Yet another Monday, yet another meal planning Monday. It’s been a stressful few weeks for me, and I’ve realised that actually it has been a stressful few months. A new job at the end of last year with a steep learning curve and new responsibilities, things to organise at home, and the usual pressures we all put on ourselves to keep life ticking along how we want it to. I’ve really been feeling it for this last week or two, and it has been getting me a bit down in the dumps, so I have decided that I need to change the way I plan meals.
Rather from cooking from scratch each evening when I get home from work and then not sitting down for the first time until gone 8pm when I finally eat my dinner, I am going to try and cook more meals in advance and use the stock of goodies in the freezer to give me a slightly more relaxed evening at least one week night per week.
Even my Wednesday stirfry was turning into a bit of a palava – in itself it doesn’t take long to cook, but preparing the ingredients and accompaniments at the same time as emptying the dishwasher, sorting the washing, cleaning up, checking my emails, making lunch for tomorrow, sorting out work clothes for the next day etc was getting me in a bad mood. Plus this week I ended up giving us dodgy tummies with the stirfry – I guess it was from the beansprouts or mange tout – so I am decidedly anti-stirfry for a while. Pretending to be all nice and easy and quick and then not being so, AND making my tummy sore? Evil.
So back onto the main purpose of this post – what am I having this week? Well, it’s officially summer now (although don’t get me started on losing an hour of sleep the night before I had to be up at 5am for a trip to Paris … I am still in a strop about that), so I have decided to ditch the lunchtime soup and make salads for lunch instead. I am boiling a ham to use for this week (I find it is cheaper and tastier to do that rather than buy pre-packed, pre-sliced ham which has usually been pumped full of water), and I’ll make some coleslaw as well. Along with a few pickles alongside the salad leaves, cucumber, radish, spring onion, grated carrot and tomato I’ll have the makings of a very tasty packed lunch.
For puddings this week I have stewed some plums to have with delicious and creamy natural strained yoghurt from our local Turkish supermarket. That could also work for breakfast but I think I’ll stick to porridge with apple and cinnamon for another couple of weeks.
Dinners will be as follows:
- Monday – fish pie (making that on Sunday so I just have to stick it in the oven when I get home from work). My recipe for comfort food fish pie is here if you fancy trying it yourself …
- Tuesday – I am popping out for a drink after work so will be making use of a lamb stew from the freezer, served with veg
- Wednesday – vietnamese rice noodle salad with seafood (thanks to the stirfry ban)
- Thursday – Jamie’s chorizo carbonara
- Friday – we’re off to see the Manic Street Preachers tonight so dinner will be a pre-gig munch in Brixton – I’ve heard good things about places there so if I have time I might investigate a few options
- Saturday – roast duck crown with veg
- Sunday – 13-15 April is Thai new year, so I’ll be making a Thailand-inspired dish, details to be confirmed!
You can find out more about meal planning At Home with Mrs M.