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Good morning! Happy Friday! What a lovely week we have had. Thomas & I enjoyed a late lunch out. We had great hospital visits for Daisy and a really helpful GP appointment for me too. Overall things seem to be going well, and I can’t believe it is Friday already! I love meal planning and lately I have been really enjoying cooking from scratch a lot more.
Having absolutely minimal food waste is always important to me. I’m making things stretch even further at the moment because we still have so many house jobs to pay for. I am taking steps to make sure we are avoiding overspending on groceries. This week I’m keeping the budget low again, and using lots of Simply Cook recipes this week. *Why not sign up and grab yourself a box for £1? < This is a subscription service so be sure to cancel if you don’t want it to auto-renew.

Every week I sit down, for around 20 minutes, and I plan out a week of dinners. I look on the calendar, to see what engagements we have upcoming. Sometimes I follow up by having a look in the fridge & chest freezer to see what meat, vegetables and other ingredients we have that need using up. This really helps me avoid food waste and means that we can eat a variety of different dinners each week. While I’m doing my meal plan I make a loose plan of breakfast and lunches that we can eat too, although I’m not quite as rigid planning these. I mostly just make sure that we’ve got the right ingredients in so we have a nice variety of breakfasts and lunches. Lots of soups and nice breakfasts are on the menu at the moment as the weather is still bitter here.
I’ve been meal planning for more than 2 years. It is a great way to save money, for sure. As long as I plan dinners around Tom’s work shifts this works well for us and mostly keeps us away from the takeaways. We do love a cheeky Chinese from time to time still though!
In the past, I switched from shopping at Tesco to shopping at Aldi and saved over 30% and while this does work well it requires quite a bit of effort and so I’ve found myself back at Tesco this week.
Each week I invite other bloggers to link up their meal plans, to try and share recipes around with one another, inspire each other and hopefully drive a little bit of extra traffic too!
The rules of the Meal Planning Linky
Link back to Katykicker on your post or display my linky badge
Comment on this post
Visit other people if you would like to
What I will give you in return for linking up with The Meal Planning Linky
I will comment on all posts linked up
Pin your post on my Pinterest (vertical pins only)
Share your post on my Twitter – at least once every week
A link back to my favourite meal plan each week (Follow link)
Grab the Meal Planning Linky badge
How to link up with The Meal Planning Linky Week #108
Once your post is live all you need to do is hit the button that says “Click here to enter”. This takes you to the link-up page where you can add your post.
My favourite meal plan from last week: Meal plan from Mud Cakes and Wine!
The Meal Planning Linky Week #108
I’ve planned 7 dinners this week. We’re avoiding the takeaways as best we can, and doing well at the moment!
Grab yourself a £1 Simply Cook box!
I recently ordered myself a Simply Cook box (Paid for it myself but as I’m using a referral code here this section of this post is technically an AD just to be clear). You select 4 meals and get sent a little box with 3 spice, herb and stock blends plus a recipe card. Then you just buy the ingredients you need and you can make a fantastic dinner with ease. It’s a little like a Hello Fresh or Gousto box, but without the expense and you have to buy the fresh items still. However, for just £1 you can get 4 of these little kits to liven up mealtimes and get some inspiration. I’ve got a couple of boxes now so that next time I want to cook something a bit different I’ve got the inspiration already on hand! If you want to grab a box for £1 just *sign up to Simply Cook. This is a subscription service so be sure to cancel if you don’t want it to renew at £9.99 – I just set myself a reminder for a few days before the next box needed to be selected.
The meals for the Meal Planning Linky Week #108 are:
Slow cooker beef stroganoff with mashed potato
Chicken makhani with rice & naan (Simply Cook)
Shakshouka (Simply Cook)
Baked pasta with sausage & kale (Simply Cook)
Homemade pizza night (making pizza dough in the breadmaker)
Moroccan lamb burgers, homemade buns & airfryer chips
Slow cooker gammon with all the trimmings including airfryer roast potatoes, sage and onion stuffing, Yorkshires, onion gravy, air fryer parsnips and more. I’m really looking forward to this because we didn’t get around to having it last week.
If you’re looking for meal planning inspiration then be sure to read my meal planning tips. Also, check out my meal planning with mince post. I’ve also got a post about how to stretch a whole chicken.
Charlotte Zealey
Wednesday 29th of January 2020
I think this simply cook box sounds amazing you have some really nice sounding meals. I know the lamb burgers would go down so well in this house
katykicker
Friday 31st of January 2020
So flavoursome! x
Jayne @ Sticky Mud and Belly Laughs
Tuesday 28th of January 2020
You have some of my favourites on your meal plan this week Katy! The Moroccan lamb burgers sound amazing.
Thanks for hosting. x
katykicker
Wednesday 29th of January 2020
Thanks lovely! I love those lamb burgers in particular!
Kim Carberry
Monday 27th of January 2020
What a great week you had. I'm glad everything is going well. All of your Simply Cook meals sound so good. I really am going to have to give them a try. x
katykicker
Wednesday 29th of January 2020
Thanks love, I'm really enjoying them!
Paula @ Mummy Vs Work
Monday 27th of January 2020
Sounds like a delicious week of meals Katy, I might give a subscription box ago just to get my lot eating a few different meals!
katykicker
Wednesday 29th of January 2020
I have found that it really has inspired me to start cooking from scratch a lot more again, and it has made meal planning even easier on weeks when I am super busy.
Louise Fairweather
Sunday 26th of January 2020
Oh I would love to eat that pizza now! Sounds like a plan my boys would love.
katykicker
Wednesday 29th of January 2020
Thank you! x