Meal planning!

I often post stories over on instagram whilst I am in the kitchen cooking and baking. People often reply asking where I get my recipes from and how I meal plan. Answering these kinds of questions inspired me to pen this post.

Our family at the moment is myself and my husband and our four children ages 7,5,3 & 1. We all sit down together at meal times and eat the same thing. Making different meals is not something I have ever done. Our children might not always eat everything they are served, but I encourage them to all at least try a bite of everything. One loves broccoli and another can’t stand it, one loves spice and another is not so keen.

I also have my groceries delivered weekly from Tesco. I purchased the delivery saver pass using my club card points and have done that every year. This means that there is no extra cost to me for having my shopping delivered right to my kitchen table. I cannot explain how big a game changer this has been for us!

So what do you do? Where do you start?

I start by logging onto the Tesco grocery app and making sure I have my normal slot booked. Then check out what is on offer for the upcoming week. I add anything I think sounds good to my basket. I also check the cupboards so see what we have in.

The next part is my favourite, I have a bit of a “thing” for recipe books… and have built up a decent collection.. I don’t need them all but Marie Kondo they ALL spark joy! I choose a few books and look up what they offer. 

(Side note – this is about half of my books..) But you don’t actually need any recipe books, the internet is FULL of millions of recipes. Just search what ingredients you have and away you go!

I work best with a pencil and paper, writing a proper list of my intended meals and what other ingredients I need to order to make them happen.

I don’t buy everything from Tesco, a local shop gets deliveries from the butcher most week days and deliveries of fresh fish twice a week, I like to have fish at least once a week.

Once I have my list of meals I can put it in order of what day I plan to have what, this has to have some level of fluidity as plans change. I go and finish up my online order and pin the meal plan to the fridge.

Typical week 

Sunday: Roast chicken with potatoes and vegetables
Monday: Chicken and bacon pasta bake
Tuesday: Baked breaded haddock, potatoes, broccoli and peas.
Wednesday: Spaghetti bolognese
Thursday: Tacos (using left over bolognese with added black beans)
Friday: Prawn curry
Saturday: Home made Chinese night – sweet and sour chicken, beef chow mein

Extra tips:
If your recipe calls for half of something, decide if the other half can be used in another recipe that week or if you can freeze it. Plan around your left overs. By doing this you will minimise food waste and save time and money. If you have children who are unsure about vegetables, don’t stress yourself out. You can try and hide them in sauces, or you can cut them up bigger and ask them to take a bite.
If you know which fresh ingredients have the shortest shelf life, have them at the beginning of the week so they are in their best condition. Meat can be frozen and defrosted so don’t worry so much about that.

I hope this has been useful! Let me know what your tips are for family meal planning.

Hazel Ann x

 

A few favourite recipes

Hello and welcome back again.

This post  is about a few of my favourite recipes  we have made over the last month.

First up we decided to buy less chicken fillets and instead buy whole chickens or chicken drumsticks as they are so much better value for money, and we find they are more tasty. Only drawback is they take longer to cook.

This roast chicken was a recipe from Kirstie’s Real Kitchen.

I really love lemon with a roast chicken.

We had boiled carrots, mashed potatoes and some steamed broccoli to accompany this juicy chicken.

 

 

 

 

Now this was a good recipe! A pot roasted chicken from Annabel Karmel’s latest book.

We were going to a birthday party on a Sunday afternoon, we only had an hour from getting in from church to when we needed to leave again.

This did not take long to prep, and then went into the oven and was waiting for us when we arrived home. Everything is in the pot so no need to start boiling potatoes either. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above is a chicken tray bake from the Hairy Dieters book which I bought a few years ago. It tasted lovely, there is paprika and oregano on the meat, but the potatoes were NOT cooked at the end of the cooking time. Paul fried his off in a pan, I just ate them anyway! But we put the rest of it back into the oven… and then found it again 4 days later! Oops!

The over on the right is a chicken stir fry with satay sauce, the recipe for which is from Fearne Cotton’s first recipe book. Its very quick to make, and is great as a dipping sauce and used for chicken or prawns.

I like to marinate the chicken breast in soy sauce, garlic, ginger, fish sauce, chilli and lemongrass before I cook it. I used a bag of stir fry mix and added a red pepper and some egg noodles. The satay sauce I then heated and added over the top for anyone who wanted.

So this was the main event on Christmas Day! Mrs Turkey, she was  delicious. We had 5 adults, 3 children and a baby to  feed. My Mam bought this turkey breast joint from her local  butcher. Then it was my job to cook it. I did this on Christmas Eve as I didn’t want to be really stressed on  Christmas Day with everything else. My sister in law gave me her stuffing recipe which is pork sausage,  breadcrumbs, oatmeal, onions and dried apricots. I sliced into the breast, put in the stuffing and then used these cocktail sticks to hold it back together. Covered the top in bacon and tied with string –  note: I need to buy proper kitchen string! I seasoned it and then basted it regularly during cooking.

 

 

 

 

 

Not to blow my own trumpet too much, but it tasted so good and stayed moist for the rest of the time we used it as left overs.

 

 

 

 

 

Is it even really Christmas if you didn’t have turkey curry?

This one was garlic, ginger and onions fried, stir in curry powder. Then I added a tin of tomatoes and seasoned. I would have added chilli too but  I wanted the children to eat it without moaning!

A table spoon of mango chutney and handful of chopped dried apricots, add the turkey and heat through. I then added natural  yogurt. Served with some rice and naan breads (which I did not make myself!)The week before the Christmas holidays were due to start, a horrible sickness bug struck down a few communities around us. We decided to keep our children off school for the last few days. I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do but the night before we kept them off one of them was up and down all night with a horrible cough too. We enjoyed our three extra days of Christmas holidays and watched films, baked ginger bread men and made a chocolate Santa’s sleigh using lots of chocolate biscuits!

I hope these ideas have been a bit of inspiration for you.

Thank you again for reading!

 

Hazel Ann Xx

New recipes – money saving

Last week I bought Jamie Oliver’s new cook book “Save with Jamie” (I paid £12 in store at Tesco)
I chose recipes to make this week- Sunday was to be the “mother ship” roast beef, then Monday Korean fried rice using the left overs. Tonight was to be fish pie. (This is a pure coincidence that these are the three recipes he did on the first show last night!)

The roast beef was truly amazing. I’ve never really made gravy without good old bisto before, but honestly this gravy was better, you add blackcurrant jam and red wine vinegar 🙂

Last nights fried rice came out lovely too. I never usually stick 100% to savoury recipes as I like to use what I have in rather than buy more ingredients. So I made some substations.

Recipes can be found here

We just had mashed potatoes rather than roast on Sunday, and we used silverside not brisket – we have a freezer of cow! For the rice I didn’t add chilli sauce and used some mangetout instead of the cabbage.

The fish pie tonight came great, was really different from my traditional fish pie. And a great way to use up fish from the freezer, we used Coley that we got from someone who had been off fishing a few weeks ago, and no salmon.

Here are some snaps of the finished products, super tasty and purse friendly. I’m looking forward to trying more recipes from this super handy cookbook.

Happy Cooking

Winter is here!

It has now turned cold here! Windy darker nights.. Can only call for one thing … Cinnamon cake!

I made a lovely cinnamon cake tonight, using a recipe I got from a wonderful friend. It can be found here!

It wasn’t too tricky to make, just the two layers to do separately, then baked in one go.

(I worked out that each slice is around 300 calories for anyone counting!)

Lots of love

Hazel-Ann

And I also tried a layer of apples in one of my cakes, between the two layers in the recipe – I simply peeled and cored an apple then sliced it and layered it over the first layer of cake mix. Then added the other layer on top. It added a lovely extra sweetness!

Save with Jamie

Last week I bought Jamie Oliver’s new cook book “Save with Jamie” (I paid £12 in store at Tesco)
I chose recipes to make this week- Sunday was to be the “mother ship” roast beef, then Monday Korean fried rice using the left overs. Tonight was to be fish pie. (This is a pure coincidence that these are the three recipes he did on the first show last night!)

The roast beef was truly amazing. I’ve never really made gravy without good old bisto before, but honestly this gravy was better, you add blackcurrant jam and red wine vinegar 🙂

Last nights fried rice came out lovely too. I never usually stick 100% to savoury recipes as I like to use what I have in rather than buy more ingredients. So I made some substations.

Recipes can be found here

We just had mashed potatoes rather than roast on Sunday, and we used silverside not brisket – we have a freezer of cow! For the rice I didn’t add chilli sauce and used some mangetout instead of the cabbage.

The fish pie tonight came great, was really different from my traditional fish pie. And a great way to use up fish from the freezer, we used Coley that we got from someone who had been off fishing a few weeks ago, and no salmon.

Here are some snaps of the finished products, super tasty and purse friendly. I’m looking forward to trying more recipes from this super handy cookbook.

Happy Cooking