I started Week 4 with a new grocery pick up and some leftovers in the fridge, along with a few perishables my daughter brought home from her fridge. I hadn't planned a special Christmas dinner, however, a friend blessed us with dinner. I cooked a dinner and took over to another friend and there were additional exchanges of food gifts, as well. With daughter being home on holiday and it being Christmas, I am afraid I didn't keep close track of what we had for meals, especially as daughter and I chose to have different things for breakfasts and lunches on some days.
These were the December Week 4 Menu Plan Options:
Breakfast/Brunch/Lunch: Waffles✓, French toast, bagels✓, croissants✓, scrambled eggs and toast, cereal and milk, oatmeal (for daughter; I don't much care for oatmeal), soup✓, salad✓, sandwiches, or leftovers✓
Dinner: Chicken curry with rice, lentils, and cabbage green beans✓; coconut flat bread with chicken curry✓; turkey meatball curry with rice and green beans cabbage, leftovers✓.
Snacks/Desserts: Fruit✓, fish cutlets✓, nuts✓, granola bars, fried breadfruit chips✓, popcorn✓, Christmas candy✓
Here's how it all turned out, more or less!
Monday:
Breakfast: Half a bagel (me); rice and chicken curry (daughter)
Lunch: Soup (me); rice, green beans, and chicken curry (daughter)
Dinner: Rice and chicken curry with green beans (both of us; yes, daughter ate rice and chicken curry for all three meals as she said she couldn't get enough of my chicken curry after not having it for 9 months! LOL!)
Snacks/Dessert: Fresh oranges, home canned peaches (daughter can't get enough of that, either!)
Tuesday:
Brunch: Croissants with butter and homemade peach jam; bananas (daughter might have had rice and chicken curry for lunch, as well)
Dinner: Coconut flat bread, chicken curry
Snacks/Dessert: Cookies, pears, banana
Wednesday:
Brunch: Croissants; daughter had leftover coconut flat bread with chicken curry, later
Dinner: Rice, chicken curry, dhal, sauteed cabbage (took some over to a friend, as well)
Snacks/Dessert: Cookies, fruit, popcorn, candy, etc.!
Thursday:
Breakfast: Croissants
Lunch: Rice, turkey meatball curry, sauteed green beans
Dinner: Rice with Korean style chicken stir fry (with onions, zucchini and mushrooms) that daughter cooked
Snacks/Dessert: Vietnamese meat pies, cake, cookies, fruit
Friday:
Breakfast: Waffles and bacon
Lunch: Leftover rice and turkey meatball curry
Dinner: Sri Lankan yellow rice, mutton curry, cashew and green peas curry, fried eggplant, cucumber salad, fried pappadum, and fresh pineapple
Snacks/Dessert: Cake, cookies, fruit, peanuts
Saturday:
Breakfast: Half a bagel (me); banana (daughter)
Lunch: Leftovers from Christmas dinner
Dinner: Parathas and mutton curry and leftover curry gravies
Snacks/Dessert: Fried breadfruit chips, popcorn, cake, canned peaches
Sunday:
Brunch: Leftover waffles and bacon (me)
Dinner: Salad, turkey tetrazzini (it was the first time I'd made it and my daughter liked it very much)
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| Turkey Tetrazzini |
Snacks/Dessert: Lime gelatin with condensed milk; chocolate; banana
According to my way of thinking, the week's meal plan options worked out quite well.
I am going to consider the week starting December 28 as Week 5. I start Week 5 with some leftovers from Christmas lunch and about half the dish of turkey tetrazzini. There are also some fresh vegetables that must be cooked before they spoil and some fruit that must be eaten.
These are my December Week 5 Menu Plan Options:
Breakfast/Brunch: French toast, scrambled eggs and toast, cereal and milk, oatmeal (for daughter), milk rice (on January 1)
Lunch: Salad, sandwiches, fried rice, or leftovers
Dinner: Turkey tetrazzini; rice, with chicken curry, green beans, and pumpkin curry; paratha with chicken curry; rice with mackerel curry, dhal, and broccoli; leftovers.
Snacks/Desserts: The house is well stocked with snacks, but, I need to go back to being careful about what and how much of it I eat! Ideally, my snacks will consist of fruit and nuts. I will be keeping track of only the snacks and desserts I will be eating and not what my daughter eats!
What's your meal plan for this week?
I'm still using up (planned) leftovers. If I can work out a safe way that doesn't involve me having to go into stores too often, I'd like to change the way I manage food to reduce costs, increase variety, and reduce the amount of bulk cooking to allow more scope for meals cooked from scratch. I'm still in the early stages of planning at the moment so it won't be a quick change but I don't think safety (in terms of Covid) will improve any time soon, so it's worth the effort.
ReplyDeletePlanned overs are a time saver! Not sure if this will help with your meal planning, but, I like to semi-prepare food in advance and freeze - like brown a package of ground meat and freeze it in smaller portions. That way, I can use it in a couple of different dishes depending on what I want to make - spaghetti sauce, or keema curry, or curry puffs, etc. Or, if I am cutting up an onion or a bell pepper and I don't need to use all of it in the dish I am making, I will freeze the rest to be used in another dish, later.
DeleteSounds like it all worked out great Bless! I didn't do my usual menu plan this week. We finished up leftovers from the holidays over the weekend and I'm getting ready to bake some fish for dinner now. I'm going to do a post with the rest of my plan after dinner.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think the meal plan options worked well, last week. I made French toast for brunch, today, and we'll have leftovers for dinner. I will need to take something out of the freezer to make for tomorrow, though! Baked fish sounds good, but, I don't have any fish, right now (except canned mackerel and tuna).
DeleteNo plan, except to learn how to use the compact air fryer that Santa brought me! Lunch was my favourite sandwich with mustard, turkey, cranberry sauce, leftover stuffing, lettuce and dressing.
ReplyDeleteOh, what a nice gift from Santa! Have fun with that! Your sandwich sounds good, but, I'll leave out the stuffing, if you don't mind! :)
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