL	SANDWICH CHEESE FROMAGE FRAIS FRUIT	CHOP VEG PASTA	WAGON WHEEL/CAKE BAR	FRUIT/RICE CAKE
FRIDAY	CEREAL	SANDWICH CHEESE FROMAGE FRAIS FRUIT	CHICKEN  1 POT	DIGESTIVE CHOC BAR	FRUIT/CRACKERS
SATURDAY	CEREAL	SANDWICH CHEESE FROMAGE FRAIS	PIZZA AND GARLIC BREAD	CHOC ICE	FRUIT

Time to get organised... Food

Well living in a new area, adjusting to new finances and schedules has put all my usual weekly organisation out the window, as I am learning to do life here. With 2 children at school, 1 child to be home-schooled alongside looking after a toddler and trying to carve out a new life, it can all seem a bit daunting.  When life throws lots of things at you once, then the best way I get through it, is writing it all out, choosing one thing off the list and starting there.

 

I am starting with food! Food shopping takes up lots of time.  Planning the meals (healthy and on budget) and buying the food.  My eldest child does not cope with supermarkets (ASD) and as he is with me all the time, my choices are to get up super early before him (4.30-5am yuck) or go in the evening (equally yuck as tired and the shops normally empty). Therefore we go online.  I'd rather spend an evening doing my shopping online in the comfort of my own home. 

 

I plan out my weekly meals this is because a) saves money, as you just buy what you need b) saves time. It also stops that - what shall I have to eat tonight? thought or me raiding the biscuit jar whilst I think about what to eat, only to find we don't have the ingredients and succumb to a takeaway and c) helps me to plan healthy eating.   It can be time consuming to plan the meals, so I do a 2 week menu which I repeat twice for the month.  I use different menus per month so we are not constantly eating the same dinners.  I menu plan everything - breakfast, lunch, dinner, pudding and snacks.  As I know what we're going to eat I buy our food shopping monthly.  That means we have one massive delivery (only pay one delivery charge) and every area of our fridge/freezer and kitchen cupboards are full.  I'm the only one who cooks in house and the children are not of an age where they can help themselves so I don't have to worry about our tea disappearing.

 

To aid with monthly deliveries and space, we have our milk delivered to our doorstep.  This does cost a little extra but if I'm really honest before we went to milkman, if we ran out of milk (being a family of 6 this happened quite frequently) we'd always pick up other stuff and so inevitably spent more money - so we are probably saving more now than before.  Milk can be frozen so if you're lucky enough to have the freezer space then you can store it up this way.  We freeze the yogurts, cheese and butter until needed too.  Lots of things can be frozen, we use pancakes, scones, crumpets and malt loaf for afterschool snacks (depending what is on offer) so if they are delivered with a short shelf life we freeze these too.  We were very fortunate to be given a breadmaker from a dear friend and so we always have fresh bread each day.  It is easy to do and you get a premium loaf which is enough for all of us for about 50p.  Also saves us precious space in the freezer.

 

Fruit is something we go through a lot.  The children have at least 2 portions a day.  I used to get a box delivered from Able and Co for 11.99 a week with the 4th week being free.  However it is quite expensive when compared to fruit in Lidls.  I have JML fruit and vegetable storage bags which can keep fruit fresh upto 3 weeks - they need to be stored either somewhere dark or in the fridge.  This can save popping out again but the fruit must be really dry before they go in the bags and I would check on them weekly to make sure they are not going too soft.

 

I'll post some more on what we eat and some more money saving tips next time...