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Weekly food plans/Budget with low repetition?
In an effort to reduce my waste and expenses (as well as get some control over my diet...), I've been looking at weekly food planning and trying to budget for stuff...
I'm lost. My typical shopping is either getting an idea for something to cook then buying the stuff, or getting the ideas while shopping for other things. This has often resulted in having to throw stuff out because it doesn't actually get used.
I'm hoping to hear from people that are successful with actually sticking to a weekly plan and budget... How do you do it?
Beans (along with chickpeas and lentils), rice and veg are the base for delicious meals that are low cost and versatile. I'm a broken record, but get a variety of spices that turn those 3 ingredients into something different each time. You can make curries, mexican and latin dishes or soups or hearty stews.
I keep dried and canned versions pf various beans, lentils and chickpeas; as well as canned tomato sauce and diced tomatoes on hand. Also a jar of pasta sauce and various pastas (angel hair, farfala, and fussili) along with some dried rice noodles for Thai and Asian dishes. Peanut butter and coconut milk are also always in my cupboard.
But spices and herbs are the key.
Cumin
Cayenne
Granulated garlic and onion
Ground ginger
A good curry blend
A good Italian blend
A reasonable selection of herbs like thyme, oregano, sage, fennel, tarragon, etc. Buy what you like. Hate parsley? Don't use it. Love red pepper flakes? Try it on everything.
Of course you need salt and pepper, but don't forget acids and oils. Apple cider vinegar, rice vinegar, olive oil, sesame oil, etc are all key to a good pantry. Once you have a good basic pantry, you can make anything delicious.
Don’t just use rice; if you can get other grains for a good price add them to the rotation. Quinoa is a pretty good option but you can use any kind of grain like oats, wheat, rye, bulgur, etc. Also worth spending a little more on brown rice; It’s more filling and has a better nutritional profile.
Good add. I like using barley too.
I think this works for me because I find a limited set of food comforting, and I did Home Economics at school, and a large part of that was setting menus and planning buying. I've also practised a lot.
I have an inspirational cookbook that I get some ideas from. (Currently this set from Blasta Books ). I'll pick one or two things from these. I will then do the rest of the week by looking through paper[1] cookbooks, and a ton of pirated e-cookbooks. I'll look[2] for recipes that include common ingredients.
For breakfast I eat cereal and milk, so those are staples. For lunch and snacks I eat some combination of supermarket sushi, (terrible) supermarket falafel or samosa, boiled eggs and salad leaves, English classic comfort food beans on toast, and fruit. Sometimes I'll buy a supermarket Scotch egg and realise why I don't eat them.
I have a freezer, and I can preserve stuff in that if needed. At the moment I am eating a lot of pre-made tinned or frozen ready meals when I feel like eating (because chemotherapy sucks).
SortedFood (a YouTube channel) have a [subscription app called SideKick[(https://www.sortedfood.com/sidekick). I don't use it. I don't know how it works. But they have meal plans that you'd cook over the week, and these use common ingredients plus store cupboard items. Some people like it, some people don't get on with it. I thought I'd mention it -- unfortunately the website doesn't do a great job of explaining it.
I'm really lucky in that I have 5 supermarkets within a kilometre of my home so fresh food is a short walk. I know lots of people don't have that. It means that I sometimes don't have to think about this - I can just buy what I need for today and tomorrow.
[1] I was struggling to find the words for this. Dead tree? AFK book? Not-ebook? !ebook?
[2] Searching inside a medium large collection of epub ebooks is unfun. There are windows explorer plug-ins that can force indexing of the book collection, but they mean that search now doesn't work because all results will include very many not-relevant files. DocFetcher works.
I don’t have a food budget, but that’s because I don’t spend much on food and I dont spend a lot of money in general.
Probably the most important thing is meal planning. If you are trying to budget, the best way to do that is to make plans! That way you are only buying the stuff you are actually going to eat.
The other thing you can do is to reduce your usage of prepared foods. That means dining out, of course, but it also means things like frozen dinners, lunchables, canned pasta sauce and the like. Some of them are pretty close to what the price of it would take to make it yourself, but you’ll lose out on flavor and often on nutrition as well.
Of course time is something to budget too, so keep that in mind when putting your meal plans together. Try to prep things in bulk so when it’s time to eat you can just do the final steps and have a very quick meal. Some meals can be completed and will keep for a few days, so the only prep steps will be putting it on a plate and heating it up. Prep things that can be put in multiple dishes and then it becomes easy to “remix” the stuff into something new.
Start eating soup more often. Soup is very filling, should ideally be chocked full of healthy vegetables, and is appropriately cheap. Its also really easy to prep in bulk.
If you have the space, consider investing in a large freezer. It will save you money in so many ways.
I have a... normal? 3-drawer freezer as part of my fridge, but yes, space runs out. I've thought about a larger one before, but it's extra costs at a time when I can't really justify them. Definitely something on my list, to be sure!
I AM fortunate enough to have good markets nearby, I can buy frozen/canned/jarred stuff easily. But I struggle when the idea is to make a big pot of something and freeze half of it, because lack of space :D
Consider getting a chest-style freezer, one with the lid on top. They are actually more energy efficient because they don't let all the cold air escape every time you open the door.
If you're only feeding 1-2 people, you might not need it as much as a good freezer clearing, though. You generally don't want to put a big hot thing in your freezer, so it's better to put things in smaller containers before putting it in the freezer (and still wait a bit for it to cool down). It will help it to freeze faster and make the space more managable.
I've been going through the frozen stuff,yeah. Not adding until all of it is gone. Just a couple packs of veggies left now, plus some frozen lollies and a steak.
I always let things cool before moving to fridge or freezer, I got very strict lectures about how it can break the fridge when I was little... No idea if that's still a worry with modern ones, lol
The real concern is actually that the stuff in your freezer will thaw, and that the refrigerator can be stuck in the food temperature "danger zone" for quite a while and grow bacteria that can make you sick. Weather or not it will break the fridge is another question since there's more than one way to design one, but my view is that it's better to not tempt fate.
I am lucky enough to own my own place and have the room for a large chest freezer. It is something that is unfeasible for someone who rents and would need to haul it from apartment to apartment as they dodge rent increases.
In such a situation, I would look at what canned foods I frequently use and create a cache of those. Beans, tomatoes, and corn typically go into our family's stash. Staples like flour, salt, and sugar can take up a shelf in our cabinet, and basic seasonings like pepper, garlic powder, chili powder, cumin, and parsley take up just a second shelf.
I am renting, but it's a large enough space I could fit a chest freezer in... And if I move I have enough other stuff that needs to come with that a freezer won't make a difference.
I'm definitely going to try to fit one in my budget, though it'll take a while... Being able to buy stuff when there's big discounts and freeze it for the next few months would be great