Welcome to another instalment of what we planned to eat this week. Just keeping a log of it has helped to keep us accountable. We have been cutting down on food waste and we have made savings as a result. If you haven’t started meal planning yet, it’s not too late. We are sure you will enjoy the process.
The Chicken Thighs
We don’t cook much red meat at home so we use up a lot of chicken. Since we discovered that the boneless chicken thigh is sold much cheaper than the chicken breasts in the supermarket, we have been telling anyone who would listen.
Apart from being cheaper, the boneless chicken thighs are also more flavoursome. This was one of the tips we shared this week on the #shopsmartsavemoney Channel 5 programme. People have asked us more about this than any other tip or information we’ve shared. If you click on the link, you should be able to watch the first episode.
The Plan for This Week
As a result of spending the better part of 3 days away from home either filming or travelling for filming this week, we bought a box of 10 boneless chicken thighs and set to work preparing it for several dishes. We love being creative with meat and here is what resulted:
- Fried chicken and spicy potato wedges (see my post on making your own takeaway style meals)
- Sweet and sour chicken with rice and salad
- Pasta, tuna and sweetcorn
- Egg fried rice (with leftover fried chicken)
- Rice and peas with lentil curry
- Free pizza from Dominoes (using the Wuntu app)
- Oven chips and fish fingers
Do you notice that a lot of what we use features in more than one dish? This makes it so much easier, as once we plan the dishes, we only need to buy the ingredients for those.
Any food left over after dinner is dished up after being properly cooled. They are then frozen for some time in the near future when we need a meal or two for lunch or dinner. You are sometimes surprised to find that you can shop from your freezer for the meals you need.
If more families did this we could cut down on food waste. And this would see us doing so much better for the world.
For the days we were away, we did some batch cooking of the dishes and then one they were cooled, we packaged them and refrigerated them so each person could have what they wanted to have. They are easy to just microwave because they are packaged in microwave safe containers.
This week, we are sharing this linked post with Katy and The Organised Life Project.
Well, back to the planning for next week.
Awesome ideas. And a free pizza!
Most of our leftovers get eaten by Himself for his lunch the next day. I get to freeze hardly any of them. That man loves leftovers! I think it’s because he doesn’t have to decide what to have and then make it, it’s all there ready and just needs heating up. But it’s scary how much stuff could get thrown away if we weren’t careful!
Tx
Ps… Filming sounds exciting!
I have started using chicken thighs recently. So much cheaper!
We eat a lot of chicken here too so that is handy to know about the chicken thighs.
All your meals sound fab especially the free Domino’s. We only have their pizza as an extra special treat as they can be so expensive x
Sounds like you’ve made some delicious meals. I love chicken – sadly my daughter is allergic.