Monday, May 14, 2012

Meal planning!

Every week we try our best to write a meal plan and stick to it. This saves us a helluva lot of time and money. Time because it means we go to the shops once, and money because we aren't tempted to buy random stuff.
I either go for cookbooks or blogs first. Blogs I tend to use if I see something really inspiring or something that sounds particularly delicious. This week I went for cookbooks (mainly because Nadine bought me a new one - Quick Fix Vegan).
This week I picked out three - depends on how many I can be bothered looking through :)

Then we flick through and pick 2 salady things for work lunches, and dinners to cook every other night with leftovers in between. This way our fridge doesn't keep piling up with leftovers and we don't have to cook every single night. I also write the shopping list as I go so I don't miss anything. It generally isn't very long because I try to keep staples stocked in my pantry (tin tomatoes, beans, rice etc.) 

So this weeks food:
Snow balls in Hell from Quick Fix Vegan. Very tasty, though the balls were a little dry and ther ecipe didn't make much saue really. I'd double the sauce next time.

Moroccan Spiced Couscous from Quick Fix Vegan. This was for lunched and SO SO GOOD. I love cous cous salads and the combination of all the flavours made it pretty amazing. I like to look forward to my lunches while I'm at work.
Fettucine Alfonso from Ultimate Uncheese.  I can't really remember this. It wasn't bad :P
Vegetable Biryani from the Oxfam vegetarian cookbook. Now this one fed us for days - and tasted better the next day then even better the day after that! We used quinoa in it instead of whatever was supposed to be...rice I think. I was sad when it ran out.

Another salad for the week was Soba Slaw also from Quick Fix Vegan. No pictures but that salad was so incredibly good. I could have eaten it all day.

So there you have it. How we organise our kitchen time :)


3 comments:

Theresa said...

That is really very organised and forward-thinking of you both! We've tried meal planning but found that we either don't feel like what we've planned when it comes time to make it, or that we choose recipes that require us to buy things we don't have on hand. Our strategy is to buy cheap/good stuff and just find uses for it. Interesting to see how different people make cooking work for them!

Joey said...

I'm a big fan of meal planning - means you don't rely on the same old meals all the time and saves you a fe bob.

I've been debating whether to buy the Uncheese cookbook - do you use it a lot? Is it good?

Emma said...

@Theresa: There has been many a time where we've not actually made what's on the list. That usually happens when most of it is based on rice...we get sick of it easily. I think your way works for us too, except our fridge is teeny tiny and we can't fit much in :(

@Joey: Ultimate Uncheese is pretty good, I've only used it a couple of times though. I often make some of the sliceable cheese recipes in there (set with agar) to have cheese and crackers at work. I haven't really gone into the meal recipes yet.