review

We started the Feed Your Family For £50 from Sainsburys at plan 2.
I love that all the ingredients are listed for you to put in your shopping basket, it’s so easy. You do have to remember to read the notes at the top of the page as all ingredients are listed as 1 and sometimes you need to buy more.

Now we are not an average family of four, we are actually a family of seven! That’s four adults, two children and a baby. So a little adapting had to take place, but that was easy enough. The shopping list came in at £75, but that also included tea, coffee, soft drinks, toiletries, cat food and a few little extra’s (like donuts!)

I was surprised when the shopping arrived, it seemed like loads. I’ve easily spent £80 before and not recieved nearly as many bags.

I liked the plan because it included breakfasts and lunches, I get so fed up of the same things day after day and until doing this I never felt motivated to try anything else. However, there are only two adults and baby at home most lunch times so again some adapting had to take place.

Mondays meals were muesli and banana for breakfast, Pate, tomato and cucumber sandwich and carrot batons for lunch and roasted vegetable with chicken and rice for dinner. I wasn’t too keen on the pate, it was a cheap version and you could taste it, but everything else was fine.

Tuesday was muesli and banana for breakfast, ham cream cheese and tomato sandwich for lunch….nb the lunches seem really simple when sandwiches and you don’t think to check the recipe, but this one states to have your sandwich with houmous and carrot sticks on the side and it’s easy to miss this and end up with an unused, and out of date, packet of houmous at the end of the week. Dinner was spaghetti carbonara and was big favourite in our house, there was plenty to go around too.

Wednesday was toast with peanut butter for breakfast, cottage cheese, grated carrot and rocket pittas for lunch (I wasn’t keen on the basic pitta breads and would buy better ones next time) and Sausage, tomato and cannellini pot with mash. (I will confess to not taking the sausages out of their skin for this recipe, but it was still really nice.)

Thursday was muesli and banana (again) (I had a bowl of shreddies instead) Salmon, rocket and red onion sandwich…one of my favourites…for lunch and Tomato, spinach and red onion frittata for dinner. The men complained there was no meat and we decided that sausages would go nice with this.

Friday was toast with peanut butter for breakfast, cream cheese and cucumber sandwich for lunch and tuna, mushroom and mozzarella bake for dinner, very happy with todays meals.

Saturday was sausages, mushrooms and tomatoes with fried bread for breakfast…at last sausages for breakfast, Toasted cheese bagueets and vegetable soup for lunch with a banana and sweet and sour chicken for dinner, not a big favourite but nothing really wrong with it, just a matter of taste.

Sunday was boiled egg and soldiers for breakfast, three-bean mackerel salad for lunch, ok big confession here, I still have the beans and mackerel in the cupboards as we were out at lunch time, but at least they will keep for a while. Dinner was roast pork with roast potatoes, carrots and broccoli for dinner. I had to add a serving of mash too because we are a greedy lot with our Sunday dinners. Then I made a carrot cake with the left over carrots because I’d not been reading the lunch time recipes and not having carrot batons with my sandwiches.

My Verdict.
The meals were nice and they were pretty good portions. We had to make a few adaptions but the little ones joined in too, baby was partial to the mashed up frittata. I found lunch times less boring and it was nice to know in advance what I was cooking each day. I would do most of the recipes again but not the sweet and sour as no-one really liked it.

I’m not really dieting at the moment but I do watch my weight, along with regular exercise I lost 2lb this week.

I did my shop online as I have no transport at this time, but you can also print off your list and take it shopping with you.

We are currently trying out plan 3 so please come back and see how we get on…you can follow this blog with the button on the right 🙂