When I feel I cannot get my head around thinking up another week of recipes, I turn either to my own pre-written meal plans on my blog, or I cheat and use a plan from another blogger. My blog friend Michelle at UtterlyScrummy does a weekly meal plan and with 3 children she chooses similar recipes to me which are healthy and money saving.

This week I’m following her meal plan and here it is:

1. Creamy Bacon & Vegetable Pasta
2. Chicken Casserole
3. Vegetable Burritos
4. Macaroni Cheese
5. Fish Pie
6. Bacon, Cheese & Vegetable Frittata
7. Roast Chicken

Michelle helpful provides all her recipes and the costings of her weekly shop. You can check it all out here.

I have been watching a lot of online recipes recently through youtube. Today I saw this delicious recipe that looked very quick and easy to do. I wonder whether people think it should make it onto my next Supper Club menu? Of course I would use free range chicken. See what you think, maybe it could go on your meal plan next week…

1. Swap olive oil for cheaper sunflower or rape seed oil when frying.
2. Don’t buy prepared vegetables/salad, a bag of salad costs around the same as two whole heads of lettuce.
3. Weigh each portion of rice and pasta so you have less wastage.
4. Grow your own herbs, even a pot on your windowsill will save you buying expensive packaged fresh herbs.
5. Compare the price per kg(lb) of products to find the real bargains.
6. Make your own flavoured yogurts by buying plain yogurt and adding jam, fruit, nuts, muesli, chocolate chips etc.
7. Say no to ready meals, make meals in bulk from scratch and freeze them in portions so you have your own ready meals at a fraction of the price.
8. Eat less meat, choose several nights a week to eat vegetarian.
9. Don’t buy brands, instead try supermarket own brands.
10. Make your own bread (dig out your breadmaker from the back of the cupboard, or buy a cheap one on ebay). Bread made at home costs only a few penies and you can make flavoured breads at a fraction of the shop bought price.
11. Meal plan – plan a whole week of meals so there are no last minute calls to the local takeaway.
12. Check the fridge, freezer and store cupboard before shopping so no duplicates are bought by mistake.
13. Dilute fruit juices to make them go further – this also makes them more refreshing as the fruit provides vitamins and the water hydrates.
14. Check out local shops – at my local Chinese supermarket I can by the same products 3x cheaper than leading supermarket chains.
15. Don’t buy gravy granules – use some cornflour to thicken sauces.
16. Make your own muesli with oats and dried fruit, it is cheaper and healthier as there are no hidden sugars or salts.
17. Use a teapot to make tea, it will provide more than one cup per tea bag.
18. Make lunches to take out – shop bought sandwiches are expensive and unhealthy.
19. Don’t thrown away leftovers make bubble and squeak or soup.
20. Look at the low shelves in the supermarket – items at eye level are more expensive and budget ranges are on the lower shelves.
21. Find out what time of day your local shop/supermarket reduces the price of items close to their sale by date. At my shop it is 11am, if I go after that I find lots of reduced items I can buy and then freeze to use at a later date.
22. Do not go food shopping when hungry it will encourage you tol buy more than you need!

Here is a fun recipe, not for food but for play dough. This recipe is for anyone out there that has kids, grandkids etc. This is a really easy recipe and kids can help make the play dough before they start using it. The big bonus is making play dough yourself is really cheap!

Thanks to my new friend Elisha Sing for sharing her play dough recipe and photo. I have not made my own play dough before and her recipe looks easy to follow.

Elisha is a qualified childcare worker from Australia and she is over here visiting us while she is looking for Nanny work in the UK.

Here is her recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ Cup plain flour
• 1 cup salt
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 tablespoon Cream of Tartar
• 1 cup of warm water, preferable on the hotter side.
• Food colouring of whatever colour you want.

Recipe:

1. Boil the kettle, when the water is hot wait for it to cool down a little or just add some cold water to the hot water.

2. Place flour in a big mixing bowl then add salt, oil and cream of Tartar than give it a good mix.

3. Add the water and the food colouring, depending on how coloured you want it add a little for some colour or add lots for a fun effect.

4. Mix all the ingredients together well until the dough is nice and firm, a good tip is to pull parts of the dough apart and add flour if it seems too wet or slimy.

5. Once you have your coloured dough, when not in use, wrap it well in cling wrap and place in seal tight container.

6. Have Fun

I found an online tutorial about making daffodils from fondant icing or gum paste and adapted it to what I had available. You can see the tutorial that inspired me here.

These cakes will be lovely with a cup of tea tomorrow on Easter sunday, but since daffodils are spring flowers these cakes will be great to make any time over the next few weeks. Use a basic cupcake recipe, if you like chocolate add some cocoa powder, and either use some glace icing like I did for speed or spend some time and pipe buttercream icing before placing on your daffodil icing flowers. I have more information on piping with butter icing in this blog post.

Enjoy, these cakes look good but are easy to make so satisfy you and your guests!

This recipe from, my meal plans, is continuously the most popular recipe on my blog. The pasta recipe is unbelievably quick. I even surprise myself how quickly dinner is on the table when I make this dish, and despite salmon appearing like a luxury food you can buy it cheapily. I like to use smoked salmon trimmings which are very reasonably priced. Tesco sell a pack for around £1. This makes smoked salmon a cheaper protein than chicken or bacon. Sometimes I buy a large pack of smoked salmon and cut up into smaller portions and freeze. You can defrost on the day you want to use it and this spreads the cost of a ‘normal’ sized pack. I also look out for special offers on smoked salmon, then I buy several packs at once, cut and freeze as above.

This is one of my husband’s favourite meals and I cooked it for my little boy for the first time today. He happily ate the salmon, since it is packed full of omega 3 I’m glad he’s made  it an addition to his diet.

Salmon Pasta
Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 pack (120g-150g) smoked salmon trimmings
• 100g cream cheese or creme fraiche
• 2 spring onions
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 tsp mixed herbs
• if possible fresh herbs (basil, chives, parsley)
• 200ml liquid (white wine or milk)
• Pasta 350g (any type, spaghetti or fettuccine work well)

Recipe:

1. Cook pasta in boiling water.
2. Fry spring onion with garlic and mixed herbs on a low heat, add black pepper – as much as you like.
3. Take cooked drained pasta and add to frying pan.
4. Add cream cheese and stir continuously until the cheese has melted and covered pasta, add liquid now to loosen mixture.
5. Mix salmon into pan stirring well, leave on a low heat with a lid (or you can use a plate if your frying pan does not have a lid) for 3-5 mins.
6. Stir in chopped herbs, if using, and serve.

Serving suggestion:

Salad of rocket, tomatoes and grated parmesan.

5 a day additions:

As in my photo you can add green beans to this dish, pop them in with the pasta when it is half way through cooking, then it can be added into the sauce alongside the pasta at stage 3. Cooking the pasta and green beans together saves on pans and washing up!

Edible gifts vanilla sponge pink piped butter icing

Now I’m a food blogger I love to give people beautiful and yummy presents. Every time it makes me try something different and work a bit harder on my presentation skills. I have been trying to improve my icing skills and for about 9 months now I’ve been researching and trying out butter icing recipes, and different piping nozzles. Finally, with the help of Gill at Cupcakes To Your Door, I managed to bring all my research together to make what I call Cupcake Roses.

These particular cupcakes were made for my Mother-on-laws’ birthday. I was secretly very proud of myself, I don’t think they could have looked any better if I’d bought them from a shop.

I used my basic cupcake recipe and my new butter icing recipe, plus all natural food colourings from Queen Quality Decorations, which seems to be an Australian firm but I found mine in my local Waitrose. Please leave a comment on this blog if you know of any good ranges of natural food colourings – I would like to find some more types to try out.

Here’s my recipe:

Makes approx 8 cupcakes

Ingredients:

• 4 oz softened unsalted butter
• 4 0z sifted caster sugar
• 2 large free range eggs
• 4 0z sifted self raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 tbsp milk (approx)

Method:

1. Pre-heat the over to 180°c.
2. Cream butter and sugar together until smooth.
3. Add one egg and mix well, add half the flour and mix again.
4. Add the second egg and the rest of the flour, baking powder and vanilla essence, combine into a smooth mixture.
5. Pour a little of the milk into the mixture, you need the mixture to be ‘droppable’, this means it should fall slowly from your spoon. If the mixture is too thick and sticks to the spoon add more milk, if the mixture is too runny then add a spoonful or two of more flour.
6. Gently spoon the mixture evenly into each cake case, make sure that the tins are not filled more than halfway (or it will overflow as it rises and end up on the bottom of the oven floor!).
7. Cook in the middle of the oven for 20 mins. Test if the cakes are cooked by touching the top of one cake, it should spring back up and not leave an indentation. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Butter Icing:

• 4 oz unsalted butter, softened
• 4 oz icing sugar, sifted
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

Method:

1. Beat butter and icing sugar together until smooth, add vanilla and blend.
2. Add a few drops of food colouring, mix until colour is evenly distributed.
3. Either pop into a piping back and pipe icing onto cupcakes or use a palette knife to spread icing on.

To pipe the cakes as I did check out this online tutorial by Cupcakes To Your Door.

Image from schweppeinc.com

I find the most difficult meal to organise is lunch. I do not always plan for this and I know I should as it means we either end up popping to a local shop or eating something not particularly healthy. I HATE standing looking into my fridge trying to invent something for lunch that is filling but not fattening. So often we end up having boiled eggs or maybe a bacon sandwich or a couple of fishfingers basically I don’t think it is good enough.

I’ve been searching online for healthy, quick lunch/supper ideas and it seems everyone wants you to whip up a culinary storm rather than eat a easy snack.

Can anyone inspire me? What do you eat for lunch?

Museli Yogurt Parfait and Tomato Scrambled Eggs.

Image from ThisWeekForDinner.com

There are three issues I always consider when meal planning:

1. Healthy, balanced meals;
2. Money saving recipes;
3. Simple, quick recipes I can cook while also paying attention to my 3 year old.

For me the money saving recipes have to be balanced out with what is quick and easy. I find cooking from scratch is money saving but time consuming, baking your own loaf of bread can cost only pennies compared to the same product in the local shop. However, on busy days I have to consider whether I can spend a few extra pennies to save time. To top this off I always have to read the ingredients in any shop bought items to make sure that the salt and sugar content is not too high, or that there are no hydrogenated fats used.

With so many things to consider when feeding my family I do like to stick to a meal plan. So, when I find a weeks worth of recipes that worked well, everyone enjoyed, I found easy to cook and easy on my budget, then I like to keep a record of it. Here is a meal plan I did a couple of weeks ago which fitted all my criteria:

1. Homemade Pizza and salad;
2. Meatballs, rice and salad;
3. Stir Fry;
4. Sausages, mash and vegetables;
5. Fishcakes with salad;
6. Steak, wedges and salad;
7. Roast pork and vegetables.

I am looking for guest bloggers to be featured on Mondays sharing their meal plans. That way we can swap ideas and build up a bigger picture of how others are saving time and money in the kitchen. Please leave a comment below or email me if you would like to be a guest blogger.