Monday Meal Planning in the snow

I have been slacking off on the Monday meal planning recently but the threat (and subsequent arrival!) of the snow forced me to be a bit more organised. Given the choice between trekking through the snow to the supermarket accompanied by the Little Princess, or doing an online shop, I chose the latter - and thanks to the Sainsbury's delivery man making it through the snow this morning, I now have both a fully stocked fridge and a proper meal plan.

This week I am continuing my quest to cook more new recipes, re-visiting the speed cooking with one of the Jamie's 15 Minute Meals that I have already tried (20 minutes and 4 seconds to beat) and adding a few old favourites for those after work dinners when I can't be bothered spending a lot of time in the kitchen.

So, here is this week's plan

Tonight - Greek chicken with herby couscous and homemade tzatziki (from Jamie's 15 Minute Meals)
Tuesday - Teriyaki beef stir-fry with veg and noodles
Wednesday - Pasta with Lamb Ragu (from Nigellisima - this week's new recipe)
Thursday - Thai Red Prawn Curry with saffron rice
Friday - Chicken Fajitas (from Jamie's Ministry of Food - a real favourite in this house, thanks to Mrs M for reminding me!)
Saturday - still tbc
Sunday - a roast of some description, am thinking chicken at the moment...

Let's just hope I can stay being organised!

New Years Resolutions

Every year I have the same resolutions - lose some weight, exercise more, don't spend so much money on things we don't need, make more effort to keep the house tidy. To be fair, I do usually lose some weight (in the first part of the year anyway, when I've got a sunshine holiday to aim for), I exercise fairly regularly and I 'try' to do the other two things but usually don't succeed. So, this year I am going for a new approach of setting myself some mini goals along the way. These aren't going to be big, dramatic resolutions. They will just be a few little things that I'd like to achieve each month and will hopefully make me feel more positive about myself.

So, for January I would like to;

Cook Six New Recipes - I have got a shelf literally over-flowing with cookery books and one of my aims for this year is to widen my range of meals as we often find ourselves eating the same old favourites time and time again. So far, on day 6, I have only done one new recipe - Cajun Chicken, Smashed Sweet Potatoes and Fresh Corn Salsa (from Jamie's 15 Minute Meals) which we really enjoyed, so next week I will be adding at least one new thing into our meal plan.

Run 40K - Hopefully if I achieve this goal; I will be well on the way to getting back into running regularly again. So far I have done 9K which is a good start.

Create Four Scrapbook Pages - I love scrapbooking but since the Little Princess dropped her afternoon nap, it is one of those things that has fallen by the wayside a bit. I have a huge stack of lovely photos from last year, a cupboard full of fabulous materials (including birthday and Christmas presents which I am waiting to try out), a new scrapbook to fill and I just need to get on with putting our memories down on paper. So, I am aiming for one page a week this month - and hopefully, 52 pages in the year!

Start the Great Declutter - Unlike the other three resolutions, this one is a bit vague. We have a lot of projects that we'd like to do in the house this year and, to do that, we need to create more space. So this month I am going to start decluttering - just haven't decided what to tackle first!

And, on top of that, I'd like to lose 7lbs (if I ever buy some new scales) and blog more.... that should be enough to get going with.

Meal Planning Monday (on Tuesday!)

After a couple of weeks of spectacularly failing to meal plan (due to a combination of the Jubilee weekend and half-term), I am back on both my diet and my meal-planning mission this week. I am attempting to low-carb which is a new thing for me, the carb-addict, but hopefully it will give the diet a boost.

Yesterday we spent the day dodging the showers / incessant drizzle at Legoland with the kids, taking advantage of an inset day at the end of half-term. Despite the weather, we actually had a fabulous day - both kids were happy all day and we enjoyed ourselves even more because of that. It was just lovely to have a day without a single tantrum / drama queen moment from either of them.

So, on to the meal-planning...

Monday - Fishcakes and caesar salad (all shop-bought due to post-Legoland tiredness)
Tuesday - Tray-roasted salmon with green beans, cherry tomatoes, anchovies and olives (one of our favourite Jamie Oliver recipes)
Wednesday - Lamb Rogan Josh with cauliflower rice
Thursday - Steak, with potato wedges for the Husband and a pile of veggies for me
Friday - Halloumi, chorizo and pepper kebabs with salad
Saturday - Out for a meal for our 9th wedding anniversary (how did THAT happen?)
Sunday - Roast dinner - either at home or the pub for Father's Day.

I think it sounds like a good week - let's just hope I stick to it!

Thanks, as always, to Mrs M for the link...

Hangover Munchies

Last night the combination of free-flowing Prosecco (and free-flowing Chardonnay once the copious supply of Prosecco ran out) and my lack of willpower when faced with waitresses topping up my glass got the better of me...  I'd like to claim I wasn't drunk but, in reality, I probably had one or two (or three) glasses of wine more than I should have had - due to the enthusiastic glass-filling I don't actually know how much I had.

So today I have the hangover munchies - I've been attempting to stick to a relatively low-carb diet this week (lots of salad, protein and no bread) but my hangover is demanding bread. And it is demanding it so loudly that it makes my head hurt. Not only did I succumb to the temptation of the mid-morning bacon sandwich run, I then followed it up with a brie and cranberry panini. And yes, it was good, but I am so going to regret it when I step on the scales next week..

I've also been thinking about my favourite hangover foods - a bacon and fried egg sandwich with a big dollop of tomato ketchup, chips covered in melted cheese, sea salt and balsamic vinegar Kettle Chips, cheese and crisp sandwiches (yes, I know that one is weird), cheesy mashed potato, cheesy pasta... spotting a theme here anyone?

Of course, there is one other thing that will make me feel better, more Prosecco - roll on wine o clock!

Meal Planning Monday

Last week was another successful week for my meal planning as I managed to stick to the plan from Monday to Friday... we did succumb to the temptation of a trip to the local chippy on Saturday after a day out, and I was out for a meal last night, but as I'd deliberately left the weekend free of planned meals, that was fine.

This week I have been flicking through my cookery books and have planned a couple of new recipes. I'm also working on getting a greater balance of foods in our meals - so the plan is to have a chicken based meal, a red-meat based meal, a vegetarian meal and a fish/seafood meal each week. I'm also trying to vary the carbs that I serve with them a bit more - some weeks we seem to eat a lot of rice. In addition, I'm trying to do one batch-cooked meal a week (this week it is the lemon chicken stew) and one meal from the freezer (chilli con carne) to save a bit of time and money.

Tonight - Lemon chicken stew, mashed potato and peas
Tuesday - Spaghetti with cod in chilli, garlic and white wine sauce (new recipe)
Wednesday - Stuffed tomato tortillas (new recipe)
Thursday - Chilli con carne with rice
Friday - Cheese fondue (not great for the diet, but some friends visited from Switzerland recently and bought us a cheese fondue kit as a gift and it needs eating up)
Saturday - TBC (probably a take-away in front of the Champions League Final on the telly)
Sunday - Roast chicken with all the trimmings

I am really looking forward to some warmer weather (aren't we all?) as I feel like I am still cooking all our favourite winter meals and I'd love to try out a few lighter options. Rainy days just don't inspire me to eat salad...

Thanks, as always, to Mrs M for the link.

That last 10lbs....

Allegedly, summer is on its way, and I'm back on the diet / healthy eating plan on a mission to lose the 10lbs that all those glossy magazines say that we should lose before donning our bikinis and hitting the beach. Coincidentally, having lost 3 stone over the last 18 months, that 10lbs is 'all' I need to lose to get to my goal weight.

My problem is that I seem to have hit a plateau / mental block / lost my motivation (call it what you want!) and I just don't seem to be able to shift them. I know exactly what the problem is - it is my inability to resist the lure of the biscuit tin, or to stop picking at the kids' leftovers, or having an extra couple of glasses of wine without thinking about the calories - but, however hard I try, I just can't stop myself doing it. And, if I do succumb to the temptation for that 'one biscuit', it seems to trigger a sugar binge which inevitably leads to another biscuit, a bar of chocolate on the way home from work, something sweet for dessert.... and half of the time, I'm not even hungry.

So, this week's plan is to cut out the excess sugar consumption in the hope that it will have a positive effect on my diet. No biscuits, no proper chocolate, no cakes... it is time to go cold turkey. To be honest, working in what a colleague described last week as 'an office full of feeders' I'm not holding out a huge amount of hope that I'll stick to it until even the weekend, but it has got to be worth a try.

Watch this space....

Monday again already?

Last week I stuck to my menu plan which, for me, is a real achievement. My usual approach is to start the week with lots of good intentions and then resort to the prepared meals aisle in Waitrose as the reality of juggling two kids, the long school run, a part-time job, a diet and exercise regime and keeping the house in a state where we don't risk life and limb picking our way though the discarded Lego catches up with me. Last week I actually found that having a plan really helped - I felt more in control and not having to think about what we were eating made my evenings commute feel much more chilled.

So, this week I am doing it all over again. I haven't planned as far as the weekend yet because I'm not sure what our plans are, but five days of planning is a good start.

Monday - Chinese beef with noodles and vegetables (using up the remnants of yesterday's roast)
Tuesday - Pasta Puttanesca (this week's new recipe)
Wednesday - Green chilli with tortilla wraps and salad
Thursday - Fishcakes and caesar salad
Friday - Chickpea and chorizo stew with bulgar wheat

Friday's stew is part of my plans to make Friday night food a bit more of an event in our house. Jedi Boy has a swimming lesson on a Friday evening which The Husband takes him to, which gives me half an hour of peace on my return from work to prepare an evening meal before being thrust into the bedtime routine. Having that time to relax and unwind in the kitchen is something I really enjoy and I plan to make more effort on Fridays from now on.

Thanks to Mrs M for the inspiration!