In response to the SARS-COVID-19 pandemic, the UK went into lockdown on Tuesday 17th March. In normal times, I meal plan week-to-week, but with the introduction of fortnightly shopping and increased isolation, this quickly expanded to month-to-month.

Obviously meal planning and fortnightly shopping is not possible for most people and families, but for someone living alone one large shop can last a while! Especially a trip to the butchers, which lasts me a whole month. Hence the need to plan!

This post is for my personal record, but I’m hoping it may encourage others to focus on nutrition and home-made food during isolation (which is better for your immune system!). I’ll keep adding to this post for as long as my monthly planning continues.

Tips

I don’t really have many tips since everyone’s meals, lifestyles, dietary requirements, cooking logistics, shopping frequency etc. will be different, and I have it particularly easy just cooking for one person, but some simple ones are:

• If shopping for two weeks or more, make sure your meals for the first week concentrate on fresh veg that will go yuck the quickest i.e. leafy greens and anything soft that’s kept in the fridge. The second week can be a mix depending on your experience keeping things fresh, and any weeks after should rely on hard/root veggies or frozen veg.
• While you’re mixing up your veg, try to mix up proteins too for varied nutrients.
• If you’re bulk-cooking, try to estimate the number of serves per recipe to help ensure that you’ll be making enough! Extras can be frozen, but under-estimating will lead to (probably unhealthy) snacking.
• Depending on your lifestyle, try to time easy recipes with busy times and more complex recipes when you have more time in the kitchen. I save easy recipes for the weekends I do my shopping, since it takes so long to clean everything down once I’m home.
• I’ve also learned to only meal plan for 10-12 meals per week, since I eat less on weekends and sometimes it’s nice to improvise with what you have in the cupboard or fridge!

My Plan

I do all my cooking on the weekend and find it easiest to bulk-cook three or four meals that I then rotate throughout the week. Since I already had food prepped for the week of lockdown and a meal plan for the week after, my monthly planning starts in the second full week.

The numbers in brackets indicate the number of serves per meal, and the letter indicates the main protein to ensure variety (although for me it is always a small proportion of meat to vegetables). Most of these recipes are AIP compliant (some with reintroductions) or paleo compliant.

Let’s begin!

Weeks Zero (Start of lockdown and 21 March)

• Healing soup (4c) with carrot, parsnip and kale croutons
• Curry soup (4c) with chicken, coconut cream, mushies, lime and coriander
• Sausage risotto (6p) with pumpkin and kale
• Sausage cooked breakfasts (3p) with eggs, greens and sweet potato
• Marinara no-mato bolognese sauce (4b) with rice
• Frozen leftover vegetable soups (3v)
• ‘Mixed plate’ (2)

Month One

Week One (28 March)

• Tom Kha Gai (4c) with oyster mushier, chicken, asian greens, seaweed, sweet potato)
• Sushi with tinned fish (4f)
• Leftover healing soup base (4v) with carrot, parsnip, beetroot and kale croutons
• Nachos with leftover no-mato bolognese (2b)

Week Two (4 April)

• African beef stew (6b) with heaps of root veg
• Leftover curry soup base (3c) with mushier, coconut cream, chicken, lime
• Cooked lunches (3p) with eggs, beef patties, sweet potato, greens, sauerkraut

Week Three (11 April)

• Chinese long soup (4f) with mackerel, white sweet potato, asian greens, shiitake mushrooms and seaweed
• Chicken stock from scratch > chicken soup with veg (6c)
• Stuffed pumpkins (3b) with leftover beef patties, bacon, kale, onions, cheese and sweet potato mash

Week Four (18 April)

• Sausage risotto (4p) with homemade chicken stock, kale, butternut and peas
• Leftover beef stew (3b)
• Avgolemono soup (4c) with chicken, cauliflower and eggs

Month Two

Week Five (25 April)

• Chicken stock from scratch > chicken soup with veg (6c)
• Mediterranean salmon salad (4f)
• Parsnip, apple and ginger soup (4v)

Week Six (2 May)

• Beef roast (6b) with heaps of veg (and leftovers to freeze)
• Indian fish curry (4f) with beans, cauliflower and cauliflower leaves plus rice
• Cooked brekky (2p) with sausages or bacon, eggs, greens and sweet potato

Week Seven (9 May)

• Pizza and stuffed sweet potatoes (6c) pesto chicken and hawaiian
• Hunter soup (6b) with loads of veg
• Cooked brekky (2p) with sausages or bacon, eggs, greens and sweet potato

Week Eight (16 May)

• Thai pumpkin soup (4b) with leftover roast beef
• Sausage risotto (6p) with any leftover veg

Month Three

Week Nine (23 May)

• Under the weather soup (4v)
• No-mato olognese (6b) served with lettuce cups or rice, with shredded greens, and loads of chopped veg

Week Ten (30 May)

• Carrot, orange and ginger soup (4v)
• Salad with fennel and kohlrabi with citrus marinade chicken and picked onion (4c)
• Defrosted chicken and veg soup (2c)

Week Eleven (6 June)

• Leftover salad with lightly breaded pork chops and rhubarb sauce (2p)
• Beef roast (3b) with roast veg
• Leftover no-mato bolognese sauce with veg and buckwheat noodles (4v)

Snacks

• Nuts
• Fruit
• Roasted chickpeas
• Rice crackers with peanut butter
• Stove flat bread
• Seed crackers
• Corn or vegetable chips

Recipes

Most of my recipes are modified from the following cookbooks, which are the only four I have and which I use all the time (not sponsored – these are links to the author’s websites not an online shop):

• ‘The Healing Kitchen: 175+ Quick & Easy Paleo Recipes to Help You Thrive‘ by Aleana Haber and Sarah Ballantyne
• ‘The Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook‘ by Mickey Trescott
• ‘The Complete Gut Health Cookbook‘ by Pete Evans
• ‘Autumn and Winter: Cooking with a veg box‘ by Riverford cooks

If you want to know where I got a specific recipe, drop me a line.

How is your iso-cooking going? Are you taking yourself on a culinary journey? What are your favourite recipes so far?