Allergy Cooking: Reducing Time and Costs

I've recently surrendered to meal planning for the week ahead. With multiple food allergies, it takes me longer to put together than my guru in organisation, but the benefits are that I don't need to spend time each day googling ingredients I know we have and considering which of the results is:
a) cheapest in terms of ingredients we may need to buy
b) most nutritionally balanced for me
c) least repetitive flavour wise.

Writing up a weekly menu is also an easy way for me to know what needs to be added to the grocery list and stops us from buying items 'in case we need it'.

Here's an example of this weeks menu plan 'in draft' . In one column are the recipes and their sources (book title and page number or urls) and in the other are items this recipe will need. This second column forms the basis of our shopping list, which once completed I paste into mysupermarket.co.uk's 'quicksearch'.

Mysupermarket compares prices per gram on all items including those on special offer, and shows you which items you can save on if you're happy to make a substitution. Now, I may not  be willing to swap the calcium enriched orange juice for regular for example (I need all the Calcium sources I can get!), but I'm more than ok to swap brands of olive oil or herbs or chicken thigh brands, so overall, this is a great tool to help you stick to a budget.

Once that's done, I re-edit my draft into a three column meal plan. The columns are now "recipes", "prep", and "groceries". The prep column is usually for reminding me (or mr Umami) to soak beans or nuts when they are called for. You can see that the dried chestnuts need a lot of prep before showtime and we definitely don't want to forget that until the day of cooking! The last column is for items bought during the week. Again, this helps us plan the groceries better and keep tabs on costs.

I like to share mine on Google docs with Mr Umami so he can  put his 2 cents in on the menu, add items to the midweek grocery expenses or get dinner ready on days I'll be home late. It also helps me to be able to look in on 'the plan' from time to time.

Factors I consider when planning my meal plan:
A good tip to save on meal costs is to try and include more veggie meals or use beans, legumes and pulses to pad out meat. We aim to have two veggi meals per week and to use the slow cooker as much as possible since our OWL monitor has worked out that even with the slow cooker on for 4-5 hours on low, it's still cheaper than running the oven for 1.5 hours AND it allows Mr Umami to focus on his writing instead of having to get up and check that stuff isn't burning. Another important factor in my meal planning is to have enough lefotvers to take to work for lunch the next day. I don't want to be making two meals an evening.

Think this could work for you? Try These Resources:

• I'm an Organizing Junkie: menu planning. This site has downloadable templates for menu plans and grocery lists. What I especially like about the grocery list is that it's divided up by supermarket section. Nothing's more dangerous to your budget than wondering aimlessly around a supermarket! 
• Google Docs templates: you can find templates for meal plans and shopping lists here.
• A Year of Slow cooking: I have both Stephanie's books since her family are gluten free and her recipes helped me so much when I  was starting out my gluten free life. It's so much easier when the recipe has a built in substitute for things like hoisin sauce. I still prefer to link to her blog articles in the meal planner though. 
• Able and Cole recipe: un-facy but very delicious ideas for use of veg in our vegbox, from parsnip soup to lovely rosties or butternut squash curries. Veg is always allergy free for me and getting a box delivered means I won't just stick to what I consider to be 'superfoods', which means I'm less likely to develop intolerances to veg. Over xmas, I lived off my veg box alone, making soups and rosties every day. I didn't feel bored at all. Just happy with how little cooking I was doing for a change. This year I'm trying to include two soup days in the meal plan to give myself a break. 
• Nutrition data: This is where I found out that mushrooms, even simple white ones, are packed full of protein and other important minerals and make a totally great protein source in meals, and that black eyed peas, in addition to being a thrifty fiber rich protein, are also a source of calcium and high in iron. Since I need to watch my nutrition quite closely, this site really helps.