Weekly Meal Plan No 1

I’ve been sharing my weekly meal plans over on my Instagram account for the last few weeks now, but you can’t really go into too much detail on Instagram. So, I’ll be sharing my meal plans here each week too and going into a little more detail about where I’ve got the recipes from and how I’ll be preparing the meals too.

I tend to plan fairly easy meals during the week as work and the kids’ activities can make for busy evenings. Meal planning for me is an essential part of my weekend. I sit down for half an hour every Friday or Saturday and write down what we’ll be eating for the next week. I make sure that I don’t plan anything too complicated for the nights when the kids have something on after school so I don’t over-stretch myself! Once I’ve got my meal plan, I order everything from ASDA to be delivered on Sunday morning. I pay £5 each month for an anytime delivery pass which works out great value compared to paying separately for each delivery.

If I don’t meal plan, then I can guarantee that we’ll overspend on our food shop and not get the right kinds of foods! It honestly makes such a difference to plan every day in advance.

This week, I’m keeping things fairly simple!

Monday – I’ll be using up the leftover chicken from Sunday lunch to make fajitas. I’ll fry some red onions and peppers along with the chicken, then add some fajita seasoning. I’ve bought some salsa sauce too as the chicken can be quite dry otherwise. I like it, but my eldest likes the fajitas to be a bit saucier. I used to buy a jar of fajita sauce, but I’m trying to cut back on buying jars and prefer to cook from scratch where I can so I know what we’re eating. It’s also cheaper to make your own! I also really fancy chips with this too, and we have loads of potatoes hanging about, so I’m going to cook them slimming world style using Fry Light spray.

Tuesday – Tomato & Lentil soup. I’m going to try out a recipe from the book Feed Your Family for £20 a Week. I was sent this book to review a few weeks back and it’s full of cheap, healthy family meals. I’m really looking forward to this! I’m going to stick some part-baked baguettes in the oven to go with it.

Wednesday – Slow cooked gammon, egg & chips. Really simple meal for Wednesday night this week. I’ll aim to cook my own chips again (we don’t usually have them twice in one week), but I’ve got a meeting at school so it may up being a freezer job!

Thursday – Thursdays are always a bit of a rush for us. The kids will probably have spaghetti on toast whilst we’ll have jacket potatoes, but I’ll give them the option to choose! Connor has swimming at 4 and Izzy has Youth Theatre at 5:30, then I have work at 6pm, so things tend to be a bit hectic. Fortunately, Thursday is Andy’s day off so he’s around to help out!

Friday – Post chicken burgers. We have these in the freezer and they need using up, so we’ll have them on Friday night! I’ll serve them up with some salad and maybe a few crisps on the side.

Saturday – We’re going to a carvery mid-afternoon on Saturday for a meal to celebrate my Mum’s birthday, so I’m not expecting we’ll need any tea (although the kids may think otherwise).

Sunday – We love our Sunday dinners at the moment. This weekend we’ll have Andy’s parents round. It’ll be a chicken dinner as this always goes down well with everybody.

I’m always on the lookout for new meal ideas, what are your family favourites?