September Meal Planning: Week 2
It's official: we're a week into the monthly meal plan!
So far, so good... We've been really pleased with how smoothly the first week went both in terms of meal options and time spent in the evenings.
In terms of sticking to the meal plan, I would give us a B+. We managed to keep to the schedule for the most part but Fridays are definitely our problem day. One issue is that I work from home so I tend to skip breakfast. As a result, when it comes to lunch, I tend to go for something easy like tuna or a fried egg.
Luckily, week two lends itself to this by planning for us to have tuna pittas for lunch on Friday anyway!
My other annoyance was that I slipped a little on the blogging front and didn't get to post our dinner from the first week: lemon paprika chicken drumsticks. It'll get up on the blog eventually though!
Week Two
This week, we're having veggie egg cups for breakfast, red lentil dhal with rice and greens for lunch and a sausage, spinach and white bean stew with mashed potatoes for dinner.
Later in the week we'll switch up our dinners by having veggie soup and then dining out for two evenings. Additionally, our lunch on Friday will be the tuna pittas mentioned above.
For this week's meal prep, I started with the rice for our lunches since that needed 20 minutes to cook. While it was on the stove, I chopped up the veggies for our egg cups (broccoli, pepper, onion) and then sautéed them. I also preheated the oven as soon as I started cooking the veggies so it was all set to go by the time the rice finished.
I popped the egg cups in the oven and started the dhal while they baked. In total, I think I spent about an hour on breakfast and lunch... which I think is not too shabby!
I didn't worry about dinner until later in the evening as I find it easier to just make this as I normally would (i.e. at dinner time). Our fridge is nice and full of our prepped meals now and we're looking forward to the week ahead!
What did we buy?
Fruit: None
Vegetables: Spinach (2 x 600g), Potatoes (2.5kg), Cauliflower (1)
Dairy/Dairy Alternatives: Milk (568ml),
Meat: None
Frozen: None
Cupboard: Chili Flakes (1), Ketchup (910g),
Household: Bleach, Paper Towels (6), Dish Soap (2)
Week Two Total Spent: £16.45
September Total: £116.32 + £16.45 = £132.77
Thoughts So Far
I can't believe we only spent £16.45! And, to be honest, £6.60 of that was on household items rather than food. Since this is our first attempt at a monthly meal plan, we weren't really sure what to set as our weekly top up budget so it will be interesting to see what the next two weeks require. Ideally, I'd like to finish this month with a good sense of a) how long certain items last/how far they'll stretch and b) what a monthly budget could look like with one big shop and three smaller ones.
Also, just a quick note on fruit: Matt and I both tend to have fruit in the office every day so that's why we didn't actually need to buy any this week. In my office for example, we have a fruit rota where every eight weeks or so it's your turn to buy some for the whole office.
Week two, here we come!
