A Slight Reprieve & Menu Planning Week 2

I told you all last week that I had been served with my redundancy notice to take effect at the end of December. Well I have been given a slight reprieve as I have been offered a secondment into the Behaviour Support Service until March 2011. This gives me some breathing space and to be honest I am looking forward to getting back into some "hands on" teaching so to speak, even though teaching pupils with behaviour problems can be challenging. It's only a reprieve however so I still feel that I need to cut back in order to make sure that I can weather any future period of unemployment.

My good intentions of planning meals etc got a bit sidetracked at the start of this week. On our return from our weekend in Dunoon I felt too tired to bother with meal planning for the coming week. Yesterday afternoon I was on a training course and so didn’t finish till later than normal, I had also promised to stop in and see my granddaughter to give her a present I had brought back from Dunoon for her. So, what with one thing and another I had nothing planned for tea and succumbed to buying Chinese takeaway. Mind you my daughter and I did both take leftovers to work with us for lunch today, so it has done two meals.

Still today it’s back to a bit of planning. One of the comments last week when I posted my first menu plan was how the downside of menu planning can take the spontaneity out of mealtimes. I did agree with the comment that sometimes when faced with a menu plan you just don’t really fancy the meal that is planned for a given night. I try to make sure that any plan I make is flexible, so rather than slavishly sticking to “the plan” I will often swap meals around or at the last minute will substitute a different meal but utilising the same main ingredient, for example I might plan pasta Bolognese but decide we don’t want pasta so will make chilli instead. It uses the same main ingredients but is a totally different dish. I also just try to decide on the number of, say main meals that I need, and then write a list containing that number of meals but in a random order.

I regard “the plan” as a guide rather than something set in stone and find that by having a guide I am less likely to go blank when thinking what to do for our meals, the problem being that when I “go blank” I am more likely to just think let’s just go out for dinner or buy in a takeaway. I am also more likely to have in all the ingredients that I need to make a balanced tasty meal, whereas without the guide I am likely to have lots of random ingredients but nothing that really goes together well if that makes sense?

Sooo... to this weeks “guide”.

I need 6 main meals (Tues – Sun):

Fish Taco’s - Chunks of fish marinaded with chopped chilli and garlic then shallow fried, served with home made wraps, home made salsa and home made wedges.

Pork chops with roast potatoes & steamed veg.

Bolognese with wholemeal pasta, grated cheese and a salad with char grilled courgette and pepper .

Beef stroganoff with rice and wild rice.

Fish Platter - I have a cooked lobster in the freezer which needs to be used up along with half a bag of frozen prawns and half a bag of frozen scallops so will serve these with a salad, garlic butter and crusty bread.

Pot roast brisket of beef, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, steamed carrots, steamed cabbage, Yorkshire puddings, gravy. (This will definitely be for Sunday)

Other meals we will need:

Tomorrow – packed lunches x 3

Thursday – packed lunches x 2 (I am at a conference where lunch is provided)

Friday – 2 x packed lunches (Dave finishes early on Friday so doesn’t take lunch)

Saturday – cooked breakfast, but no lunch as we will be out.

Sunday – cooked brunch.

So – Packed lunches:

Cheese sandwiches

Sausage sandwiches

Vegetable soup (From Freezer)

Breakfast – Poached eggs on toast.

Brunch – Sausage, bacon, egg, mushrooms, tomato, toast.

Tonight I chose Bolognese with wholemeal pasta, grated cheese and a salad with char grilled courgette and pepper.