Menu planning is crucial in keeping the cost of our food shopping down and it also helps with our family organisation. At the moment, I'm not working, Tim works from home and we have 2 adult sons living at home (1 working and 1 a recent graduate looking for work). We all like to cook and we all eat a vegan diet. When Sam was on furlough he chose to cook 3 or 4 times a week but now he's back at work he just cooks on one of his days off. Marcus has become a really good cook since he came home from uni last March and is also a much tidier cook than he was. As Sam works some evenings, I've gone back to writing up the week's meals on our blackboard painted kitchen wall to help with communication. We nearly always all eat the same evening meal but Tim and I have smaller portions especially of carbs! Sometimes the meals get swapped around or even changed. And sometimes we'll have something easy like Linda McCartney country pies, oven chips and peas!
I've kept a good food stockpile since the first lockdown of 2020 and I've found this really helps though at times the cupboards have been too full. I'm learning that doing a thorough weekly stock check in the fridge, freezer and cupboards is vital because otherwise I can't keep track of what's been used up with 4 different people cooking. The menu plan on the wall dates back to when we used to plan our meals Thursday to Wednesday which is why I've added dates. We have 2 online orders a week which I try to keep as close to £40 as I can. At the weekend I usually go to Waitrose to pick up a few favorite items and recently I've been using cash as Waitrose is expensive and it's very easy to get spendy in there.
This weekend I went to Waitrose just before closing time on Sunday afternoon and spotted some yellow sticker items. There were some reduced vegan items so I was very happy. The veggie balls will be eaten with pasta, the Italian whirls used in paella and the apples cooked with cinnamon and sultanas for our morning porridge. So the paella will be Spanish inspired but with a twist.
