Budget Meal Plan (chicken and fish)

SHOPPING LIST
This meal plan is based on TESCO this week and is just over £40 so that you qualify for a £5 voucher off your next shop. These meal plans are designed for a couple where one person works in a heavy labouring job however this meal plan would work fine for 3 or 4 people with smaller appetites.

MENU
MAIN MEALS

  • Roast Chicken, roast potatoes and veg
  • Chicken, baked beans and baked potatoes
  • Chicken Green Thai Curry
  • Chicken Soup and Dumplings
  • Fish Pie (2 meals)
  • Leek and Macaroni Cheese

PACKED LUNCHES
PUDDINGS & CAKE

  • Broken Biscuit Cake
  • Scones
  • Jam Sponge & Custard

SHOPPING LIST Cost: £40.72

MAIN MEALS
1x Tesco Wild Pacific Pink Salmon (418g) £2.49
1x Tesco Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce (6x420g) £2.00
2x Tesco Everyday Value Chopped Tomatoes (400g) 62p
1x Patak’s Creamed Coconut (4x50g) £1.20
1x Mae Ploy Green Curry Paste (400g) £1.39
2x Campbell’s Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup (294g) £1.50 any 2 FOR £1.50
1x Tesco Everyday Value Grated Cheddar (500g) £2.13
1x Atora Light Shredded Vegetable Suet (200g) 67p
1x Tesco Everyday Value Sage & Onion Stuffing Mix (85g) 15p
1x Sharwood’s Medium Egg Noodles (2x375g) £2.79
2x Tesco Whole Chicken (1.45Kg) £7.00 any 2 FOR £7.00

PUDDINGS
1x Tesco Everyday Value Ready to Serve Custard (396g) 17p

PACKED LUNCHES
1x Tesco Everyday Value Chicken Paste (75g) 32p
2x Tesco Everyday Value Ham & Beef Paste (75g) 64p
1x Walkers Salt & Vinegar Crisps (6x25g) £1.58 any 3 FOR £3.50
2x Tesco Everyday Value Pork Pies (4 per pack – 440g) £2.40
3x Tesco Everyday Value White Rolls (12) £1.05

BAKING
1x Tesco Everyday Value Custard Creams (400g) 35p
1x Tesco Everyday Value Digestive Biscuits (400g) 35p
1x Tesco Everyday Value Self Raising Flour (1.5Kg) 52p
1x Tate & Lyle Fairtrade Granulated Pure Cane Sugar (1Kg) 88p
1x Tesco Everyday Value Sultanas (500g) 84p

STORE CUPBOARD
1x Tesco Everyday Value Stock Cubes Chicken (10 per pack – 100g) 10p
1x Tesco Everyday Value Medium Sliced Wholemeal Bread (800g) 47p
1x Tesco Semi Skimmed Milk 6 Pints (3.41L) £1.74
1x Tesco Everyday Value Mixed Eggs (15) £1.50
1x Tesco Everyday Value Soft Spread (1Kg) £1.35
1x Tesco Everyday Value Tea Bags (80 per pack – 250g) 27p
1x Tesco Everyday Value Double Strength Apple & Blackcurrant Squash (750ml) 32p

FRUIT & VEG
1x Tesco Everyday Value Carrots 92p
1x Tesco Everyday Value Peppers 98p
1x Tesco Everyday Value Leeks (750g) £1.34
1x Tesco Everyday Value Onions Pack 69p

£40 WEEK MEAL PLAN RECIPES

Assumes you have bought a sack of potatoes to last you many weeks. Plus it assumes you have dried chillies or chilli powder and mustard and homemade enchilada spice mix and mixed spice in the store cupboard.

MEAL 1
Roast chicken, roast potatoes, stuffing, carrots and gravy.
2 Chickens
4 Medium potatoes
Carrots
Bisto chicken gravy
1 Packet of stuffing

Roast the chickens as indicated on the packet. Peel and cut the potatoes into 4 pieces each, or more if they are very large potatoes. Put the potatoes into a pan, cover with boiling water and boil for 10 minutes, drain and shake the potatoes around in the colander to roughen the edges. An hour before the chicken should be cooked, put the potatoes into a roasting tray and drizzle with oil and some crushed salt. Put them in the oven to cook, turning them after 30 minutes. The potatoes should take about an hour to roast. Make up the stuffing mix, place in an ovenproof bowl and place in the oven for 30 minutes. 15 minutes before you are wanting to eat, put the carrots in a pan, cover with boiling water, bring to the boil and boil for about 10 minutes. Use the boiling water from draining the carrots to make 1/2 pint of gravy.

When serving only use one breast each or a leg plus a little breast meat per serving. (the remainder of the chicken will be used for other meals this week).

Once the chicken has cooled remove the other 2 breasts, put in a bag and freeze for later in the week.  Strip off the rest of the chicken and bag and freeze it for a thai green curry). Cover the chicken carcasses with foil and put in the fridge for tomorrow.

MEAL 2
Chicken Soup and Dumplings
The Chicken carcasses from yesterday
2 large onions, chopped
4 carrots, sliced
2 leeks sliced
2 large potatoes cut into 1cm cubes
2 chicken stock cubes
2oz suet
4oz self raising flour
mixed herbs
salt

Put the chicken carcasses into a large pan (break the carcasses up if necessary), cover with cold water, bring to the boil and simmer for 2 hours ready to make chicken soup and dumplings, top the water up from time to time to make sure the bones are covered. Turn the heat off, leave to cool then using a large sieve sieve the stock into a pan so that all small bones do not go into the stock, then put the bones into a bowl and take off any further meat and put it in the stock in the pan. Add the chopped onion, the carrots, leeks, potato and the crumbled stock cubes, boil for 10 minutes or until the potato has broken up and thickened the soup a little. You want there to be a depth of about 2-3 inches of soup in the pan to cook the dumplings so top it up with a little boiled water if it needs it.
Make the dumplings – put the suet, flour, a pinch of salt and a few pinches of mixed herbs into a bowl, gradually add a little water until the mix is sticky but not runny. Bring the soup to the boil and put small spoonfuls of the dumpling mix into the soup, then put the lid on the pan and simmer for 10 minutes, preferably without raising the pan lid. Use 2 forks to pull one of the dumplings apart to check it is cooked inside, if not cook for a couple more minutes. Then serve the soup and dumplings in large bowls.

If the soup is too runny for you, try experimenting with adding a little cornflour or chicken gravy granules to thicken it a bit. Any spare soup can be frozen for another day but take the carrots out first as they do not freeze well in the soup.

MEAL 3
Macaroni and Leek Cheese
1 onion chopped
2 or 3 leeks sliced
2 tbsp oil
2 dsp flour
1.5 pints milk
200g grated cheese
mustard (optional)
200g penne pasta

Gently fry the onion and leek in the oil for about 5 minutes until softened but not brown. Sprinkle in the flour and cook for 1 minute, remove the pan from the heat and gradually add a pint of the milk incorporating the flour into the milk. Return the pan to the heat and bring to the boil stirring all the time until the sauce has thickened, if you have mustard put a good teaspoonful in and mix well. Once the sauce is thick, turn off the heat and add the cheese and mix in well and then add the remaining half pint of milk. Put the pasta into a casserole dish and pour the cheese sauce over. Sprinkle with mixed herbs. Bake in the oven at 180C for 30 minutes. (you can make this dish earlier and then put it in the oven half an hour before you want to eat).

There should be plenty of this left for lunch the next day.

MEAL 4
Chicken, baked beans and baked potatoes. Use the chicken breasts you froze earlier in the week.

MEAL 5 & 6
Fish Pie (sufficient for 2 days)
1 tin pink salmon
4 hard boiled eggs
1 tin of campbells condensed mushroom soup
2 onions or leeks
6 large potatoes, peeled, diced and mashed with a little salt
100g grated cheese
mixed herbs
Carrots

Fry the onions and/or leeks for 5 minutes until soft but not brown, then put these into a rectangular glass casserole dish together with the salmon broken up into chunks, pour the soup over the fish etc, wash out the tin with half a tin of milk and incorporate that into the fish mix in the casserole dish. Make sure the fish etc is evenly distributed across the casserole dish. Slice the hard boiled eggs and layer over the fish then dot the mashed potato over the top and using a fork spread the mashed potato across the dish, sprinkle a little grated cheese across the top of the potato along with some mixed herbs and bake in the oven for 30 minutes.

Serve half of the pie with carrots, put the remainder into a plastic container and either eat next day or freeze for another day.

MEAL 7
Green Thai Curry
Cooked Chicken pieces from earlier in the week
4 carrots cut into narrow batons
2 onions, thinly sliced
1 or 2 peppers cut into thin strips
Green thai curry paste
1 sachet of creamed coconut
2 layers of noodles

Gently stir fry the carrots and onions for 5 minutes, add the peppers and stir fry for another 3 minutes, add the chicken pieces and green thai curry paste to taste. Warm the sachet of creamed coconut in a cup of warm water then add to the chicken mix and stir. Cook the noodles, drain and serve.

PUDDINGS
Jam sponge with custard (2)
Broken biscuit cake
Scones with jam

PACKED LUNCHES
Fill 18 of the rolls with the 3 jars of paste and freeze these, 2 rolls to a bag to make sure there are always rolls for Alex to take for lunch.

Make Egg Mayonnaise using 6 hard boiled eggs, the mayo and a pinch of salt and some black pepper for fresh rolls, these won’t freeze as mayo doesn’t freeze well.

Each Day – 4 rolls, 1 pork pie, 1 packet of crisps and tea-bread should be sufficient for breakfast and lunch.

LUNCHES AT HOME
-either left-overs from the meal the day before or omelettes, egg mayo sandwiches etc plus apples, cake etc

BAKING FOR PACKED LUNCHES AND PUDDINGS

Tea Bread
1 mug hot tea
2 mugs of sultanas
1 mug of sugar
2 mugs of self raising flour
1 egg
2 heaped teaspoons of mixed spice

Soak the sultanas in the hot tea for a couple of hours or overnight. Beat the egg and add to the cool mixture then mix in all of the dry ingredients. Place the mixture into a lined loaf tin then bake at 150C for an hour, check whether the loaf is baked by inserting a skewer. If the skewer has raw mixture on it bake for another half hour and check again. When baked leave the loaf to cool in the tin. This loaf freezes well, ideally slice it and freeze the slices so that just one or 2 can be removed at a time.

Broken Biscuit Cake
100g butter spread
2 tablespoon sugar
4 tablespoon cocoa powder
2 level tablespoons golden syrup
500g roughly broken biscuits

Line a baking tray with foil or greasproof paper.
Gently heat the butter, sugar, cocoa and syrup in a large pan. Mix in the biscuits and stir. Press the mixture firmly into the tray using a wooden spoon to smooth the top. Chill for 2 hours before cutting into slices. Keep in the fridge as it melts easily. This freezes well and can be eaten after only about 19 minutes defrosting at room temperature.

Scones
1.5lb SR Flour
8 oz sugar
7 oz butter
10 fl oz milk
3 tbsp vegetable oil

Put the oven at gas mark 6. Put all the dry ingredients into the mixer and mix until breadcrumbs, then add the milk and oil and mix until just combined, do not over mix.

Tip the dough out onto a floured board, pat flat until the dough is about 2 inches thick and then cut scones using a round cutter. Place on a baking tray and bake for 20 to 30 minutes until golden on top. Scones only last a day or so, therefore freeze them, they defrost well in a microwave.

Jam Sponge
8oz self raising flour
8oz sugar
8oz butter spread
4 eggs
Jam, syrup or marmalade

Beat all of the ingredients together for 2 minutes. Place 4 or 5 spoonfuls of jam, syrup or marmalade in the bottom of an 8 or 9 inch casserole dish then spread the cake batter on top. Bake at 160C for 30-40 minutes until the centre of the sponge springs back when lightly pressed down. Serve with custard.

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