I think this is week three of 'Save with Jamie'. We started with the Mothership Roast Pork for week one, then the Roast Chicken and this week the Brisket of Beef, and really, it has helped streamline the shopping budget. One of his key tenets is that you cook a roast on the Sunday and then use leftovers the following week. His leftover recipes are unusual and tasty and perfect for cooks who (for instance) perhaps don't know how to create a chicken filling for a pie from leftovers.

We've always tried to plan the week's meals and shop accordingly, often using recipes from low-fat cookbooks, and the snag is, that to avoid monotony, many of those recipes use expensive cuts of meat, (pork tenderloin, chicken breasts). Ok, so Jamie's recipes aren't necessarily low-fat, but we have avoided eating out, and also, the amount of meat he uses in his leftover recipes especially is much less than we'd usually consume in a meal.

One of the best things about this book is that there is a particular repertoire of ingredients, so that, for instance, if you use 1/2 a cabbage for one recipe, there are other recipes you can do that also include 1/2 a cabbage.

Last Saturday I used up 1/2 a butternut squash (had needed the other half in a recipe that week) from his 'Roast Butternut Squash 4 ways' section, and we had bruschettas with butternut squash mash spread on them, with crispy bacon and mushrooms on top. Scrummy.

It's has also taken me out of my comfort zone and I have cooked offal (chicken livers) and tofu, both of which were new to me. I'm feeling proud of myself. I've also done his 'make herb butter with leftover herbs' trick and actually used them to make a very tasty gravy.

My favourite recipe is probably the Banh Mi which was a surprising hit with our 2 boys, aged 5 and 2. We loved it so much we've done it twice now. Excellent.