You know when you open your freezer and you see a whole lot of food but you can’t remember all the things that are in there and you can’t be bothered to check? Well, to be honest, that happens here sometimes as well. I’m ashamed. I really do hate food waste and I want to do something about it.
So what I have done is to clear the freezer, to reveal a whole host of food that I don’t even remember buying. With all the food I discovered and with all my garden produce (only tomatoes and courgettes now) and also food in the cupboards, I reckon I can manage without any food shopping for the next 2 weeks.
I always find that some of the nicest foods I make are from leftover ingredients!
Hurray! I can report that I have managed this for one week so far. You might be thinking I will certainly need to go buy at least milk and bread but no! I made my own bread from ingredients in the cupboard and we always buy and use long life milk which is already in the cupboard.
Some of the meals were repeated throughout the week because we had a lot and in our family, we don’t mind that.
So these are the meals we had:
Sunday: Roast Chicken Dinner with potatoes, broccoli, carrots
Monday: Egg and chicken fried rice using chicken from Sunday along with frozen peas and sweetcorn
Tuesday: Oven cooked chicken and chips
Wednesday: Vegetable soup and homemade bread
Thursday: lentil curry with rice
Friday: Vegetable soup and homemade bread
So far we still have left in the freezer, chicken breasts, pieces of boneless fish, frozen courgettes and carrots which we have cut into big chunks ready to be put into a soup. The cupboards are also stocked with cans and bottles of ingredients such as kidney beans, chickpeas, and sauces.
I am confident that I can pull off another week of meals all from what we already have in. In fact, I am thinking that we may even be able to do two more! We found enough fruits to make at least 5 fruit smoothies, so we should be able to do without buying fresh fruits too.
Since I have started linking up with Katy, I have learned so many positives about meal planning that I could never go back!
Have you ever tried this? Any top tips to share with us? Please use the comment box below.
Your soup looks amazing, this is the same here we are about to clear down the freezer of the couple of fish fingers in a packet and the random things we have. as i need to sort out our food waste too
I’m avoiding the shops at the moment but it’s impressive not to need to buy anything at all!
Nice one… Meals sound good too.
Tx
Two more weeks would be fantastic! At the moment we are using up lots of bits we have in as well, I’m really enjoying the challenge. We spent £20-30 less this week (and next week as I’ve done the shop already!) and I’m really pleased x
It is certainly doable! With being away for three days this week with traveling and filming, we still have so much food that we haven’t used.
I have good intentions of having a shopping free week but it never happens. I have stopped buying for the freezer though. I have so much in it. I love the sound of the soup. Perfect for this time of year x