Part 2 of my New years Resolution is something that we’ve tried (and failed) to do before. Lunch boxes for my lovely husband. This was brought about by the realisation that our car just wasn’t suitable for longer journeys with all the family. The middle seat in the back was just a lap belt, which didn’t feel very safe and was very awkward to do up. So we’re taking the plunge and getting a Ford S-Max. We looked at a Chrysler Voyager, and although it was very spacious, at 26 mpg I almost got a nervous twitch at the thought of the cost of using it – both environmentally and budgetary.

Anyhow, we’re getting the S-Max on the basis that we save money elsewhere and the obvious place to start saving is my husbands breakfast / lunch. He leaves the house so early that he usually picks up coffee and a pastry when he gets to London and then pops out for a sandwich and a drink at lunchtime. He reckoned he was spending between £8 and £10 every day on food which is between £160 and £200 every month!

And so far so good. For breakfasts he’s either having some yummyhome-made yogurt with oaty crunch, or a muffin / breakfast slice. I particularly like the white chocolate, raspberry and cinnamon blondie from Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache which both at least contain some veg (carrots in the muffin and butternut squash in the blondie).

For lunches, there’s the standard orange juice and a piece of fruit, then a little treat which is either a small piece of cake or some ‘nibl’ type snacks dried fruit. But it’s the lunch ‘main course’ which has actually been easiest to sort out much to my surprise. Rather than sandwiches / rolls every day which could be monotonous, I cook a little extra most evenings and save this for the next day. I’m not talking meat and two veg here, but pasta bakes, chicken and couscous and my personal fave, Thai noodle soup.

So far it’s been fairly easy, as it’s all packed up the night before…although I have to admit to getting up early this morning as the fishcakes we had last night wouldn’t have reheated well. If you fancy sharing your lunch box ideas, please feel free to share them – either here or on my facebook page

I’m going to share my New Years Resolutions with you over the next week or two. My resolutions are normally of the ‘must lose weight’ variety (which given that I’ve had three children in the last 5 years, you can understand). But happily my weight seems to have stabilised respectably at about 9 stone 9-ish which I’m pretty happy with. So I can strike that one off the list.

I’ve got a few things I’d like to focus on this year. The first one is mostly related to food:

I resolve to have three meat free days per week and plan all meals in advance!

I’m distinctly trying to eat less meat for various reasons. Firstly it will ensure that we all eat more veggies which is a GOOD THING. Secondly there’s the whole global warming issue – rearing livestock creates large amounts of CO2 that growing veg doesn’t.

We don’t have meat every night anyway so the meat free element of this resolution should actually be fairly easy. My menu for this week had Jacket Potato for one night (with cheese / coleslaw / beans) and Goats Cheese & Tapenade Pasta for another. Home-made Pizza rounds off the week and I’m happy to stick with veggie options for that too. Thankfully my children are usually pretty happy to eat their veg, although no1 son picked every bit of spinach out of his pasta last night…ggrrr.

I’m also going to do a menu plan every week and use up what’s in my freezer. Menu planning is great, but with Christmas etc I’ve fallen out of the habit of sitting down every Thursday / Friday and planning for the week ahead. It saves me money, it saves me time and energy and I WILL do it every week. That way I’ll avoid having a fridge full of stuff that’s going off because it hasn’t been used. I’ll be able to do little bits of preparation when I’ve got a spare moment in advance of the evening meal (if necessary). And I’ll still have tasty, scrumptious meals. Putting it that way and it almost sounds like fun!