Repriced at the end of April 2024. You will need £26.34 at the checkout, with £20.03 worth of food used during the week, or £1.43 pppd

This is our Seventh Meal Plan. As for all the others, it shows 3 meals a day, plus some cakey extras to fill any gaps, for 7 days, for 2 adults. The same caveat applies to change the meals around to suit yourself, combine the shopping list of ingredients in any other way that suits you, add extra ingredients that you may have, just use one of the recipes, leave out anything you don’t like or need or change anything else that you see fit.

You and the 2nd person you are feeding may not need all the calories a day. Only you know what you need, I will leave this part of it to you to adjust. Many of the recipes are freezable, so if you have the facilities, you could freeze the extra, or carry the ingredients forward to the following week.

If you do use anything from here, I would love it if you let me know how you get on.

You will need to be accurate with your measuring with some ingredients, and can be more free-handed with others.

Prep for the week

• The soups can be made when you have a moment and stored in the fridge or freezer
• The scones can be made in advance, but store the in the freezer as they stale quickly
• Make the wraps in one go and store in the freezer, wrapped well
• All the main meals can be made in advance this week if you want to, except the dumplings, I’m not sure they would work. Store in the fridge or freezer

What will freeze this week

• Any of the soups will freeze well
• Wraps will freeze, but must be packaged well or they will dry out
• The scones will freeze, and should be before they go stale
• All the main meals can be made and frozen this week, except the dumplings, I’m not sure they would work.

 

	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
day 1	oats with milk, 100g oats & 100ml milk per person	lentil and veg soup	cottage pie
day 2	pancakes, 100g mixed veg	mixed veg soup, bacon	scone based pizza
day 3	oats with milk, 100g oats & 100ml milk per person	leftover scone pizza	lasagna
day 4	plain pancakes, jam, soft cheese	lentil and veg soup	Casserole of bacon, veg, toms, soft cheese
day 5	oats with milk, 100g oats & 100ml milk per person	mixed veg soup, bacon	spaghetti bolognese
day 6	plain pancakes, bacon	veg pancake flatbreads	lentil dumplings stuffed with bacon, tom sauce
day 7	oats with milk, 100g oats & 100ml milk per person	veg pancake flatbreads	oaty peach crumble, custard
Cakes & Bakes
oaty biscuits, plain scones with jam & soft cheese, the remaining half of the oaty peach crumble, pancakes & jam, pancakes or flatbread with sauted veg

Day 1. Make the breakfast oats with 100g oats and 100ml milk for each person. Add water to make it as thick or as runny as you like it. Add sugar if you want it.

Using one third of the ragu mixture, place in an ovenproof dish. Make up half the pack of dried mashed potato following the instructions on the packet, adding a knob of butter if you have any.

• If you have any, and want to use them, use fresh potatoes to make the mash. Or you could use a tin of potatoes and mash those, or maybe slice them, layer them on top, with some butter if you have any, or drizzle over a little oil, just a tsp.
• There are enough carrots left so that you could boil and mash some carrot to add to the mash topping if you like.
• You could also fry some onion until crispy and put those on top as well for some extra flavour and crunch.

Meal plan 7 has some veg available that you could use here to serve with the cottage pie.

Day 2. The breakfast pancakes this morning have a few vegetables in them. Make them in the same way as the link for the pancakes on Day 4, omitting the jam and soft cheese on Day 4, and the raisins in the link as we don’t have raisins. Mix the vegetables into the batter, season with salt and pepper, and maybe some mustard if you have any, and fry in whatever fat you have available. Leftover beff or chicken fat will add delicious flavour.

If you need to make the pancakes in advance, they reheat very well, you could even use the toaster!

This is a lunchtime soup used on 2 days on this meal plan

• 200g onion, chopped
• 200g white cabbage
• 200g carrots
• 100g spaghetti
• 100g red lentils
• 200g bacon
• Chop the carrots into dice, peel them if you like, or just give them a good scrub.
• Chop the cabbage up small.
• Chop the bacon up into small pieces.
• Saute all the veg together with the bacon until soft. You may need to add a little oil, don’t let the mix stick
• Add the red lentils and about a pint of water.
• Simmer for 10 minutes.
• Add a bay leaf if you have one (remember to remove it if you whizz the soup)
• Break up the pasta into small pieces and add to the soup.
• Simmer for a further 10 minutes until the pasta is done. Add salt and pepper to your taste.
• Add more water if it needs it.
• If you like smooth soup, you could whizz it with a hand blender, or maybe just half of it. Or put a stick blender in the pan and whizz for a few seconds to semi-puree it.

Use half for lunch on day 2, and the remaining half on day 5. You will need more calories than this for lunch, so have something else with it. A flatbread, or one of the cakey extras. The flatbreads will stay soft enough to be carried in a packed lunch. Keep them well wrapped.

Day 4. Using 100g flour per person, make pancakes as shown in the link. You can make flat crepe type ones, or thicker American type ones. Serve each portion with a tblsp jam and 25g soft cheese.

Day 5. Today, we are using another third of the ragu mixture you made earlier, plus some spaghetti to make a fast, easy and delicious dinner.

one third of ragu mixture
160g spaghetti
Boil the spaghetti for about 10 minutes, or until as soft as you like it, add half a tsp of salt to the boiling water for a little extra flavour. Drain well. Meanwhile, heat the ragu sauce.

Tip the drained spaghetti into the ragu, mix well and serve immediately. That’s it, quick, easy and delicious.

• If you have any, a crispy green salad goes wonderfully with this
• or any green vegetable
• or, of course, garlic bread.
• If you are following meal plan 7, there are enough carrots left over to make a carrot ribbon salad.
• If you have any, a sprinkle of cheese on top is a lovely addition. Parmesan is the classic, grana padano is very similar but cheaper, or you can always use a bit of good old cheddar

Day 6. Make pancakes as Day 4, omitting jam and cheese, adding 40g bacon per person. Chop the bacon into small pieces and crisp up in the pan after making the pancakes. Or crisp up the bacon first and either add it to the pancake batter, or set aside. Use the bacon fat to fry the pancakes in.

When making the flatbreads for Day 6, mix 100g flour with enough water to make a bread dough type consistency. Cover and leave for at least a couple of hours. Then follow the cooking method in the link. You can mix up enough for all the flatbreads for the week in 1 go, the dough will sit happily, covered, in the fridge until you need it. The flatbreads will stay soft for a day, so can be done the day before to be used at lunchtime. Keep them covered at all times, or they will dry out. Saute a selection of whatever veg you still have available and serve on top of the warn flatbread. Or if in a packed lunch, wrap the flatbread and vegetables separately.  Make sure to season the veg well so they are tasty.

When making the dumplings for dinner, follow the recipe link, but use 90g lentils, not 100g, we don’t have enough left here

Bakes. When making the oaty biscuits, we don’t have enough here to use 200g of everything, use 120g instead

The link to the scones recipe is a raisin one, we don’t have any raisins in this plan, so just leave those out. Or if you have any in the cupboard, and want to use them, do, of course, feel free

Make the peach crumble using the apple crumble recipe link, substituting the peaches in a tin for the apples. Serve with the custard, saving half for the crumble leftovers if you want to.

As usual, use the Cakes and Bakes at any point during the week when you need them, as an extra at lunch, a pudding after dinner, for supper, or any other hungry moment. Or if you and the 2nd person you are feeding don’t need this many calories, healthwise, these would be the best things to leave out.

Shopping List for the week

priced 22nd April 2024 at Asda	you will need	left at the end of the week	Apr-24
2kg carrots, Asda SmartPrice (SP)	1.25kg	750g, 45p	£1.20
2kg onions, Asda SmartPrice (SP)	1.4kg	600g, 59p	£1.98
1.2kg white cabbage	800g	400g, 32p	£0.96
value plain soft cheese, 200g	175g	25g, 16p	£1.30
2.27 litres / 4 pints milk	1200ml	1070ml, 68p	£1.45
bacon, 2 x 300g		100g, 48p	£2.90
20% fat 600g beef mince		100g, 75p	£4.50
peach slices			£0.34
strawberry jam			£0.89
Asda veg oil, 1 litre	500ml	500ml, 92p	£1.85
chopped toms, x 3			£1.65
180g instant mash (or use fresh potatoes, you will need about 500g)	90g	half the pack, 50p	£1.00
red lentils, 500g			£1.50
value spaghetti, 500g	360g	140g, 21p	£0.75
tin custard			£0.58
oats, 1kg			£0.90
white flour, 1.5kg x 2	2.22kg	780g, 36p	£1.40
sugar, 1kg	250g	750g, 89p	£1.19
Total	£20.03	£6.31	£26.34
per person, per day	£1.43
Nutrition
2000 plus 2500 calories per day
12% protein, 22% fat, 64% carbs, 25g fibre pppd
Govt. recommendations 10-35% protein, 20-35% fat, 45-65% carb, 25g fibre pppd
Current recommendations have moved from 5 a Day for fruit & veg, to 7 a Day.
This plan has, per person, a total of 17 portions of red, 55 orange, 11 green and 26 white. No purple. This gives a total of almost 8 portions of fruit and veg a day