Student Homemaker

While I’m shopping at Sainsbury’s, I’m playing ‘the Basics game’ - only buy Basics range or offer items. While I’ll be relaxing that rule, here’s how to menu plan with these in mind.

I start with the offer items. Note down those you want for meals/extras against days of the week you plan to eat them. Stop when you have reached the end of offer items.

Then, look at the days you don’t have anything down for. Trawl through the Basics range (a longer search than offer items, it seems), picking a meal for each slot left.

Finally, review what you need to have fro extras - snacks, lunchboxes, and use Basics/offers to fill these spaces in much the same way.

As one last point, as a student, cooking for one is enevitable sometimes. So when I cook for one from a 2 pack/ 4 pack, I plan that dish to appear again, same time next week. This also gives me less slots to fill next time, and hence less money spent.

Monday: 7/4/08

Today went better in terms of following this - maybe I’m getting the hang of it!

Got up late, so had a quick breakfast of fruit and a museli biscuit bar

Wanted to eat the leftover couscous for lunch, so made that into my salad with lancashire cheese, and then packed as many items into my box as possible.  Those that fit are listed in the table below.

Pulled a mystery meat out of the freezer for dinner.  Was Pork, there’s a lot of that in our freezer.  We pan fried that in a bit of tomato sauce and served with BP’s leftover garlic bread.

Didn’t eat much more after that.  I’m dealing with the stress of being back at the Uni department - trying to shake it off.  Only 5 more weeks to go, including this one!

So - recap:
Daily servings of fruit and veg: 3 (Doing better)
Daily servings of dairy: 2
Daily servings of high-fibre: 4, without fruit/veg: 1
Weekly servings so far fish: 2
Weekly servings so far high-iron:4

Other news - I have pictures coming hopefully today