Food planning, budgeting, shopping & cooking - Part 3

Hello again.....

Here we are back with Part 3, doesn't time fly?

SO, how did the week go?  Pretty good so far.

Monday was Vegetable Curry all from the store cupboard and freezer, Tuesday was the Sausage Tagliatelle again from the store cupboard and freezer.....click to follow the link to Jamie's YouTube tutorial.  Here's a piccie of that one.....

Wednesday was eating up the leftover Tagliatelle (that really doesn't look like the correct spelling but spellchecker is telling me it is!).  The portions of pasta look small, but believe me...in the end it did 6 meals and could therefore have done with more sausage.  So having had leftovers, we still have a soup in the freezer.  Thursday we had another Jamie special, Lentil Bolognese and garlic bread, again all from the store cupboard and freezer.  Follow the link for the recipe.  We cook double of this one and freeze it....any shape pasta is ok, it tastes great no matter what!  And here's a pic of that one....

Friday was date night for me and hubby.  I went shopping after work and bought Little Lady treats for tea as she has been so good this week.  And I got some more things to get us over the weekend and for lunch next week.  Our meal was Greek salad with feta parcels and apart from some herbs and salad, it used up stuff from the store cupboard and fridge.  We also bought some Cranberry juice in order to make Woo Woo and Cosmopolitan cocktails from our store cupboard spirits (Vodka, peach schnapps and triple sec).

the meal looked like this.....

Today we've used up a stand and stuff fajita kit with fresh peppers and onions and chicken from the freezer.  It also used the remains of the salad, some grated cheese and a bit more natural yoghurt (instead of sour cream).  I have a loaf in the bread machine and we plan on bread & jam with cups of tea whilst watching Strictly Come Dancing tonight....Little Lady's choice!

She has also chosen Fish and chips for Sunday lunch!  We are going to experiment with making our own batter and chips and it will be a chance for me to make a batch of fishcakes.  They are based on a Hairy Biker recipe and I'll photograph our makings and finished product in another post very soon.

This morning, I made Breakfast Pancakes.  It's a Nigella recipe and extremely good.....pretty low fat too!  I make up a load of the dry ingredients and then use 150g of it with the wet ingredients as I need it.  We worked out that they cost under 3p each....a bit different to the 9-30p each from the supermarket!!  We've frozen the leftover ones and we are going to experiment with toasting from the freezer for a fast weekday breakfast.  I'll pop the recipe and photos on another post with costings and photos very soon.

So the shopping bill for Friday looked like this.....

I bought the cheese, crisps and salad for odd meals and for lunches throughout the week. Little Lady's treat was the Lasagne and sheep biscuit.  The mushy peas, fish and scampi are for Sundays lunch, herbs for Friday nights date night dinner and the rest to stock up store cupboard stuff.

So with Mondays shopping at £8.80, in total, this weeks food shop was under £40.

I have a list for next week, mostly fresh vegetables to make our vegetarian meals.  It's shaping up like this:

Monday - Pasta Ragu (Hairy Bikers go Veggie p101)

Tuesday - Kerry Ann's Veggie Chilli

Wednesday - Veggie Curry (not sure exactly what yet!)

Thursday - Veggie Pie (Hairy Bikers go Veggie P98)

Friday - Date night - to be decided

Saturday - Veggie Meatballs (Hairy Bikers go Veggie  p104)

Sunday - Lentil Roast with all the trimmings

This will be an interesting week in terms of costings....surely it has to be cheaper than meat and fish.

I will do those recipes and come back with how the reheating from frozen went on the pancakes, so, until I see you again...take care.....bye.
Nora xxx