Saving money: Menu Planning

Menu planning is something we have been doing for years, especially once I realised that without a weekly plan we not only spent a lot more money by constantly going food shopping, we also were less stressed.

I usually do my menu plan on a weekly basis, and base my grocery list on this. I firstly look at what we have in the fridge or freezer, and plan to use these first. For example, we had a BBQ over the weekend, and for some reason we have a few sticks of cabana left in the fridge, as well as some salami - I will use this for our "Bits and pieces pasta" dish (see recipe below). I also look at what our family is doing, for example if someone is not going to be home until later I would plan to cook something that is easy to reheat.

Our menu this week looks like this:

Monday - Meatless lasagne (I can't believe it's not meat lasagne) with salad
Tuesday - Bits and Pieces Pasta
Wednesday - Tuna Pasta bake
Thursday - Curried sausages, mashed potato & vegies
Friday - Crumbed chicken & homemade chips with garlic aoili
Sat - Takeaway
Sun - Easy dinner - most likely eggs on toast

Backup Dinner - Baked meatballs & spaghetti

Baking - Chocolate cake (will bake two of these as they go so quickly in our house)

My grocery bill was around $170 for the week (including a bottle of gin for a few G&Ts) :-)

Bits and Pieces Pasta

Ingredients:

Packet of pasta of your chosing (enough to feed your family)
Salami/cabana/chorizo sausage - chopped
1 x Onion chopped
Sundried tomatoes (we keep a large container in our fridge)
Olives
Garlic
Basil (from the garden)
Olive oil
Whatever else that you can find in the fridge - for example some leftover basil dip goes well, or some leftover roast pumpkin, mushrooms, any antipasto leftovers, fetta cheese....
Parmesan cheese to serve. .

Method:

All we do is fry up the meat and onion in a little olive oil (usually we use chorizo) until the fat renders and the meat is crispy, then add whatever you have to add to the dish. It can be as complex or as simple as you want. We buy olives and sundried tomatoes in bulk and keep them in the fridge so we always have a simple dinner ready to go.

Whilst frying the ingredients we cook the pasta. Then drain the pasta, but keep a cup of the pasta water for later.

Toss the drained pasta through the pan-fried ingredients, adding a little olive oil. If the pasta looks dry add some of the pasta water.

Add parmesan cheese to serve. It's not a precise recipe, as the recipe amounts will change according to how many you need to serve and what you have in the fridge.

Money Saving Tip: Some supermarket delis sell the salami ends at a greatly reduced price. As you are going to dice them up anyway they are perfect for this dish.