meal plan

winter is well and truly setting in and i feel an enormous apetite creeping in - is that the cold? the short dark days? our primal instincts telling us to add layers of fat for the cold season?  i need to turn up the heating and get back on the salads! so it's monday and i have a meal plan. how much time in our lives do we spend thinking about, planning and shopping for our meals? what a weirdly huge part of our lives this fills!
on our weekly shop this week a tired Miss M consumed one kinder surprise egg, an entire punnet of blueberries and a huge bag of Kettle Chips (i may have helped out a little with the chips!), but at least she was happy and stayed in the trolley! i often overspend in the supermarket but we have been rubbish with money for too long and are now trying to stick to a strict budget. two things are helping me massively with this:
1. the iphone app EEBA which is brilliant - it creates envelopes (e.g. Groceries, Clothes, Presents, Travel, Personal etc) and enables you to easily track everything you spend and how you're doing at keeping to your monthly allowance for each category. having it right there on my phone and entering everything penny as soon as i spend it is so helpful. 

2. i am loving the new supermarket self-scanning systems. it enables me to see exactly how much my shop adds up to as i go around and then easily reevaluate and put back expensive or unnecessary items to bring down the total.
so here's our meal plan for this week (these always end up changing as the week goes by and my cooking inspirations change, ebb and flow). I have ended up with two huge cauliflowers in the fridge this week - any good recipes welcome!

Monday: egg fried rice (using left-over rice. we just ate it and it was deeelicious thanks to lots of crushed chilli. we watched the film The Blind Side which is very sweet and lovely)

Tuesday: chicken fajitas (after family outing to buy a christmas tree - woohoo - kids are very excited!)

Wednesday: polenta with chopped tomatoes and mozzarella (kids rejected this last time but it's been a while so i'll try them on it again - may end up doing boiled eggs for them!)

Thursday: good ol fashioned meat (pork spare rib steaks - in the freezer from when our budget stretched to Riverford Organic boxes), potatoes and veg.

Friday: salmon, spinach, tomatoes & cream cheese on pasta (salmon and veg. for kids - they're not so keen on things mixed together in sauces!)

Saturday: bean casserole (house will smell nice in the morning!)

Sunday:  vegetable soup or leftovers or jacket potatoes with baked beans and salad

Lunches: soups (with homemade bread - my new fad), pizza, lentils, salad, quinoa, saturday macaroni cheese, sunday roast(?)

Check out other people's meal plans over at At Home with Miss M for inspiration. It's quite handy when you're running low on ideas.