I never bothered with a meal plan last week as I was feeling a bit bleugh (if that’s even a word), and as a result, without even looking at the receipts from last week’s food shopping I can tell you that we went way over our weekly budget.
As we didn’t have a meal plan to stick to, we bought random things when we did our main shop and then got home and realised that the things we’d bought didn’t really make up a weeks worth of meals. This meant that through the week we ended up making two extra trips to the shop for extra bits, both times buying more than what we went for. So this week, I’m feeling more than a little disappointed with myself as I’ve been trying so hard to stick to our budget and I really felt like we were doing well with it and I could see the savings we were making each week beginning to add up.
I’m going to try and just forget about it now though and start fresh….
Monday – Macaroni Cheese I have a lovely gammon joint cooking at the moment in the slow cooker so I’ll add some of this in to the macaroni cheese as well for a bit of a change. The gammon should hopefully stretch to a few days worth of meals as well as packed lunch sandwiches.
Tuesday – Sliced gammon, egg, chips and beans
Wednesday – Ham and mushroom oven baked risotto using up the last of the ham I would think.
Thursday – Sausage Casserole
Friday – Quesadillas
Saturday – Homemade burgers, see below as I’m after a bit of advice.
Sunday – Sunday Roast with chicken, roasties, veg and Yorkshire puds.
I’m not very adventurous when I make burgers, in fact for the kids’ burgers all I do is roll 4 portions of minced beef into balls, squash them into burger shapes and that’s it.
For more grown up burgers, I tend to add something like chilli or cajun spices but again, that’s it really.
To cook them, I usually just grill them and serve in buns with homemade wedges and salad.
I don’t want to add anything else to them to fill them out or make the meat stretch further as they’re delicious as they are and at around £3.00 – £3.50 for a medium sized pack of extra lean mince, I think it works out at good value for a meal for us all as it makes 8 burgers.
What I want to know is what other mince I can use to make burgers that won’t need anything adding to them? I worry that some meats might dry out a little without egg or something to bind the mix and I think that’s why I stick to minced beef as I know that won’t happen.
I like the idea of minted lamb burgers or pork and apple burgers so I was hoping that you lovely people might be able to give me some ideas and to reassure me that if I try something different, it won’t end up as a pile of much in the oven 😉
Over to you….
