Food Challenge Update

This post is a little overdue since I actually did my food shop on Friday, but it was a busy weekend so I hope you'll forgive me!

The good news is that Part One of the challenge was a success - I managed to make meals each night without doing any extra shopping (besides getting lunches for Tom for work, but we do that every week anyway so I'm not counting it!). Woohoo! There was a bit of luck involved as I wasn't sure one of my batch meals was going to stretch to 4 portions (it looked more like 3 generous portions or 4 measly ones) but in the end it was just an eyes-bigger-than-belly scenario, haha. Isn't it always?

As for Part Two I've made a good start. Instead of getting a weekly shop as usual on Friday I went to Aldi. Their meat is cheaper than Asda and good quality, but it's the only thing we buy there so I don't go often unless it's to stock up in bulk. I ended up spending about £25 on meat and managed to get 4kg of chicken breast (for comparison this much in Asda would be £30 alone), 4 beef burgers, a pack of turkey mince and a pack of pork mince (which we've never tried before). That should last us quite a while! I also did Asda for our usual stuff, but bought extra veg so that I can prepare and freeze it for future meals.

So far I've done a big batch of shredded chicken - half went to that nights' batch meal (a Mexican Casserole style thing that I just have to share at some point!) and the other half I froze for future meals. I also froze enough chicken stock for 2 meals, so I'm feeling pretty smug. On the menu tonight is Chicken Tikka Masala and I'm adding in some veg we don't normally eat so I'll chop and freeze extra at the same time again.

On a semi-related note I've thought of another project to start that I'm hoping might be interesting, so I'm gonna write another blog on that shortly. Stay tuned!

Is anyone else doing any food challenges at the moment? I'd love to hear about them. :) I always feel like Spring is a better time to start resolutions than January - it's right as the weather picks up and everything feels more positive! What do you think?

"One Of Those Days" Becomes A Food Challenge!

The last week hasn't been the best for me. I've had a few productive bursts of activity, but for the most part I've not been up to much more than playing Facebook games. The kind I hate, but find myself unable to stop playing. I've been suffering from pretty bad headaches and really tired. I think I've just reached a stage in my recovery where I need to start doing more, but I'm stuck in a chicken and egg scenario - I've not got anything to do I've been out of action so long!

I start extra work with Discover Your Bounce next month which will help - 3 days a week of getting up and going to work rather than 'working' from the sofa in my pjs. But that doesn't help me this week, where I've got a few small tasks to get done but at my own pace and without a deadline.

Today has been the peak of the problem, but has also unwittingly offered me a solution. I've been out of action most of the day with another headache - this one worse than usual. Just reading, chilling, trying not to make it worse. So it wasn't until I was making dinner and went to put something in the freezer that I realised it was unplugged... and most of the contents were either defrosted or halfway there. Oops! Pretty much everything had to go in the bin, since we can't work out when it must have been unplugged and what state of defrost the items were in.

Here's the kicker - most of the food was on the meal plan for this week, meaning all of our planned meals have to be scrapped and we're still 5 days from our normal shopping day. Bummer, huh?

After being royally p***ed off for a bit, I decided to set myself a little food challenge for the week. I'm not going to go shopping until our next regular shop. All meals will be made from what we have to hand at home (luckily we had a little excess meat in the fridge still waiting to be frozen). The only exception to this will be picking up some fresh veg to accompany meals as we're running low.

I'm also going for a second challenge - to restock the freezer with healthy meal components to reduce the number of takeaways we have (we've been getting lazy lately). This'll be a combination of chopped veg to throw into soups, curries & chillies, some pre-cooked shredded chicken and batch meals of some of our favourite things. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while, so this was a bittersweet kick in the bum for me to get on and do it.

I'll update you to my progress soon, perhaps with some recipes too as I've found some new ones to try! :)

Do you set yourself food challenges? Let me know in the comments!