meal planning - where do i start?

Hell_Dans_Un_Handcart

Waaah swampy!

rosieben

MrMicawber wrote: »

........moving on from last note. I'm obviously a bloke and I wouldn't want you all to think I do all this and either get a reputation I don't deserve or have people think I'm just swinging the lead. My wife is brilliant and she does cook more than me - although I do try (macaroni cheese tonight). Also I do get banned from doing the shopping quite often because although we make a list I do tend go off limits rather too much.

Excellent posts MrM :T its always good to see the boys joining in here! I know that men sometimes get the blame for spending off limits in the shops, but a lot of women are like that too .... I know, I'm one of them

beckstar1975

Hello - whilst try and do meal planning it usually fails as both Dh and I work, and by the time we've got the three kids to bed we're too tired to cook much - and it's usually pasta or take-away which is obviously not old style at all!

How's it best to start? I've tried keeping a track of what we cook and it tends to be pasta - I'm so lacking in inspiration for quick and easy meals . .

Thanks

b*

mrsJef

Morning to you!

I'm still fairly new to this too but hope my thoughts may still help you! Since strating meal planning & budget plans etc the amount of time i actually spend thinking/planning/cooking food has actually been reduced. I have worked out a rough monthly plan split into workdays/weekends, checked if we are out anywhere and then thought up meals to cover the rest of the days. I put the 'staple' meals in first on the list i.e. 1 x Pasta bake each week, 1 x omellette/quiche each week, 1 x lasagne/spag bol each week, pick something take-away-ee for sat nights e.g. burgers/curry, then fill in the other days with new recipes or meals made from leftovers. Do a big shop for the ingrediants, then keep a little money for restocking bread & milk etc through the weeks. When I've been shopping I then bulk cook chilli/spag bol mix, soups, cakes etc and fill the freezer. When cooking each nights tea i take out from the freezer whatever i need for the next night so it can defrost or prepare pastry for quiche/veg for slow cooker etc. We dont stick strictly to the meal plan as in next tuesday on my list it says we'll have quiche, but on the day i might change it into omellettes (same ingrediants). Doing things this way i have cut out that horrible coming home & staring at the cupboards and only seeing the things you've already had 3 times that week. If things are ready to go in the oven when you get home then dinner can still be on the table within 20-30 minutes. Also slow cookers are fab, chuck the food in, turn it on when you leave for work, come home to dinner ready!

I've realised i'm probably going on a bit! Hope this helps though!
X

rachbc

We both work too and find meal planning nigh on essential. We eat together with the kids which leave a pretty small window of opportunity to cook and eat before the kids go to bed. I check the list and take anything I need out of the freezer before work then cook pretty much as soon as I get in. I plan for the whole month trying to give as much weekly variety as poss so once chicken dish a week, one mince, one sausage/ burgers, one pasta, one fish etc etc and try to have something new once a week too. On nights the kids have activities or I know there will be lots of rushing about it tends to be stuff we can reheat from freezer or one that will keep warm.

I also always make sure we keep ingredients for a few emergency meals incase we are just to busy/ can't be bothered - pasta and pesto, thai prawn curry, sausage and oven chips. Also the menu doesn't have to be strict- we jiggle and rejiggle the order through the month, or might make different things with the same core ingredients.

Phew that was a bit of an essay - sorry.

ceridwen

Not sure how this would adapt to a multi-person household - but:

I take a look say twice a week at what "use up" foods I have in and write up a list of these ingredients on one part of an A4 piece of paper and then (on the rest of the sheet) list ideas I have as to how to use them up. When I've done that I've usually got 3 or 4 things listed to cook for dinner.

Rather haphazard - but it works best for me that way.

If I'm still stuck for ideas after dealing with those use-up foods - then I go to a general recipe folder of basic recipes I've picked up from MSE (ie they're easy/use "standard" type ingredients and use cheap recipes) and pick out a couple from them for the rest of the week.

It tends to work pretty well for me to use recipes from the cheap general recipe threads on MSE - and I then "healthy-ise" them up by swopping unhealthy ingredients to healthy ingredients, eg:
- sugar gets swopped to honey
- white flour/rice gets swopped to wholemeal/brown
- vegetable oil gets swopped to olive oil

etc

You could have a session every so often (say monthly) of soaking and cooking up batches of dried pulses and bagging them up to stick in the freezer (in portions to fit size of household). That way - you could take out a bag of them at breakfast time and they will be thawed by dinnertime and ready to be the basis of a meal.

Another "I dont know what to do" tip - is I've also compiled a folder of "greengrocery" recipes - in categories according to whichever is the main vegetable or fruit in them - so I can just think "Potatoes - I've got some potatoes to use and I want them as a basis of a meal" and I will look up the potato section of this file for instance. You could extend this idea by thinking of maybe having a "Filler foods" folder maybe, ie:
- section for potatoes as main filler food of a dinner
- section for pasta
- section for rice
etc

It would take a while to compile a reasonable selection of recipes to suit you - but, once you've done it, then all you have to do is grab a folder and pick any page under the section you have chosen and there's a suitable recipe instantly to hand. It saves a lot of time hunting to and fro in recipe books or on websites...

zippychick

Hi Beckstar

I replied last night but my computer crashed in the middle of it!

Few threads which should help you ! I think the key to a lot of it is planning and organisation. Do you and your OH each have your own jobs to do and things to sort out?

meal planning - where do i start?

Meal planning how do you do it?

Save money by not meal planning

Can you do OS and work full time?

How to organise everything in my life OS?

I'll merge your thread with the first one later

thanks:A
Zip

maman

I'm with mrsJef and rachbc here. I started meal planning years ago to save me time when working.

My meal planning is not sophisticated at all. It's just a little box in the corner of my weekly shopping list with seven days listed and a meal beside each. Early meals tend to be the ones with most fresh veg, days crossed out when we're going somewhere, freezer stuff for later in the week. I write the 'meal plan' in the kitchen so that I can check what we already have and do my shopping list from that.

I find my supermarket dash is much quicker (and cheaper) when I know exactly what I need. Sometimes the freezer things (HM from occasional weekend batch cooking) fall off the end if plans change and roll forward to next week.

Little_miss_sunshine_2

I do it exactly the same way as Maman does, i.e. I write out the weekly meals on my shopping list.

I write my weekly shopping list out in sections eg. dairy, meat etc and it takes me no time to whizz up and down the ailses at the supermarket.

I think meal planning saves you so much time and I find we end up eating a better variety of meals.

MancMillyMolly

DH and I both work full time and we're the same in terms of being so tired when we get in you don't have the energy to decide what to make for dinner. However we now meal plan 4-weekly in advance and although it's still flexible (in terms of changing days around within the same week), we know exactly what we are having on which day. I do a basic shop for fruit, veg etc every week, but then have Mr T deliver the non-perishables each fortnight. Generally I will buy to the meal plan though, saves having things go off in the fridge

If the recipe is a new one for us to try I'll put the page number and which book it's from on the meal plan as well - that way DH can get cracking on making dinner if he's home first plus the kids always eat what we eat that way too. Using a SC helps alot too - if we know it's going to be a particularly long/hard day we'll have something that can be ready for when we get home. Always a win-win situation!

This way does mean I have to invest a little time in terms of planning, but once it's done I don't need to think about it again for another 4 weeks!!

MMM

ETA: By planning more than one week at a time I can also get a better picture of what I can use, in terms of leftovers, on other meals.