Do you plan your meals for the coming week? If you meal prep then of course you do, but it’s good to be a little foresightful anyway, even if you think it’s boring. All very good to open the fridge at 6 in the evening and spontaneously decide on a chilli tonight, but the makings of such chilli must be there, along all the other different options you might spontaneously and impulsively want to go for. And that means an awful lot of waste.
I plan, some say obsessively, but very rarely there’s produce I need to chuck out at the end of the week. So I maybe basic but I’d rather that than be wasteful. Let me tell you what I have planned for the coming week and weekend, which will impact on my weekly shop and the visit to the butcher and the market, and hopefully will provide some inspo for you.
I’ll go for fish and chips tomorrow but I’ve yet to decide whether it will be the authentic, full works or the oven fish and chips. That traditionally comes with coleslaw but I might be a rebel and make a bowl of marinated fennel salad with ranch dressing instead. One of the following days I’m making chicken rice pilaf, a one pot dish – and there’s a veggie version too, rice with three mushrooms. That’s three kinds of mushroom of course – we’re not stinging on champignons.
I’ll have a whole grilled mackerel with spice crust on another day – it’s cheap, it’s healthy and it takes all of fifteen minutes to prepare. That will go beautifully with garlicky beans or perhaps buttered spinach if there’s any fresh spinach in the market; frozen doesn’t quite work as well cooked like this.
Weekend will be the feast of côte de bœuf cooked medium rare, with a simple salad and some corn chips grilled with cheese for a moment or two – you don’t need a recipe for that! And I’ll be baking lemon polenta cake because it’s gluten free and I’m finding myself baking a few of those these days. It’s an awful thing to have to deny yourself some foods and those who do it through fads and fashions are utterly dumb. So if you’re lucky to suffer no gluten intolerance, you can treat yourself to a batch of the rye, cranberry and chocolate cookies of the famed Parisian Mokonuts bakery. Happy cooking!