When a few adjustments to the weekly menu plan are needed...

...don't be afraid to make them!

No sooner had a I returned from the grocery shop on Saturday evening than my husband suggested that perhaps we could have a BBQ for dinner instead of whatever I had planned to make.  I had nothing in for a BBQ!  After initially saying no, I ended up agreeing to a BBQ - after all, it was our one half decent Saturday this 'Summer' so far and for all I knew it might well be out last!!  This caused me a little menu plan dilemma. 

Firstly I had to go and get the meat required for the BBQ.  Unexpected additional grocery shopping, but as I've already said, it may just be the only Saturday we get to have a BBQ for a long time so I forgave myself for the extra spend.  We ditched the idea of soup as we had to go out to the butchers again and needed something that would be a little faster to make.  Queue sandwiches!

Secondly, I had already lifted the pork loins out of the freezer before I took off to get the grocery shopping so I had to decide what to do with them.  The reason why we were to have pork loins two nights in a row was because I had five frozen together.  I was going to cook two on the Saturday night for my husband and I, and three the next night to feed up as all.  I knew they'd still be fine to cook on the Sunday, but was a bit worried about cooking them on the Monday night as they were lifted out of the freezer on the Saturday morning (I really should read up about freezing/defrosting meat and how long it is 'ok' for after it has been defrosted).  As luck would have it my mum called to say that she and my dad would be visiting on Sunday, so I needed five pork loins for dinner after all!

After being invited to a birthday party on Sunday evening, we decided to have our main meal earlier in the day.  I made the Bacon and sweetcorn chowder at the same time as preparing Sundays dinner.  I initially intended for us to have this for lunch during the week, but we ended up having it for dinner tonight.

Tomorrow night we will have the soup again, then we will have the mixed bean chilli on Wednesday and Thursday night.  The only night this week that we will eat the dinner I intended will be on Friday night.

I guess you could say that things haven't exactly gone as planned!

The other thing about spending extra money on meat for a BBQ - I went slightly over my €50 budget for the week.  I'll write a bit more about this later this week as I intend to have a review of my July challenge to work out exactly how I did...

Menu plan for 14/7/2012 to 20/7/2012

We're onto week 3 of my July challenge and so far things are going good.  Last week I managed to spend only €35.70 of my €50 budget for the week.  To say I am happy would be a bit of an understatement.  Although, in fairness I had one less day to feed the family last week and while this wouldn't have caused me to save the €14.30 that I didn't spend of my budget it certainly helped a bit.  Hopefully I'll be able to do as well with my budget this week as I did last week.

This morning my husband cleaned out our fridge while giving me a bit of a lie in (I know - lucky me!) so it was possible to see at a glance what we had in our fridge.  Together we had another review of the contents of the freezer and made a list of what was in there just to update the list of what we had in already.  So, using the list of what we have in already I put together a menu plan for the week.  It is as follows:

Saturday dinner - Steak and sticky red wine shallots with potatoes
Sunday lunch - Tomato, lentil and lime soup (I have all the ingredients in for this)
Sunday dinner - Roast lemon chicken with tagliatelle (I have all the ingredients in for this)
Monday dinner - Wraps
Tuesday dinner - Pizza
Wednesday dinner - Chorizo pilaf (I have all the ingredients in for this)
Thursday dinner - Leftover chorizo pilaf
Friday dinner - Fish fingers, chips, peas and sweetcorn

For lunches we will be having ham sandwiches, leftover tomato, lentil and lime soup and leftover roast lemon chicken with tagliatelle.

As you can see, I have selected three items for my menu for the week were I will not have to buy anything for the recipe as I already have all the ingredients in.  For the rest of the options I have selected I have most of the items in already apart from Tuesday evenings pizza.  I will be buying whatever frozen pizza is on offer for my daughters dinner on Tuesday evening as a special treat for her as my husband and I are off to a concert on Tuesday evening while she and her brother stay at home with a minder.  Picking recipes where I have most of the ingredients, if not all of them, in the house already has enabled me to keep my shopping list quite small for this week again.

Tip
To help select recipes using ingredients I already have in, I used the search function on the Good Food website to do this quickly.  I typed in a selection of the ingredients I have in already, for example 'chicken' and 'basil', and then went through the search results.  I then looked at the ingredients list for those that caught my eye, dismissing those that involved the purchasing of lots of items I don't have in the house at the moment. 

Menu planner 8/7/2012 to 13/7/2012

I've been a little slow at getting my menu plan for this week up - sorry about that.  Anyway, I have finally got round to posting it.  This is week two of my July challenge, so I am attempting to keep the cost of the shopping down by using leftovers from the freezer and other items I have in already.  Another way that I will be able to keep costs down this week is by using some veg that my father-in-law grew and gave to me and by using some eggs that my brother-in-law gave to me.

We were at a Christening on Saturday so my menu plan for this week only runs from Sunday 8th July to Friday 13th July.  It is as follows:

Sunday dinner - Leftover better-than-baked-beans and oven chips
Monday dinner - Letfover sweet and sour pork and rice
Tuesday dinner - Salmon, broccoli and new potatoes
Wednesday dinner - Summer chicken and basil stew
Thursday dinner - Leftover summer chicken and basil stew
Friday dinner - Fish, chips, peas and sweetcorn

For lunches we will be having soup, sandwiches and leftovers if there are any.

Weekly shopping budget - slightly over in week 1

As you can see from the title I went slightly over the weekly shopping budget in week one.  To sum up my expenditure for the week - I spent €6.91 in Lidl, €45.82 in Dunnes and my husband spent €5.38 in Dunnes on Monday.  The means I spent a total of €58.11 which is €8.11 over my weekly shopping budget of €50 during each week in July.

So where did I go wrong?  Well, two things happened that I feel caused me to go over the limit.  Firstly, my disorganisation meant that my husband ended up buying some food on Monday in order for me to be able to put together a meal for Monday night.  So, lesson one is to be better prepared in future!

Secondly, in a rush of blood to the head I managed to miscalculate how much I spent on cartons of ready-made formula for the baby.  I had to buy a lot more of them than I anticipated as a trip to the Dr's on Tuesday resulted in me being told that the baby has a food allergy of some sort and in order to get to the bottom of it I have been told to cut out cows milk and all fruit from his diet to see if the rash clears.  This means that I need extra formula to send up to the creche for his cereal in the morning so that it can be used in place of the cows milk that he usually gets and I bought more than I had on my shopping list.  So, my second lesson is not to try to do maths in my head when I am shopping.  I should use the calculator on my mobile phone.  Of course, it generally helps if the mobile phone is in your handbag when you go shopping in the first instance!

Still, I am pleased with the €58.11 and won't be too hard on myself for going over.  I did acknowledge that if I was intending to buy nappies and formula that I would need a slightly higher budget than the €50 I had set for my July challenge, but I really didn't think I would need to buy anymore of either this month. 

I wonder if next week I might be able to limit my spend to €41.89 to make up for my overspend this week.  That might be too much of an ask.  You know what they say though - it won't hurt to try!!

Not exactly going to plan...

So, day one of my July challenge hasn't exactly gone to plan as I ended up not being able to do my grocery shopping as yet for a number of reasons.  Instead of having the turkey meatballs that we were supposed to have this evening, we ended up having fish, chips, peas and sweetcorn.  There was fish in the freezer and I used tins of peas and sweetcorn, so all that needed to be bought were the chips which my husband picked up on his way home from work, along with some bread and bananas.  He spent €5.38 in total leaving me with €44.62 for the groceries for the rest of the week.

As we didn't have the turkey meatballs this evening, I am going to make them for dinner tomorrow night instead.  I'll just bump my entire menu plan along one day, freezing the leftover better-than-baked-beans instead of having it the following evening for dinner.  I could just stick to the recipe and make enough to serve dinner for one night, but it is such a simple recipe to double up and save the leftovers for another night that it would be a shame to waste the opportunity to save time another evening.

I am hoping to get my groceries tomorrow so I've done my shopping list in preparation for going.  It is REALLY short this week so I know that I am definitely going to stay within my budget.  It is as follows:

1. Red Pepper (on offer for 79cent in Dunnes at the moment)
2. Mushrooms x 2 punnets (on offer in Lidl for 69 cent per 250g at the moment)
3. Milk - slim line x 2 litres
4. Milk - full fat x 2 litres
5. Cheese - babybel
6. Ham
7. Bacon medallions (on offer in Lidl for €1.69)
8. Cartons of ready made formula x 15 (10% back in Dunnes on baby products ending on the 3rd July)
9. Toilet cleaner

A very short shopping list.  I have decided to split the shop over two stores as there is so little I will easily be able to walk from one shop to the other carrying whatever I have bought.  I don't go in for driving to different shops on a weekly basis as I reckon that any savings that would be made would be swallowed up by the fuel costs in getting between all the different shops.  However, if I can see that I will make decent savings, I will walk between Lidl and Dunnes as they are not too far away from each other, so it is worth my while to park between the two and do this.

I am actually quite excited to see what my food shop comes to for the week.  I think I'll put whatever extra I save, on top of the €50 that I am aiming to save, into our savings account as well.

Menu planner for 19/5/2012 to 25/5/2012

This week will be a busy week for us as we get ready for our daughters birthday party on Saturday.  To make sure we have plenty of time to get ready on Friday night I have opted to have leftovers from Thursday nights chilli.

My menu plan for the 19 May to the 25 May is as follows:-
Saturday dinner - Spiced salmon with lentils
Sunday lunch - soup (depending on what veg is on offer)
Sunday dinner - Ham, vegetables and Boulangère potatoes
Monday dinner - Leftovers from Sunday lunch
Tuesday dinner - Pizza
Wednesday dinner - Maple and pepper glazed chicken with roasted carrots and mash
Thursday dinner - Quick chilli (special request by my daughter for her birthday!)
Friday dinner - Leftover chilli

For lunches I will be making baked feta and tomato, scrambled eggs, tuna, red onion and white bean salad and sandwiches.

Several of the recipes I have picked this week are low GI recipes.  Food that has a low GI helps to keep your blood sugar level steady as the foods take longer to digest.  This helps make you feel fuller for longer.  I will be trying to incorporate more low GI foods into our diet over the next few weeks, paying special attention to lunches.

Tip - My shopping bill for this week will probably be slightly higher than previous weeks as I will be adding some items to it for my daughters birthday.  Next weekend we are planning on having a BBQ at our house, so rather than buy everything in one trip to the supermarket next week, I am hoping to pick up some things this weekend in order to spread the cost slightly.  Our butcher has offers on this weekend on pork loins which are lovely cooked on the BBQ, so I will pick up a few of these, marinade them and then freeze them so that they are ready to simply lift out of the freezer and cook next Saturday.  Doing this will save me time as well as money.

Menu planner for 12/5/2012 to 18/5/2012

So, it's that time of the week again - menu planning time!  This week I have quite a few leftover ingredients in the kitchen, so I have made a list of them so that I can pick recipes that will use them up and prevent waste.  Doing this will also keep my grocery spend for the week down, which is good as I need to buy some formula and nappies which takes a chunk out of my budget.

My meal plan for 12 May to 18 May 2012 is as follows:

Saturday lunch - Orange, carrot and mint soup
Saturday dinner - Smoky chicken and bean stew
Sunday lunch - leftover soup
Sunday dinner - Chicken wraps
Monday dinner - Shepherd's pie
Tuesday dinner - Leftover shepherd's pie
Wednesday dinner - Leek and mackerel penne bake
Thursday dinner - Spanish bean stew
Friday dinner - Leftover stew

For lunches during the week I will make puy lentil, spiced roast carrot and feta salad, some leftover chilli that is in the freezer, leftover shepherd's pie and sandwiches.

As you can see, this week I am making a couple of dishes that we can eat two nights.  This means that I will only have to cook from scratch three nights during the working week which will save time that I can spend doing other things.

Menu plan for 7/5/2012 to 11/5/2012

This week I have a short meal plan to put together as we were away for the Bank Holiday weekend, so I didn't have to worry about cooking on Saturday or Sunday.  My menu plan for this week is as follows:-

Monday dinner - Fish, baked potato and broccoli
Tuesday dinner - Potato, leek and bacon soup
Wednesday dinner - Quick chilli (from Nigella Express)
Thursday dinner - Leftover chilli
Friday dinner - Summer pork and potatoes

For lunches I am making soup broccoli and almond soup, ham sandwiches and tuna salad.

Irish coddled pork with cider..again!

Back in January I made this Irish coddled pork with cider recipe from the GoodFood magazine and it went down a treat.  I decided to make it for dinner today when I saw that both cabbage and turnip were on offer in Dunnes yesterday for 29 cent each.  There we pork loins in our freezer and we got some bulmers when we were in Asda last week (note - we bought 'Magners' not the English Bulmers), so I didn't need to buy them which made this recipe a cheap enough option for me this week allowing me to stay well within my grocery budget.

The cabbage on offer in Dunnes was a quarter of a white cabbage for 29 cent, so I only used a quarter of cabbage this time round.  There was still more than enough to go around.

I wouldn't normally post about a recipe I've made previously, but I wanted to show how tailoring your menu to suit what the stores have on offer on any given week can reduce the overall cost of your menu for that week by comparing the how much it cost me to make the coddled pork this week to when I made it back in January.

Cost - As I said I had Pork Loins in the freezer.  They were recently on offer in our butchers at 5 pork loins for €5.  This recipe used 2 so this it cost €2.  The turnip was 15 cent, the cabbage was 29 cent, the carrots were 25 cent, the bacon was €1, potatoes were 60 cent (I used 4 instead of two) and the bulmers was 25 cent (the offer I bought them on was not as good as the one I got before Christmas making this ingredient slightly more expensive.  This makes the total cost of the meal €4.54. 

I saved 46 cent on this recipe this week when compared with how much it cost when I made it in January.  I used an extra potato but less cabbage.  Even if I had bought an extra quarter of white cabbage, I would still have saved money on the recipe as this would only have cost another 29 cent.

A saving of 46 cent doesn't really seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but if I saved this much in every meal I made in the week I'd have an extra €3.22 at the end of the week.  Considering that I have some recipes on here that cost less than €3 to make, this extra money means that I could feed the family for an extra day on what I had saved.  Something to think about I guess.

The disorganisation continues...but not for long!

So my excuse for this past week?  Well, my husband took me to Paris for the weekend so all good intentions of sorting out a meal plan for the week promptly went out the window.  Good excuse really, but there will be no more trips anywhere if I don't get my act together and start planning my meals for the week and sticking to a shopping list again!
So, to refresh myself my shopping budget for the week is €130.  This is to include formula and nappies for the baby.  I recently stocked up on nappies and formula, so I shouldn't have to buy either of them for a while so hopefully I'll be under budget.  I've decided that any money that I 'save' from the budget each week will go into our savings account.  Hopefully it will start to accumulate quickly!!

So to kick myself back into kitchen control action, here is my meal planner for next week:-

Saturday lunch - sandwiches
Saturday dinner - Lentils with chorizo and red wine
Sunday lunch - Crab and sweetcorn chowder
Sunday dinner -  Herb and lemon pock chops, baby potatoes and green beans
Monday dinner - Crab linguine with chilli and parsley
Tuesday dinner - Oven-baked leek and bacon risotto
Wednesday dinner - Chicken wraps
Thursday dinner - Sausages with creamy lentils
Friday dinner - Mince and onions (from freezer) with mash potato

I have my shopping list done, ready for me to go and pick up the ingredients I need tomorrow night. 

Who doesn't like a Sunday roast?

To be honest, until a few years ago I had gone off Sunday roasts altogether.  During my final few years living at my parents house we seemed to have roast chicken or beef with potatoes and vegetables all the time.  At least, that's what it felt like.  After I left home to go to university I stopped eating roast dinners, even managing to avoid eating them when I went home.  I had become sick of them!  Fast forward a (good) few years and I love having a roast dinner.  We don't have them every Sunday though - I don't want to get to the point where I am bored of eating them again - and I try to shake things up a bit by having different vegetables on the side or cooking the potatoes a different way.
Yesterday we had a roast chicken dinner.  I got the chicken from my local butcher on Saturday.  It cost €6.99 which is a bit more expensive than the whole chickens you can get in the supermarkets but I prefer to buy it from my butcher as I feel it tastes much better. 

With the chicken yesterday we had a little bit of mash potatoes, roast potatoes (made the same way that the roast potatoes were made last weekend), mashed carrots and parsnip and gravy with onions, some carrot and parsnip through it.  For dinner this evening, we had leftovers from yesterday.  The baby had the same dinner as us, minus the gravy. 

TIP - Having a whole chicken - then get as much out of it as possible.  After slicing the roast chicken for our dinner yesterday and today, I pulled the remaining meat from the wings and legs and put it in a bowl.  Then I made chicken stock by boiling the carcass in water in a stock pot on my cooker.  I used the chicken stock and the meat to make a soup (a version of the creamy chicken soup mentioned earlier in the blog) for lunches this week.

Cost - Sometimes paying for a whole chicken can seem a bit expensive, however you can get more out of a whole chicken than you can out of chicken breasts making it good value for money.  We had dinner for 2 nights - slicing a breast for each night - plus six portions of soup from our lunch during the week.  The chicken was € 4.66 (I've allowed two thirds of the cost for the roast dinners), the parsnips were 49 cent, the carrots were 99 cent per 1 kg bag (I used them all between the soup and dinners), the potatoes were about € 1.50 and the onion was 28cent.  The total for the roast dinner was €7.92, making it €3.96 per dinner. 

Looking at the cost of our roast dinner I can easily understand why my mum made so many of them.  It was good value for money and offered a well balanced meal of protein, carbs and veg.

Chicken and veg bake with mashed potatoes

My husband prepared dinner tonight from a recipe that I taught him how to make - chicken and veg bake.  We had leftover mash from yesterdays roast dinner with the chicken and veg bake.

I usually use a can of chicken soup for this recipe but we had none in the house so used a can of mushroom soup instead.

Ingredients
2 x chicken breasts (€2)
carrots (30 cent)
celery (50 cent)
broccoli (59 cent)
can of mushroom soup (€1 - estimate)
milk - I use around 250ml (50 cent - estimate)
slice of bread (5 cent)

Method

1. Prepare the veg and cut into chunks.  Steam until almost soft and remove from the heat.
2. Cut the chicken breast into chunks and cook in a non-stick frying pan.
3. Heat the soup and add milk to it.  Once is it starting to warm lift it off the heat.
4. Make breadcrumbs with the slice of bread in a food processor.
5. Put the veg in the bottom of a rectangular roasting dish.  Put the chicken on top of the veg and then pour the heated soup on top of it.  Scatter the breadcrumbs across the top.  Put the dish in the oven.
6. Heat until the breadcrumbs are beginning to brown.  Lift out of the oven and serve.

TIP - This recipe is already low in fat, but to lower it further I use low fat condensed soup. 

TIP - To save time on making the meal tonight I prepared the veg in advance so that all my husband had to do was steam it.  After preparing the veg I put it in a resealable sandwich bag and stored it in the fridge.

COST - The total cost of the recipe is €4.94.  As this is doing dinner for two nights (we are having leftovers tomorrow) this means that the cost is only €2.47.  Not bad, although the mash increases the cost slightly. 

Grocery budget revisited

My grocery budget has been €80 for a while.  I can not actually remember the last time I went through our household budget, so I decided that this weekend would be a good time to check it out.  Having sat down wand worked out our in comings and outgoings, I've realised that we can now comfortably spend €100 per week now instead of my previous €80.  This is just as well as my baby has gone from one meal a day to 3 meals a day within a matter of weeks.  He has an excellent appetite, so though he is only a baby and eating a small amount of food in comparison with the rest of us, I still need to get some snacks for him and the occasional jar of food which all adds up.

This week is the fifth week I've tracked the money I've spent on the food shopping so I decided to work out how much I've spent to date.  Looking back I can see that I spent €228.60 on grocery shopping.  During the week we've sometimes had to pick up extra milk and bread, so I am adding on an extra €10 per week as I haven't made a proper note of this.  That means that over the last 4 weeks our grocery shopping has come to €268.60 which is an average of €67.15 per week. This is quite low. 

If you are wondering how I've managed to keep my weekly spend so low over the last four weeks it is because I have only had to pick up a few cartons of formula for the baby and no nappies, toiletries or cleaning products.  This is because I stocked up on these items before Christmas when there were some really good offers going in the shops.

Although I now have a budget of €100 per week, I will try to keep this as low as possible.  Any money that I have left over at the end of the next four weeks I will use to buy seeds and supplies for my garden as I will soon be preparing to grow my own vegetables over the spring/summer.

My weekly grocery shop for this week I spent €52.42 in Dunnes, €8.23 in Marks and Spencers, €4.39 in Lidl, €10 in the butchers (10 chicken breasts for €10) and €4.97 in my local green grocer.  That's €80.01 in total.

Grocery shopping - meal planner 31/1/2012 to 3/2/2012

Short week for the meal plan this week as we were away for a few days.  So, the plan for this week is as follows:-

Tuesday dinner - Salmon, broccoli and potatoes
Wednesday dinner - Stir fry
Thursday dinner - Chicken stew (from freezer) and mash
Friday dinner - Fish, chips and peas (all from the freezer)

For lunches I will be making the black bean and chorizo soup I made last week (I have all of the ingredients in), salad and ham sandwiches.

As I'm off on Tuesday (today - better get a move on!) I bought ingredients to do a load of batch cooking for the baby.  I will be making a few recipes from the Annabel Karmel website:-

• Salmon, broccoli and cheese sauce
• Salmon puree
• Chicken puree with carrots and apple
• Carrot puree with lentils and cheese

I'll be freezing these in portions to give to the baby in the evenings when I get in from work.  As well as this, I will be giving him some finger foods over the next week including strips of chicken, plum and ripe pear.

 This week I spent € 60.44 in Dunnes and just under € 10 in Superquinn.  This shop was a bit more expensive as I was picking up specific ingredients for the baby food, including some free range chicken breasts.  When we were away I had to by some jars of food to give to the baby for practicality reasons so I know that spending a bit extra on cheese and free range chicken breasts is still cheaper than buying jars of food for him.

Cream of scallion (spring onion) soup

Spring onions were on offer in Dunnes this week for 45 cent per bunch.  I remembered seeing a recipe for Cream of Spring Onion soup in a recipe book at home, so bought 3 bunches to make it.  I then set about the somewhat mammoth task of trying to find the recipe (note to self - must write down the name of the cookbook I see recipes I'd like to make in so that I can find them easier!).  Anyway, I eventually found the recipe yesterday and set about making it to have for lunch today.

It tastes quite similar to leek and potato soup, so if you like it you should like this.  The recipe is from 'The Soup Bible' published by Hermes House.  The recipe is as below.  I've added any alterations I made in brackets.  The recipe serves 4-6 people and can be served hot or cold.

Ingredients
25 g/1 oz/2 tbsp butter
1 small onion
150 g/5 oz/1.75 cups spring onions, chopped  (I used a bunch and half of the spring onions I bought in Dunnes)
225 g/8 oz potatoes, peeled and chopped
600 ml/1 pint/2.5 cups vegetable stock
350 ml/12 fl oz/1.5 cups single cream  (I didn't use this, so my soup was really just spring onion soup, not cream of spring onion soup!)
30 ml/2 tbsp lemon juice
salt and pepper to season

Step 1

 Method

1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add all the onions.  Cover and cook over a very low heat for about 10 minutes or until soft.
2. Add the potatoes and the stock.  Bring to the boil, then cover again and simmer over a moderately low heat for about 30 minutes.  Cool slightly.
3. Puree the soup in a blender or food processor.  (I used my hand blender so didn't need to do the first part of step 4)
4. If serving the soup hot, pour it back into the pan.  Add the cream and season with salt and pepper.  Reheat gently, stirring occasionally.  Add the lemon juice.  (I don't add seasoning.  I put salt and pepper on the table and let each person season their own instead)
5. If serving the soup cold, pour it into a bowl.  Stir in the cream and lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.  Cover the bowl and chill for at least 1 hour.
6. Sprinkle with the chopped spring onion greens or chives before serving.  (I didn't bother with this)

TIP  To lower the fat of this recipe I didn't add the cream.  It was still tasty.  The fat content could be lowered even further by using fry lite instead of the butter.

Cost - Again, this is another recipe that was quite cheap to make as a result of the scallions being on offer in Dunnes.  I used a bunch and half in this recipe, so that's 68 cent.  The potatoes I had left over from a bag I had from a previous week, estimated cost 50 cent.  I had a lemon in already as I had bought a tray of 4 for €1 two weeks ago.  I used half of a lemon, so that is 12 cent.  The onion was leftover from a bag I got for 49 cent, so 6.5cent for it.  I've allowed 50 cent for the remaining ingredients, making the total recipe cost €1.86!

Obviously if I had added the cream this would have added quite a bit to the overall cost of the recipe, so omitting it kept the recipe under € 2 as well as lowering the fat.

Squash and chorizo stew

This squash and chorizo stew is really quick and easy to make.  It has only five ingredients in it, so there is little preparation work involved.


I served the stew with some baby boiled potatoes which were on offer in Dunnes this week for 48 cent per pack.  I only used half the pack for the 3 of us.  I omitted the parsley as I didn't have any in.  As it was to garnish for serving I do not think that the stew really needed it so I may leave it out if I make this recipe again as it will save a bit of money.  However, if I had some in I would add it at the end as per the method.

The stew is quite inexpensive.  I paid €1.49 for the butternut squash, €0.75 for the Chorizo, 6.5 cent for the onion and €1 for the passata.  Together with the potatoes I paid €3.54 for this meal. 

While I was preparing this dinner I also cooked and pureed a little of the butternut squash to give to my baby as a first taste.  I often try to do this with other vegetables, freezing the puree for future use if I do not need it straight away.

Grocery shopping - meal planner 14/1/2012 to 20/1/2012

Meal plan for Saturday 14th to Friday 20th January is as follows:-

Saturday dinner - Roast chicken dinner
Sunday dinner - Creamy avocado jackets
Monday dinner - Squash and chorizo stew
Tuesday dinner - Pizza
Wednesday dinner - Chicken fajitas
Thursday dinner - Chicken stew (from freezer) and baby potatoes
Friday dinner - Salmon, green beans and baby potatoes

For lunches I will be making creamy chicken soup, ham sandwiches and chicken salad wraps.

This week my grocery shop cost €79.63.  I spent €44.51 in Dunnes, €15.13 in Boots, €19.99 in my local butchers.

Grocery shopping - meal planner 7/1/2012 to 13/1/2012

Each week before I do my shopping I plan the meals for the following week and then write a list of the groceries I need to make these meals.  My meal planner for Saturday 7th until Friday 13th January is as follows:-

Saturday dinner - Chicken stew (recipe after the method)

Sunday dinner - Potato and Savoy cabbage soup

Monday dinner - left over potato and savoy cabbage soup

Tuesday dinner - roasted red pepper risotto

Wednesday dinner - braised peas with bacon, lentils and sea bass (recipe has cod, but I will use sea bass)

Thursday dinner - chilli

Friday dinner - left over chilli

Saturday lunch - chorizo and chickpea soup

I've lunch for Saturday 14th as well as I have will have everything in I need to make it after this week’s shop.  For lunches we will have ham sandwiches as there is ham in the fridge and left over red pepper risotto on Wednesday and Thursday.  For weaning the baby I will get a parsnip and sweet potato and introduce these to him this week, along with potato, apple and banana.

My shopping list for the week is as follows:-

• bag of onions (on offer in lidl)
• Savoy cabbage (on offer in lidl)
• Irish bacon medallions x 2 (on offer in lidl)
• parsnip x1
• sweet potato x 1
• red pepper x 2
• parsley
• lemons x 2
• mint
• mushrooms
• bananas
• oranges
• apples
• slim line milk x 2
• 2 litres full fat milk
• butter
• loaf of bread
• chorizo x 2 (on offer in Dunnes)

My shopping budget at the moment is € 80.  This week’s shopping should be considerably less than this so I will get some extras in for my store cupboard depending what is on offer. 

Once I have got my shopping I shall post a comment updating what extras I bought together with the exact amount spent. 

Chorizo and bean salad with oven chips.

For dinner tonight we had a variation of the cannellini bean salad with roast cherry tomatoes and chorizo on the BBC Good food website.

When roasting the tomatoes I sprayed fry lite on them instead of drizzling them with olive oil.  I had no sherry vinegar in, so used white wine vinegar instead.  The taste was still good!

In the past I have used butter beans instead of cannellini beans as well.

Cost wise, this wasn't too expensive for me.  The chorizo is on offer at the moment at my local supermarket  and is €2 for 200g, so I used 50 cent worth of chorizo in this recipe.  The bag of lettuce leaves I used was lambs lettuce and rocket, which cost €1.09.  Cherry tomatoes were 89 cent and the cannellini beans (which I got a while ago) were €1.09.  I am allowing 30 cent for the red onion and another 20 cent for the squirt of fry lite, the white wine vinegar and honey.  This means that the total cost of the salad is €4.07.

I served this with a few oven chips.  To save on energy costs I roast the tomatoes while I am cooking the oven chips.  Doing this also means the salad is nice and warm.

The recipe easily feeds 2 adults and a child.  I could have stretched it further by putting on a few more chips and getting a lunch out of the salad for tomorrow, but having done this in the past I dont think it tastes as nice cold the next day.  If I was to keep some for a lunch in the future I think I would mix all the ingredients together, except the lettuce leaves, then lift out what I needed for the next day before adding the lettuce.  Then I would add the lettuce leaves before serving it for lunch.

Grocery shopping - part one

Once a week I go to my local supermarket and my local butcher to get the groceries for the week.  I always take a shopping list with me.  One of my new years resolutions will be to stick to it as far as possible.

To prepare my shopping list I check out what is on offer at my local supermarkets and what I have in the fridge and freezer.  I then pick the recipes for the week based on what is on offer.  If I am stuck for recipe ideas for the vegetables on offer I go to the BBC Good Food website and do a search for recipes containing one or more of the vegetables on offer.

For example, this week Lidl have savoy cabbage, onions, and carrots on offer.  For dinner one night and for lunch the next day I will make potato and savoy cabbage soup, which I came across by doing a search on the Good Food website.  I will also make chorizo and chickpea soup as I have chickpeas in my cupboard and chorizo left over in the fridge from earlier in the week.  These recipes are new to me, so I will try to stick with recipes I am familiar with for the rest of the week.

Once I have my final shopping list ready I will post it, together with a list of the meals I have planned for the week.