Planning the Weekly Menu

I come up with 5 dinner ideas for the week, as we tend to eat about 2 meals a week from previously frozen meals.  I tend to cook most things from scratch as it always works out cheaper and tastes better.  I work out what ingredients I need for each meal, adding any ingredients I don’t already have to my weekly shopping list.

A great way to help plan your weekly menu is to ask your mother and grandmother for their favourite old recipes, these are usually cheap and easy to make.  Create your own recipe folder by using a ring binder and plastic sleeves.  Cut out recipes from old magazines or print them off a website.

On the weekend we have a special homemade “takeaway” meal, such as homemade pizzas or hamburgers.

I use Lebanese bread for pizza bases or make dough in my bread machine of course making my own dough is the cheapest option.  Most bread machines come with recipe books and instructions on how to do this.

For homemade hamburgers, I buy buns and make my own patties.  This works out so much cheaper than buying ready-made patties and tastes so much better.

A few more ideas:

Homemade white sauce is extremely versatile and can be used as white sauce on top of lasagne or as a cheesy sauce with pasta, just add onion and bacon for a yummy meal kids will love. This is so much cheaper to make, than buying jar sauce.

By buying a whole frozen chicken and roasting it, you can have meat for sandwiches, for a stir-fry and you can then boil the carcass and make homemade chicken soup.

Mince can be made into so many different meals such as casseroles, rissoles, meatballs etc. all these meals workout so cheap to cook.  Try to stay away from packaged sauces and casserole bases, as you are generally just buying something that could be made from scratch for a fraction of the price and only takes an extra 5 minutes to prepare.  We have been “marketed” into thinking packaged food is quicker to prepare.