One Month Later ... New Freezer Inventory

 

My previous freezer inventory worked out really well and menu planning from it has really helped me to use the contents of the freezer up logically and regularly.

But by the time we went away on holiday the inventory looked like this!!

I struggled to make head or tail of it, so I decided that as soon as I got back I would take  everything out of all three drawers and see exactly what I had left.  Then hopefully, put everything back a lot more logically and in categories that made sense.  I thought I had done it only a couple of weeks ago but looking back on the last freezer inventory post, it was almost exactly one month ago.

Gosh, it shows how much food I had jammed in the drawers that I have still got this much left ... mind you I really have made a lot of space as it is all easily accessible now, which is a huge relief.

I was very nearly a bad blogger as I forgot to take a photo while everything was laid out on the worktop.  But I realised just in time and took this one above ...

... and then this photo of the top drawer before I slid it back into the cleaned out freezer.

As I said earlier I decided to categorise the drawers more logically, so this one is the bread style items and the bits for making my compost heap jelly along with some other little homemade bits and pieces.  Putting my new loaf straight into the freezer while it's nice and fresh means that I can take a single slice out each day for my morning toast, or take out two slices for a sandwich, and not waste any of it.

The middle drawer is now the vegetable drawer.  I was surprised at how many bags of various veggies I had, but really pleased too.  Some are bought bags from the supermarket and some in the zip lock bags are homegrown, or things like fresh onions chopped ready to be used in various dishes.

The bottom drawer, which is the smallest due to having the freezer motor behind it, contains packet foods bought from the shops.  Having this ratio, more veggies in the middle drawer and then less bought 'ready made' things in the small drawer is the way I want to eat from now on.

I was shocked to find that I still had these two 'rhubarb bases' buried amongst all the frozen stuff.  My priority this week is to make some crumble topping and actually eat them as I need to make space for this years rhubarb in the freezer.

Doing a freezer inventory is something that I usually put off and put off, but this time I actually just got stuck into doing it without thinking too much about it, and and had it done and dusted in less than an hour.

My new, much neater, freezer inventory which is now on the side of the fridge freezer ready for me to menu plan from ... and I've promised myself that I will neatly tick off each thing as I use it.  😁

Sue xx

Menus ... and Holidays

 

My menu planning from the freezer is going really well, with lots of things now being used up nicely and giving me back some space in there.   Here is last weeks menu, and as you can see all but one of the meals was eaten as planned, and all of them contained at least something from the freezer.

This weeks menu looks very different.

That's because we are off to this magnificent looking castle for our holidays.

It's a Warner Leisure Hotel called Studley Castle Hotel and it's in Warwickshire.  This will be our third holiday with them all in different venues.  We stayed at Alvaston Hall in Cheshire back in September 2022 and then Holme Lacey House in Hereford in May 2023.  Hopefully this holiday will be just as fantastic as they were, although none will ever be as memorable as the 2022 one. ❤

Alan wants it to be our mission to visit them all, we'll have to see about that.  😄

Anyway knowing that we would be away all week there really was minimal shopping to be done, so it was a few real necessities for me and Ginger, bananas for the journey, and a couple of boxes of fish fillets to restock the freezer ever so slightly.

The first thing that I got organised was my holiday reading, and I decided to take these two books off my 'to be read' pile.  Looking at the titles I do hope I don't become the Missing Wife ... or have to Walk Home!!  😁

Don't worry about Ginger, he and the houses are going to be in the capable hands of Jason and Tash, who are holidaying in our home as a change from living as they do, in the holiday capital of the North West ... Blackpool.

There will still be posts each day next week, as I have been a busy bee double blogging all week to give  you something to peruse in my absence, although I may not be answering comments, sorry.  I will tell you all about our holiday when we return next week, unless you are on Instagram then there may be a few little reels and posts.

Sue xx

 

My Back to Basics plan is going quite well.  

True I have spent a bit more than I meant to already this month, and on things that I really didn't need.  But just having the plan on the back of my mind is making me do so much better.

It's oh so easy to let things slide isn't it, you start by not always writing shopping lists or menu plans, and maybe eating slightly too much because you have cooked too much, and then not saving the leftovers for the start of another meal.  So I have been thinking a bit more about things this week, and using my purposeful leftovers.  The remaining two portions of baked beans after this breakfast the other day were incorporated into lunches.

The top photo simply adding two hash browns from the freezer to the plate.

Then a nice baked potato with the final pot of beans and a sprinkle of cheese.

While I have been a bit remiss about making out shopping lists, well I only needed two items so I decided not to write them down, even if I did come away with a couple more ... I have been good about following the menu plan.  

As you can see from this photo taken at the end of last week, I ate all bar two days meals directly off the menu plan.

So they were added straight to the top of the next menu plan.

The burger was delicious, with added onion, homegrown tomatoes and cheese.

And the 'Wrap Pizza' was delicious and very satisfying.  It made good use of a small tub of pasta sauce and half of a small tub of Mediterranean vegetables from the freezer

I switched around the fish fillets and new potatoes instead of the pie, that was destined for last night as it was just far too hot for pie and gravy, but apart from that I have been just as good at following my plan this past week.  

Will I make the soup tomorrow ... perhaps not for the same reason, but the beauty of a menu plan is that it gives you ideas when you just cannot think straight at the end of a long and perhaps busy day.  It doesn't have to be written in stone and rigidly adhered to, and sometimes it can simply be beans on toast again.  😁

Sue xx

Twenty Five Pounds ... and Shopping from Home Challenge - Part One

Twenty five pounds, that's what in my head I am allocating myself for each week of this year for my shopping.  It includes all my food, toiletry items and cleaning products.  There are a few things that have fallen outside this budget, such as Gingers food which I buy once a month from 'Untamed' and my 'smol' washing capsules that I buy once every three or so months.  But by and large this is my budget and one that because of having a massive amount of food already in my food cupboard, I have been able to stick to really well.

So well in fact that I am not finding this to be particularly 'challenging' at all.  Don't forget I have been setting myself various challenges for years now and it was only quite recently that I stopped my challenge blog Challenging Myself ... I just checked and it was last April.

Well at the end of this April I decided to go on the Sainsbury's online shopping website and price up what food I would be able to buy for my full £25 per week budget ... and challenge myself to shop my cupboards instead of spending any money at all, and live on just that food for a full week.  Unfortunately, I couldn't do it straight away and I didn't have the time to re-check all the prices this week, but I am happy to go with the figures that I got on 22nd April. 

(Actually I have just checked and my shopping basket is still there ... and 4p cheaper, the potatoes have gone down in price!!)

Below is my online shopping basket.

I decided to include a jar of coffee in my £25 budget as that is a larger purchase but I had given myself permission to use salt, pepper, oil and any of the herbs and spices from my drawer.  With the total of this 'online shop' only coming to £24.52 I decided to spend some of the change on a couple of bananas and a carrot.  

This brought my total to £24.95.

The Home Shopping

Although I had shopped for some of the cheaper end items in my online shop I was not concerned about just using what I actually had in the cupboard.  So for instance 'Stamford St.' baked beans have been replaced with my Heinz.  This sort of gets balanced out by me using what I already had open from my cupboards and the fridge ... half a jar of mayo, 3/4 of a loaf of bread for instance instead of a new item. 

 I wasn't being pedantic about anything.

Once I had the food out on the worktop I could start to properly plan my meals.  I had a loose meal plan in my head when I chose my shopping but it was just that 'loose'.  For instance I knew I would have a curry, a pasta dish ... and I had been fancying a Shepherdess Pie for a while.

The Menu Plan

The menu plan wasn't written in stone but more of something to aim for.  Obviously all the meals could be inter-changeable as could the days.  It's no good waking up to scrambled eggs on the menu when you desperately fancying some peanut butter.  😄  

I'll be back soon with some photos of the meals that I actually make.

Sue xx

Pizza ... and a Use It Up Week

 

I want this to be a bit of a 'use it up' week.  

Getting all the bits and bobs out of the fridge and freezer and turning them into meals, so the menu plan for this week had to fit this idea.  The first stop yesterday was to use the last of the Mediterranean veggies from the fridge, and the garlic naans that have sat in the little basket drawer for far too long.

In principal the idea worked really well the naans were lovely and tasty in their own right and the veggies were just enough to pile onto the two naan breads with a good scattering of dairy-free cheese.

Just as tasty looking when they came out of the oven.

In practice however, I found this too stodgy for me.  I'll try it again in the future but perhaps switching back to pitta breads or even just a thin wrap in place of a dough base.  I couldn't eat it all though, so I cut away the edges of both pizzas and just ate the middles.  The birds had no objection to the dried and whizzed up crumbs made from the edges that I put out on the bird table this morning. 😄

For a change I have done a three meal a day menu plan for this week, just for the five days as is the norm now.  This is working out really well, and having two 'spare days' it gives me the opportunity to add other meals in the middle if I don't fancy what I have written down on the day, or use up leftovers from previous days on the other two days of the week.

Do you menu plan, or happily wing it. 

I have had a couple of missing weeks of menu plans this year, the weeks when I simply do not have the brainpower or the inclination to stand in front of the cupboard and think, let alone write things down on paper.

Sue xx

TEDx ... and Menu Planning for Five Days

 

I don't know why the dogs were so interested in Chris Van Tulleken giving a TEDx Talk all about Ultra Processed Food ... but they were.  

https://youtu.be/6DAbx5vkslo?si=8ign--JSgxFBYSRq

It's here if you want to see it for yourself, it's very interesting ... although Ginger the cat obviously didn't think so.  😄

Anyway I was originally coming on here to show this weeks menu plan.  It's a very simple plan this week, my main aim was to get the large tub of homemade vegetable stew out of the freezer, using it once as it is and again as a filling inside the two 'pie lids' that I have frozen.  After all a pie lid can be rolled a little thinner and turned into a pasty in the blink of an eye.  😀

 I've decided that having a five day menu plan is a better idea for me as something nearly always comes up that means I have to miss one of the days midweek, and it's good to have a couple of 'free' days to be able to move things to if necessary or to be able to eat leftovers on.

I wrote the freezer inventory out again to update it as there were so many crossings out on the original and a couple of things had been added.  As you will notice from yesterday's post this new one is already out of date as I haven't added the pots of tomatoey sauce that I made over the weekend.

There now they have been added.

Now that it's bang up to date I just have to carry on with it and try not to let it be ignored.  It is a useful thing to do as it saves me rummaging through all the drawers to find things when I need  them.  I'm also enjoying having a little bit of space in the freezer at last, and it means that I can start to batch cook things soon.  I ate the Mac n' Cheese ready meal for my tea the other day, it was okay but not brilliant and the list of ingredients was not good, I can make much better myself with a bit of thought.  

Maybe I should join the animals and re-watch the Chris VT talk again to keep me on the straight and narrow.  😀

Sue xx

The Freezer Inventory ... and the Furry Gang

 

I got back with the shopping the other day and decided that while I was in a 'foody mood' I would finally get around to doing a freezer inventory.  

I had been meaning to do it right at the start of the year, but the freezer was so packed full of extra things pushed in there after Christmas that it was simply off-putting.  Now that the drawers could actually be pulled out without too much of a struggle it seemed a good time to do it.

As usual there was more than I thought ... and it was nice to see a few old friends.  😄

It didn't take me long to do, and straight away I could see that menu planning from it over the next couple of weeks will bring it all down to a much more sensible and organisable level.  I want to be able to have a drawer for vegetables, a drawer for meal components and another drawer with a loaf of bread and any miscellaneous items in.

Writing this weeks menu out was a doddle with my inventory next to me, the little red asterisks are the items from the freezer, so now I know exactly what I will be having each evening ... and exactly where I can find it.

And the furry gang slept through it all.

Sue xx