Meal Planning Monday; 10th December 2012

Goodness me, just over two weeks until Christmas; how scary does that sound! Thankfully I've done all my wrapping (bar two last minute presents when my brother and his girlfriend decided they were actually doing presents after all and I hurriedly bought them gifts) and just have a few cards for family to write.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post Bubbah has been much better this week, much to my relief! He's also learnt a new trick; climbing the stairs. Imagine my horror when hubby went upstairs while I was in the kitchen washing up and didn't shut the door properly. Of course as curious as any other baby, Bubbah crawled off excitedly to explore. I realised it had suddenly gone quiet (usually to be treated with suspicion when children are involved in the day time) and went to investigate to discover Bubbah hitting the bottom step. Several minutes later, with me firmly wedged in behind him to stop any falling over, he'd scaled the stairs. He repeated this later on yesterday after I went to put some washing away and he's so proud of himself. Time to start bolting everything down!

Cheeky, well padded and cosy!

I didn't really go out much last week because we had some snow(!) and that always makes me want to hibernate. I did venture outside with Bubbah to explore the snow because I couldn't resist his excited face when I showed him the newly whitened back garden. We also went Christmas shopping with my mum on Thursday and put up our Christmas tree so it was a very festive week indeed!

Last week's meal plan went pretty well, although we didn't have sticky chicken as I forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer (doh) but I did manage to remember to blog the recipe for those who asked so here it is. Instead we had a nice lazy Chinese take away (yummy) while watching the first half of the X Factor final with my mum and discussing Christmas presents, onesies and snow boots.

This week is a store cupboard week as, after reading everyone else's meal plans I realised our cupboard was disgustingly full of tins and I had no idea what we actually had in there! So I cleared it out and made a list while Bubbah was asleep and came up with a meal plan from pretty much everything in there.

So this week we are having:

• Risotto (probably vegetable or sausage and vegetable)
• BBQ mac n cheese
• Pizza
• Pasta bake (tomato for hubby, tuna for me)
• Pasties or fish fingers for my free meal days (when hubby fasts)
• Egg fried rice and chicken chunks

I've also got lots of soup in the cupboard so I'll probably have those for my lunches with the doorstep bread I bought today (easily the best thing to have with soup) or just some of the bagels I got in the reduced section while shopping today - 24p for a packet of 5, needless to say I bought two and promptly pre-sliced them and whacked them in the freezer!

As usual I'm linked up to Mrs M so head on over there to see what everyone else is cooking up.