Tag Archives: dinner

Ratatouille Casserole

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In my weekly plan, one of my dinners was a ratatouille casserole. Here’s the recipe which I slightly adapted from a Weight Watchers recipe. This recipe is so easy, my wonderful husband made it 🙂

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Ingredients
1 small eggplant (aubergine)
1 zucchini
1 yellow squash
1 red bell pepper
3 garlic cloves (crushed)
1 onion
1/4 cup tomato paste
1/2 cup water
2 Tbsp fresh parsley
1 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried thyme
pinch of salt and pepper
1 tomato sliced

Cut all the ingredients into ~1-2 inch chunks. Throw all ingredients into a covered casserole dish and place in the oven at 350 degrees F (180 degrees C). Bake for 50 minutes covered, then uncover and back another 10 minutes.

I served our ratatouille casserole with brown rice pasta (first time trying it and it tasted great).
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Meal plan week 1

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Today is the first day of my life style challenge, and to help keep on track here’s my first week’s meal plan. We use the meal plan as a guide, we will mix up the meals depending on what we feel like but typically these are the meals for the week. This is a short week as I will typically post every Saturday.

Day Breakfast Dinner
Monday Fruit Salad with Flax seed Ratatouille Casserole + Brown Rice Pasta
Tuesday Oatmeal with grated apple + sultanas Lentil and Kale Soup
Wednesday Fruit Salad with Flax seed Vegetable Paella + Quinoa
Thursday Oatmeal with grated apple + sultanas Curried Pumpkin Soup
Friday Fruit Salad with Flax seed Falafel and Greek Salad + humus

Meals may also include fruits or unsalted Pistachios.

Budget constraints were $70; in total we spent $60 and only a portion of that contributes to my meals.  Additional groceries are being purchased for the rest of the family. In future, I can provide a shopping list if anyone is interested.

Meals on a Budget: Roast Chicken into 10 meals

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We try to live of $70 (USD) a week on food for two adults and one child (5 years old). We do this by pre-planning the meals to make sure things get used in multiple ways through the week. Below, is how we got 1 full main course, 3 light dinners, 6 lunches and a core pantry ingredient from one meal – Roast Chicken.

Starting with a main course

Last week, I made a roast chicken (whole chicken) with roast potatoes, sweet potatoes and green beans for dinner.

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From the left overs

I boxed up two lunch-size portions of the meal above
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From the left over potatoes/sweet potatoes we made a light dinner of Bratkartoffeln (Recipe in previous blog).

There was significant amount of chicken meat left over which went towards 3 x Chicken Sandwiches and a Chicken Vegetable Pie.
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Finally, I used the chicken carcass to make chicken stock (broth) which I separated into two batches – 1 batch I froze into large Chicken Stock Cubes and the other I placed in a jar and put in the fridge to use during the week in things like casseroles, stews or chicken noodle soup.

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I will continue to share “now” and “later” meals and weekly menu’s throughout December. Feel free to add suggestions or let me know if you have any questions.