November sees my husband’s birthday and I can’t wait to taste the pork fillet he has requested. Below is the plan I had made, using up items we have available. However as is life, there was a curveball thrown in that one of our freezers has given up the ghost. Therefore the meals this week are all freezer surprise! I’ll leave the plan as was so people can use it for ideas.
Sunday: Pork fillet, mushroom sauce and wilted greens.
Breakfasts: Oat based (porridge, pancakes, cold oats), egg based (dippy, scrambled or omelette) or cereal. Weekends are English breakfast, pancakes or eggs on toast.
SOTW: Red lentil, chickpea and chilli.
POTW: Chocolate cake!
Snacks: Hard boiled eggs, pepperami, cheese sticks or sweet treats
Please do let me know if you try any of these recipes or meal ideas, or if you would like to know more on how I manage my meals and planning.
If you are interested in seeing what we grow here on the smallholding, feel free to join in the fun on our Instagram or Facebook smallholding pages. We also dabble in YouTube which is rather amusing! Not the content, just that we don’t know what we are doing with it yet!
Halloween is fast approaching and as it falls on a weekend this year and given the kids won’t be out enjoying it, I thought we’d do a themed meal for the day and enjoy it in the farmhouse. Stay tuned for more on that.
We have corned beef one pot this week and it was so good, a seriously underrated meal. I’m not sure if it’s everyone’s cup of tea so let me know if you would like the recipe.
Coming up this week is also half term and the kids are home whilst I am working from home. Here’s the meal’s I am planning to have with them and my husband.
Monday: Cottage Pie served with home grown veg (sprouts, cabbage and parsnips).
Tuesday: Chicken, broccoli and rice casserole.
Wednesday: Cranberry chicken one pot.
Thursday: Pork Bolognese.
Friday: Pork chops, roast potatoes and seasonal greens.
Saturday: Halloween buffet
Sunday: Roast chicken dinner with Yorkshire puddings
Breakfasts: Toast from a new recipe I’ve found, oat based (porridge, pancakes, cold oats), egg based (dippy, scrambled or omelette) or cereal. Weekends are English breakfast, pancakes or eggs on toast.
SOTW: Red lentil, chickpea and chilli
Snacks: Banana flapjacks, brownies, fruit,
Please do let me know if you try any of these recipes or meal ideas, or if you would like to know more on how I manage my meals and planning.
If you are interested in seeing what we grow here on the smallholding, feel free to join in the fun on our Instagram or Facebook smallholding pages. We also dabble in YouTube which is rather amusing! Not the content, just that we don’t know what we are doing with it yet!
This month has gone by so quickly. My month’s run from 25th until 24th around pay day, just how I’ve always done it. I did the fair size grocery haul last pay day and except for milk, yoghurts and a few fresh items we fancied (didn’t need, just wanted), we’ve not needed anything else.
I am really pleased with how well freezing the kids’ packed lunches has worked out. The ham brioche are not in the slightest bit soggy, the cheese is perfect and the yoghurts lovely and chilled by lunch time. We grab them out of the freezer on a morning, they defrost during the day and are perfect to eat when their lunch time comes round. They take up a bit of space in the freezer so I guess you have to prioritise, for me this is such a time saver each day (mentally too!) that it’s a no brainer.
We also have a full freezer of pork in all it’s forms now so you will see that featuring more and more heavily in the meal plans each week. Here’s what I am planning for this coming week.
Monday: Home reared pork chops, mushroom gravy and seasonal veg from the garden.
Tuesday: Left over chicken curry (from Sunday’s roast), rice and naan bread.
Wednesday: Soup and pudding night (see options below)
Thursday: Corned beef stew, mash and mushy peas.
Friday: Shredded ham and roast potatoes with green salad
Saturday: Lasagne (homemade from freezer), chips and left over salad
Sunday: Home reared diced pork and apple one pot.
Breakfasts: Oat based (porridge, pancakes, cold oats), egg based (dippy, scrambled or omelette) or cereal. Weekends are English breakfast, pancakes or eggs on toast.
SOTW: Chicken and noodle soup or pea soup.
POTW: Chocolate sponge and custard
Snacks: Mini frittatas, hummus and peppers, home made scotch eggs (using quail eggs)
Please do let me know if you try any of these recipes or meal ideas, or if you would like to know more on how I manage my meals and planning.
If you are interested in seeing what we grow here on the smallholding, feel free to join in the fun on our Instagram or Facebook smallholding pages. We also dabble in YouTube which is rather amusing! Not the content, just that we don’t know what we are doing with it yet!
I do enjoy being in the kitchen, with the warmth of the Aga keeping the cold away and the dogs under my feet seeing who can get closest to the heat, whilst the wind and rain beats down outside.
Then I have to go out in the elements to take care of the livestock and no amount of wrapping up tightly in a hat, scarf and coat can make being in the rain enjoyable for me! Especially in the volumes we are getting right now. On day’s like these, there’s nothing better than a hot bowl of porridge to help you prepare for this or a thick soup to toast you from the inside before heading back in to sit in front of the Aga again. That reminds me, I’m out of Pam Corbin’s ‘souper’ mix (home made bouillon in a jar), so I’ll get some more of that done this weekend. This last batch lasted me for ever!
Snacks: Flapjacks, hard boiled eggs and my famous steak pies (sooo delish!)
Please do let me know if you try any of these recipes or meal ideas, or if you would like to know more on how I manage my meals and planning.
If you are interested in seeing what we grow here on the smallholding, feel free to join in the fun on our Instagram or Facebook smallholding pages. We also dabble in YouTube which is rather amusing! Not the content, just that we don’t know what we are doing with it yet!
I’m getting a little bit obsessed with meal plans and what other people are doing with theirs. I’m even watching YouTube videos showing what people ate in a week for ideas and inspiration. This is all building up to our 2021 challenge of spending as little as possible on groceries and other expenses to allow us to overpay the mortgage. It’s really exciting for me (please don’t roll your eyes 😉 ). We’ve been saving hard through 2020 to have a pot of money to call on for necessities, as we still have projects on the smallholding which feed in to longer term savings. I’ll post those over on Our Smallholding Adventure blog that we run. Do join us there if you haven’t already, we would love your company.
I’ve enjoyed making apple sauce from our own cooking apples in the slow cooker. It’s lovely to be able to put them in and walk away. I’ve dusted these with sugar and lemon juice and put them on for a couple of hours on low. The result is lovely and freezes very well. I tried some warmed with cold Greek Yoghurt and it was delish. Maybe served over porridge, rice pudding or as a side to our home reared pork….yum!
Please do let me know if you try any of these recipes or meal ideas, or if you would like to know more on how I manage my meals and planning.
If you are interested in seeing what we grow here on the smallholding, feel free to join in the fun on our Instagram or Facebook smallholding pages. We also dabble in YouTube which is rather amusing! Not the content, just that we don’t know what we are doing with it yet!
Well the children are well and truly back to school (how long for is anyone’s guess) and we have taken the time we need to get going again. I have been meal planning even though I haven’t had them on here, but you can find them in my Facebook group if you’d like to join. I’d love to have you there.
We have had a busy old weekend here on the smallholding and I have been so grateful to have food in the freezer as I have relied on it today at least! I have felt like I am coming down with something so earlier today I went foraging for elderberries to make a winter tonic to ward off the sniffles. I don’t think it will qualify as a vaccine though 😉
I have actually written a meal plan for 31 days and went to Aldi on Saturday (yesterday) to get 80/90% of what we will need for the month and it came to £138. I’ve a post coming on it shortly.
Monday: Beef and butter bean stew with mash and green beans
Tuesday: Freezer surprise (what will be will be! Close your eyes and get something out)
Wednesday: Soup and pudding night (see below)
Thursday: Beef and prune stew, roasted sweet potatoes and peas
Friday: Home made pizza
Saturday: Lasagne, chips and salad
Sunday: Corned beef and potato pie served with lots of veg
SOTW (soup of the week): Cheesy broccoli
***New*** Pudding of the week: Seasonal apple and bramble crumble
Snacks: Fruit, peppers, hard boiled eggs, chocolate cake
If you are interested in seeing what we grow here on the smallholding, feel free to join in the fun on our Instagram or Facebook smallholding pages. We also dabble in YouTube which is rather amusing! Not the content, just that we don’t know what we are doing with it yet!
Well that week went quickly. We’ve have a mix of busy and quiet times here on our smallholding. Our little family has been fortunate enough to have a few day trips out, one of which was to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary.
I made a delicious rice pudding in the slow cooker as the weather hasn’t been too favourable again and it’s nice to have something sweet to eat hot as a treat. I’m going to freeze what’s not used to enjoy another day. (I’m not helping myself use up my freezer contents here am I?).
Our delightful veg box is yet again supplementing our home grown produce, freezer and pantry meaning this week I won’t have to spend much at all to put some yummy meals on the table.
I’m going to put breakfast choices at the bottom of the post this week and see how that works. Also I am changing Sunday (today) from a Roast Dinner to chicken & cabbage soup followed by the slow cooker rice pudding. I’ll serve the soup with homemade crusty bread too, yum. We will be having a ‘soup and pudding’ themed night most weeks now, at least fortnightly. It’s a good way of keeping costs down and varying meals I find. Plus if you have a sweet craving and you’re the chef then you can pop in what you fancy 😉
PL stands for packed lunches as we have 1 adult and 1 child on packed lunches this week and 1 of each working from home too 🙂
Bank Holiday Monday:
PL/L: Tuna Salad/Scrambled eggs and/or beans on toast.
D: Cottage pie (left over mince from Saturday’s lasagne) served with a side dish of cabbage, bacon & onions.
Tuesday:
PL/L: Ham brioche, yoghurt, banana, treat/big ham salad
D: (Frugal) Jacket potato bar (selection of toppings chilli con carne, tuna, cheese, beans)
Wednesday:
PL/L: mini homemade steak pie, yoghurt, fruit, treat/rice and pepper salad with ham
SOTW (soup of the week): Warming lentil & Carrot and Parsnip
Snacks: Fruit, hummus and peppers, hard boiled eggs
If you are interested in seeing what we grow here on the smallholding, feel free to join in the fun on our Instagram or Facebook smallholding pages. We also dabble in YouTube which is rather amusing! Not the content, just that we don’t know what we are doing with it yet!
Last week I mentioned that it felt more Autumn that Summer like, well it feels down right Winterish today. That’s ok though, our spirits aren’t dampened as we are off work for the week, yay!
That said, our holiday weeks can be a little spontaneous food wise, so this wouldn’t be the best week to start a new challenge and start monitoring my calories again would it? Nope! Yet here I am laying down a low spend challenge for the next 4 weeks and getting back to calorie counting. Just as well I had this delicious quiche before thinking too much about calories. Oh and bean sprouts came in this week’s veg box….now to figure what to do with them as I don’t fancy stir fry again yet? Did you know you can freeze them? I think I might have to.
I’ll share more detail on my challenge in my next post so I can get right in to the meal plan here which is what you’re here for, right? 🙂
Holiday week plan so far – I’m trying to stick to a maximum of 1600 calories a day, which is a lot when trying to shift some pounds for me but the week after next will be down to 1200.
Monday:
B: Bowl of oats and fruit – 1/2 cup oats, 250ml almond milk, 20g raisins, 1 tsp honey – 188 cals
L: Fish and Chips – family day out (I know, day 1 and I have fish and chips!) – 800 cals
D: Golden Soup – 225 cals
Tuesday:
B: Oat pancake with 1 tbsp syrup – 179 cals
L: Minestrone soup (homemade) – 164 cals , also quiche for family and visitors
D: Slow cooker cranberry chicken stew with mash and mushy peas – xx cals
SOTW (soup of the week): Minestrone/chicken cabbage
Snacks: Fruit, hummus and peppers, hard boiled eggs, slow cooker rice pudding, slow cooker banana bread, flapjacks, Aldi treats.
As usual, I’ll post recipes and photos of how things turned out as I make the items, to allow me to post photos too.
I hope this gives you some inspiration and I’d love to hear what meals you are thinking of making this week. In time my meal plans will also include costs where possible.
If you are interested in seeing what we grow here on the smallholding, feel free to join in the fun on our Instagram or Facebook smallholding pages. We also dabble in YouTube which is rather amusing! Not the content, just that we don’t know what we are doing with it yet!
I don’t know about you but the weeks are flying by here. I have some much needed time off work next week and cannot wait! The best part is that Steven is off too, meaning we can have some quality family time. We’ll get lots done on the smallholding, have some lovely days out and hopefully get some chillout time too. I know one thing I need to do if I haven’t by then is get organised with the freezers, they appear to be full but I know with a little time spent organising them, there will be plenty of space.
I don’t know what you think but it has felt quite Autumnal here after the crazy heat we have been having, I noticed lots of leaves on the garden when I went over to check on the animals yesterday.
Autumn leaves already? Surely not.
As always here, my meal plan for the coming week is written out on the whiteboard. I didn’t get to make banana bread in the slow cooker last week, we just didn’t have the need for it, so I’ll roll that over to this week. If I have too many bananas left over and going squishy, I’ll freeze them. Did you know you can freeze bananas? Perfect for cooking with and making smoothies.
I’ve made a couple of notes in brackets below. I was asked about vegetarian options over in the Facebook group so I will start to think how meals can be adapted when I go through this process each week. Right now, there is meat on the menu every day however stir fry can be meat-free and wraps can be replaced with different egg or cheese options. Friday’s pie could be cheese and onion (yum!) .
I’m also making quiche which can be any filling, but I have a basic recipe that I use as the base and add any filling to. I’ll share this week.
Monday: Chicken stir fry (using chicken breasts from freezer)
SOTW (soup of the week): Butternut squash & sweet potato
Snacks: Fruit, hummus and peppers, hard boiled eggs, slow cooker rice pudding, slow cooker banana bread, flapjacks, Aldi treats.
I’ll post recipes and photos of how things turned out as I make the items, to allow me to post photos too.
I hope this gives you some inspiration and I’d love to hear what meals you are thinking of making this week. In time my meal plans will also include costs where possible.
If you are interested in seeing what we grow here on the smallholding, feel free to join in the fun on our Instagram or Facebook smallholding pages. We also dabble in YouTube which is rather amusing! Not the content, just that we don’t know what we are doing with it yet!
As I’m sure is the same for you, we are always busy with something or other. For us, if we are not dashing around to school, work or days out with the kids, we are firmly planted on the smallholding (pun intended) raising our livestock and growing our own food. Oh not to mention doing everything else that us humans do, cooking, cleaning, washing, shopping for said cooking…..this is making me tired just typing!
In my years of experience, one thing I have learnt for us to be successful is that life needs organising. By successful I don’t mean anything other than the smooth running of this place, food on the table and a comfortable home with happy and healthy inhabitants. Being organised doesn’t mean take the fun out of things or running an inflexible military operation. It does mean we have to be organised or things slip and don’t get done, which can have negative outcomes. Not having matching socks doesn’t matter as much as having no food prepped/available for the evening meal, which may lead to eating out ruining our budget etc etc. Forgetting to feed the animals is not acceptable where as forgetting to write ‘butter’ on the shopping list is. You see where I’m coming from?
As we move in to 2021 we will be making our usual plans and dreams for the coming year, one of which is already decided upon. That leads me to this new blog. Meal planning our way to financial freedom. Crazy woman? Bear with me.
The dream for Steven and I is to be able to make an income from our smallholding, enough to support us so we don’t have to work for big cat/other companies forever. We DO want to work, but for ourselves. If you know us from our smallholding blog, you’ll know we aren’t work shy.
Why do we have to work? To bring in an income. Why? We have chosen a lifestyle choice which includes having a mortgage. To pay the mortgage we need to work and continue to earn at least one of our wages just to settle the bills every month. So why doesn’t one of us quit and the other just work? Well then what would we do if hard times hit? We would have no plan b. Right now, we have a plan b, one of us goes down, the other steps up and we adapt.
So the short version is we are doing numerous things to lower outgoings and save money to overpay the mortgage.
Maybe you can relate this, maybe it’s not a mortgage for you, maybe you want to save money for one reason or another, or you simply need to meet your current mortgage or rent demands. One thing is for sure, times are really hard for many right now, during the 2020 pandemic.
In the 4 years or so we have lived here, one thing we have managed to do, which is helping us save towards overpaying the mortgage, is reduce our grocery budget significantly. From around £600 a month (I’m aware this is spending stupid money from not being organised, buying on a whim and eating out!) to what is a reasonable £300 a month. The only way I have found to do this is planning. Meal planning, freezer planning and planning your grocery shop. Meal planning can be reverse planning, which I’ll talk about in another post or standard planning (ie planning ahead). Without sitting down and planning my family’s meals out, I wouldn’t be able to have a grocery budget of £300.
I refer to this sitting down time as one of my “Kitchen Tasks”, a phrase you will hear me use often. This blog isn’t about paying the mortgage off, it’s about what we are doing with the grocery and grocery related bills to reduce them and to use those savings to over pay on the mortgage. Other people will want to reduce their grocery budget for another reason or maybe you don’t want to reduce your budget, maybe you struggle with meal ideas and would like to start meal planning.
Thinking of ideas to cook each day or for the freezer can be overwhelming. I hope my blog can help. What you can expect in the coming posts is to join me around our Farmhouse Kitchen Table and I’ll share how I manage all of these activities and my other Kitchen Tasks! Including weekly meal plans, shopping lists, grocery hauls and related budgets. Get insight in to our lives and follow our journey to financial freedom with regular updates on everything. I hope you find some useful or inspiring information here and even if not, I’d love for your support as we take on this next chapter in our lives. We have a dedicated Facebook Group if you would like to be a part of that community, I’d love to see you there.
Transparent, real life going on here! Now, final comment for today, remember I said I live on a smallholding (homestead)? My Aga is my favourite part of the kitchen and in the spirit of the transparency I mentioned, here’s me working around a poorly duck at my Aga.
Isn’t she beautiful 🙂
If you got this far, thank you for reading!! I really appreciate it!
Please leave me a comment below or on social media if you’re new here (everyone is, it’s a new blog!) as I would love to get to know you.
Our Farmhouse Kitchen Table 