Today is shopping day, and this weekend I'll be trying two new recipes and two new side dishes. The beauty with the main meals I'm trying out (tandoori chicken and home made Calzone pizza) is that once I've bought in the bulk of ingredients (the tandoori spice, bread and yeast etc) the fresh ingrediants (the chicken, and filling for the pizza) can be bought at no greater expense than my usual shopping budget, so I'm going to stock up tonight on a whole load of bread flour. Another great thing about the Calzone as well is that I can fill it up with just about anything I like. This weekend I'm using Tapas deli meats that Asda are pushing along with a ton of fresh cherry tomatoes and yummy, low fat mozzarella cheese. Way better than a store bought monstrosity!
As my recipe repertoire expands and I fill my cupboards up with flour, spices etc I've been trying to think up ways of being able to mix up my diet, as I believe I've mentioned before. Currently our weekly menu, each and every week, looks like this:
Monday: Low fat carbonara with leeks OR Chicken Fajitas
Tuesday: Stir Fry
Wednesday: Tortillioni with tomato sauce
Thursday: Stir Fry
Friday: Shopping night = pretty much free for all, but usualy a pizza or baguette for me, Ben likes his southern fried chicken
Saturday: Pie
Sunday: Roast
It's worked for us for so long because of the various offers on meat and stir fry veg etc that Asda has on at any one time, and the meals through the week are very low in calories thus make up for a little indulgence on Friday and Saturday. However, my problem is this;
Aside from a tiny bit of variation at the weekends, we've been eating this exact same menu, week in, week out, for at least six months.
If you're wondering why I've not dropped the weight off in that time, by the way, it's usually because we're very naughty and buy sweeties on a week night, or I drink gallons of hot chocolate at costa coffee, all bad habits we're trying to do away with. You know, those indulgences that you think "oh, it's just this once, it's not like it's every day" but then totally forget about since you're thinking about your main meals anyway and ultimately end up undoing all your hard work.
Ahem.
Anyhow, as I said, I've been trying to shake this up a bit and still stay within budget. Of course my recent good news is going to make budgeting for truly fresh and healthy food that little bit easier (who am I kidding, it's going to make it a WHOLE load easier!) but on my travels through the wonderful world of the interwebs I've found this awesome little tool.
It's nothing at all to look at, but I've found it so useful so far just in planning what I need to buy for this weekend. The jist of it is that you have a database of recipe's with which you create a weekly menu plan. You can pick recipe's already there or you can input your own (which can be time consuming but worth it in my opinion). Once you've completed your menu plan for the week, it automatically generates a shopping list complete with how much of everything you need. For example, since I'm making calzone's and Naan breads this weekend I need to buy in at least 350g of flour. Then you simply tick off any items you already have in the cupboards and there you go, your shopping list for the week.
I'm hoping this will help me to both budget and juggle up my weekly menu a little. If I fill this baby up with loads of healthy recipe's soon I can simply think "mm what do I fancy this week", check off what I want and not worry about overdoing it at the shop whislt knowing I'm eating fresh, healthy food somewhat automatically.
Anyhow, this is my first week using it, and it's a somewhat odd week anyhow since there will be a lot of eating out with the folks so hopefully over the next couple of weeks I can really put it through its paces and let you know how it's working out for us.
Hope you're all well!
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