This week’s meal plan: using up stuff from the freezer
We’re swapping things around here at the moment, with our formerly sealed coal hole becoming a proper lovely & useful utility room-ette, we’re moving our undercounter freezer down there and have got a more space efficient (and generally more efficient) fridge-freezer for the kitchen. Anyway, long story short, we’re going to have more freezer space in the long run but are using it as an opportunity for a clear out now.
Sunday brunch – sausage & egg sandwiches
Sunday dinner – pasta with John’s special pasta sauce (from the freezer)
Monday lunch – croque monsieurs, since I’ve had a craving for them for weeks :)
Monday dinner – Spanish omelette with chorizo, garlic mushrooms & peppers (to use up some cheap potatoes we got last week), with salad (homegrown!)
Tuesday lunch – sandwiches or fish & chips if Strowger gets his way ;)
Tuesday dinner – spicy smoked mackerel kedgeree (smoked mackerel from the freezer)
Wednesday lunch – curried egg mayo with toast
Wednesday dinner – John out with friends; an on-toast or doggy bag for me
Thursday lunch – tuna and salad in wraps
Thursday dinner – slow cooker beef goulash (beef from the freezer) (thanks to Katherine for the inspiration :) )
Friday lunch – samosas with pickles and salad
Friday dinner – leftover beef goulash
And a note for me for next week – use sausages from freezer to make a casserole :)
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How nice, to have more freezer space coming your way. And good for you, all this meal planning! Sounds yummy, and makes life easier. I just have my small freezer with refrigerator. I don’t always make meal plans, but I do a lot of prep work. When I come home exhausted after working a long day, it makes the difference between eating good food and eating fast food or using mixes.
I buy any meat that’s on special, and before it goes in the freezer, it’s divided into just enough for dinner sized packages, and cooked first when I can. Or it’s chopped for stew. Or ground beef has half of it shaped into patties, and the other half cooked, ready for chili or tacos or what have you. Found out the hard way I can’t just chuck meat in the freezer to deal with later-I find reasons to avoid dealing with it. ‘Defrosting, chopping, cooking-that’ll take too long. I’ll get a bite out just this once, and fix this when I have more time.’
I peel and dice carrot, celery, and onion and lob it into a package-then I can make rosemary bean soup in a flash. If the grocery has the normally pricey red bell peppers on sale, I buy all I can get my hands on, and chop and freeze what I won’t use fresh. I always buy frozen tortellini and ravioli when it’s on sale. I know, I could make my own, but my time is limited. And it’s nice knowing a quick meal is on tap.
I do try planning ahead. When the day off is a real day off and not a tons of errands day, I’ll make cassarole, spagetti sauce, cook something like a roast, ect. for during the week.
Love my little freezer! Utilized properly, I eat healthier meals, save time, and a surprising amount of money.
Hi bookstorebabe, that’s really interesting. I have pots of ready chopped herbs, spring onions (scallions?) and chillis in the freezer all the time but that’s about it on the advanced prep front — I think I’ll start doing what you do with meat too.
One of our main problems until recently has been a lack of labelling – not knowing what random lump of meat is or whether a mince based homemade ready meal is pasta sauce or curry. We’re conquering that though (thanks to some masking tape & a pen near the freezer at all time) so hopefully that’ll make advanced prep stuff more useful :)