Meal plan time!

Best laid plans to update this blog regularly and then my laptop broke down and needed to be repaired. It wasn't budgeted for (nor was the cost of getting the husbands license renewed) so I was without a computer and had to wait for a few weeks before getting it repaired. But it was fixed this week and I'm back to posting my meal plans again.

I did stick mostly to my meal plan for the last few weeks but writing it out by hand sucked. Typing out my meal plan and shopping list is so much easier and neater. Plus, it's all organised by category and only takes me a few minutes to complete.

• Sandwiches - Ham and tomato toasty for the husband and tuna salad for me. (We have a lunch date and the days we eat lunch out I like to plan a light meal)
• Chickpea burgers 
• Rice paper rolls
• Oven baked fish and salad
• Pork chops, baked potato and steamed veg
• Rissoles, mash and veg
• Curried sausages and brown rice

The pork chops and fish are already in the freezer. Chickpea burgers show up pretty often on my meal plans but to be honest, they're usually the first thing dropped off the meal plan if we decide to eat out or have a lazy dinner because the bread rolls will go in the husbands lunch and the salad will easily get used up in other meals. Plus a can of chickpeas lasts forever in the pantry.

And the curried sausages is purely a craving. I was talking to mum on the phone the other day while she was cooking it. Instant craving! I've made curry recently in the last few weeks in the form of katsu chicken curry and chicken singapore noodles but I really feel like mums recipe for curried sausages. Plus it's cheap and super easy to make. (Although mum would never have served it over brown rice or veggies other than onions and carrots in the sauce)

Meal planning

I've made meal plans for a few years now. But every now and then I get side tracked, either I get stuck in a rut and I'm just making the same few dishes over and over again. Or I have the best intentions and buy all the ingredients for the meals I've planned.....then wind up eating out or dinners that consist mostly of toast. Scrambled eggs on toast, baked beans and toast or peanut butter toast.

I need to get back into the habit of cooking from the meal plan, so I'm posting it here for a bit of accountability. So here it goes, seven dinners for the week. Not necessarily in the order I'll cook them, I usually swap nights around here and then to fit in with our schedule for the week.

• Meatball Risotto with a side salad - loosely based off this recipe, except I make my own meatballs instead of using Italian sausage. http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/27634/tomato+and+meatball+risotto
• Left over Risotto - I'm not a huge fan of leftovers but this makes a big dish and it tastes even better the next day
• Pork chops, mashed potatoes and steamed beans, broccoli and carrots
• Oven baked fish and homemade chips with a salad
• Chickpea burgers - based off this recipe, except I cut the eggs down to just one egg white and use hardly any breadcrumbs http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/23438/chickpea+and+vegie+burgers
• Roast chicken with roasted veggies and steamed beans
• Rice paper rolls using the leftover roast chicken 

It's a bit of a mix, a few meat and three veg type meals (boring but simple) one vegetarian meal and no side dishes of toast!