For the past four years, I have cooked a different meal for dinner for myself and my partner. But why you may ask? And how have you not repeated the same meal twice?
Like many couples we had been cooking the same meal routine for years in the hope of keeping our food budget down. However, it was getting boring having the same meals and even we when rotated the options slightly, it was becoming old! Lasagna, Spaghetti Bolognese, Chili Con Carne, Shepherds Pie, Jacket Potato, Fish and Chips, Pizza. You get the idea!
A lot of people rave about batch cooking for saving money, but I don’t know about you, the idea of having the same meal twice in one week just doesn’t appeal to me, and filling my freezer full of meals that I didn’t enjoy eating the first time and have every week was not something I looked forward too.
So, I decided to start planning our meals for each week. At the start of the week I would look up recipes, write a shopping list, check the cupboards so as not to duplicate items we already had and then go shopping, (at preferably only one supermarket) not only did I find that we saved money as I was buying only the items we needed, but our enjoyment and love for food came back, because every meal was different we got to try ingredients that we had never eaten before.
Our meal plan for the week tended to be mainly meat based but we also had fish once a week and included at least two vegetarian/vegan style meals. And for cheat night we would have store brought junk food, Pizza, Chinese & Indian.
Because we have managed to save money, control how much we spend on food each week and limit our food budget costs we have been able to splash out and once a month we go out for dinner locally. Another thing we have noticed is, that we have more quality time together as while one of us is cooking the other is doing the washing up, and with most of our meals taking less than half an hour to prep and cook, we can spend the evening chilling out together in front of the tv.
So, our new style of cooking from recipes is a massive win-win! If you want to find out more drop me a DM and I would be happy to share my current meal plan with you.
