For example, I got paid on Thursday 25th April, so I would top up on Friday 26th, Friday 3rd May, Friday 10th May and Friday 17th May. Then I would get paid again on 24th May, and so on.
I use my Filofax to plan our dinners for one simple reason:
I will never lose the list.
It has happened before, and it's not good. I either lose it all together, or forget to take it with me. And that's awkward when you claim to be stupidly organised.
So, anyway, I start by writing down the days of the week:
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
SUNDAY
MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
Then I check what we have in the freezer, what we can use that we already have, or anything we didn't eat last week (sometimes if an unexpected dinner with friends arises then we essentially have spare ingredients to make a meal the following week.)
So I assign dinners to the days of the week, and it does matter, because sometimes boyfriend gets home earlier and can take a bit more time to make something, other times it'll be a quick easy one, or something comforting and slow-cooking for the weekend:
FRIDAY - Chicken, chips and beans
SATURDAY - Pizza Express
SUNDAY - Chilli and ginger salmon
MONDAY - Lamb kebabs
TUESDAY - Quorn chicken style curry
WEDNESDAY - Mushroom pasta
THURSDAY - Swedish meatballs, chips and soya beans
Boyfriend gets to take part in this when I say, "I want carbonara, what goes in your sauce for carbonara?" Yeah, I literally have no idea. He uses egg, cheese, cream or crème fraiche or something... So the ingredients go on my master shopping list. And so does everything else that I know we'll need.
I then add up the prices of all the ingredients using the Tesco food app (or website, depending how tired I feel), and there we have a really good idea of how much our food shop is going to cost.
It's never exact, but it's not far off, we try and keep to what is on the list as much as possible. We cook pretty much everything from scratch, boyfriend is an excellent cook, and it's enjoyable picking recipes you'd like to try. It helps you actually think about what you're going to eat, rather than just buying ready meals.
How do you plan your food for the week?
4 comments:
I pretty much do it the same way, all the way down to adding it up to be sure I'm on budget.
Not very well at the moment but it's something i'm working at - I hate thinking about meals, I hate shopping for them and I hate cooking so you can see why I have problems with it, and with five kids to feed it's hard coming up with a plan that suits them all :(
Alison I also hate thinking about food and I hate cooking. But, I really need to get better about meal planning because I really hate opening the fridge at 5 pm wondering what I'm going to make for dinner! When I know what I'm going to make and have all the ingredients it's much less stressful. For awhile I had my kids each choose the meal one day per week which was nice, I need to reinstate that habit.
It is a good way to do it, plan plan plan!
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