Meal Planning - how do you do it?

SunnyGirl

I have been meal planning religiously for just over a year now & it's saved money, time & arguments I write the plan out & put it into a plastic wallet that is permamently up on the cupboard door. Everyone knows whats coming up then & it allows the children, usually DS2 :rolleyes:, to make himself an omlette/beans & egg on toast/frozen leftovers etc. I plan for nights such as a Saturday when it only tends to be me, DH & DS3 as the others are generally out with their friends.

I started off by making a list of everything that we ate, even if we'd only had it a few times. Then I made a list of what was in the fridge/freezer/cupboards and tried to make at least 3 meals (that 1st time) from what was already in there. Then I chose meals to make, wrote the required items on the shopping list that I always do at the same time and wrote the menu up that way.

We don't have too many repeats over the course of a month the only things that crop up regularly are soup (fridge clear out ) which we'll have for lunches or serve as an evening meal with HM flatbread & a pudding afterwards. There's always a couple of pasta dishes on each plan as we all love it & I'm also feeding 6 on a fairly limited budget at the moment (DH lost his job a month ago).

I tend to have a rough idea in my mind of what I make with each thing, Such as minced beef - spag bol, savoury mince, mash & veg, potato hash & yorkie puds, chilli & mince & onion pie.

Pasta - pasta bake, HM tomato & bacon sauce with spaghetti, meatballs & spaghetti, tuna pasta (hot & cold version), carbonnara and lasagne.

Eggs/Cheese - Omlettes, on toast, quiche.

Potatoes - onion, bacon & potato hot pot, corned beef hash, sausage mash & beans etc.

Veggie - Dhal curry & rice, soups, stuffed peppers, veg quiches, risotto's.

Chicken - Roast, curry & rice, casserole, stuffed boneless thighs, grilled with new potatoes (Saturday nights usually as it costs less for 3 of us ).

Other meats like pork chops, lamb & other joints are used as a roast, a hotpot, grilled with potatoes & veg, curries & other recipes I find on the Grocery Challenge thread :T

I used to shop 1st then decide what we'd eat based on what I'd bought. I often ended up going to the shops a couple of times in the week as I'd need extras to make meals. With putting everything down on a shopping list now I don't need anything else for each meal. If I put potatoes on, for example, for a roast on Sunday then I'll do another meal with mash for later in the week so that they all get used.

Hope this helps & sorry for such a long post

purpleivy

I tend to plan meals around what we have in the freezer. Then to suit whether I'm around to cook, or whether we need to eat as soon as we walk in, whether Dh and veggie DD are around.


When I go shopping I pick up things to add to what's in if I see anything that looks a good deal, or it might be something from Costco, or occasionally get a lamb from a local farmer we know, when he has one.

Although I don't work many hours outside of the house, I still tend to do batch baking and cooking at the weekend or in the school holidays.

I have recently changed my shopping habits so that I now pop into Aldi on SUnday morning on my way back from taking ds to rehearsal. Bananas will last for the week for dh's lunch if I do that and they have enough basic foodstuffs to see me through in the way of fruit, veg and dairy.

WHen I need a few things that I can't get at Aldi then I will do a top up shop somewhere else. I think a lot of people do it the other way round and use Aldi as a top up shop, but I'm too idle as a rule and end up getting most stuff there (at Aldi).

I base the fruit and veg needs for the week on Super 6 up to a point, but it's a bit repetitive at the moment.

I find that by having the basics in the freezer and a good storecupboard and by going to ALdi most of the time I don't get tempted. For me it's both the price of stuff and the temptation that encourages me to overspend.

misskool

I plan meals not the days to have them. The meal plans are based on what's cheap and on offer at the supermarket when I get to them. Waitrose sometimes has excellent whoopsies so we may sneak in a whoopsie meal and move the planned meal to another day.

I batch cook on a Sunday (or I used to and I will again in a week or so when the kitchen is ready) and then we portion them out during the week. If it's not something we fancy, sometimes may dig something from the hidden depths of the freezer.

maryb

My meal plan looks quite dull and repetitive when I just list out the main headings (eg Wednesday eggs/cheese) but it works if you try and ring the chnages within those categories. I sat down and brainstormed every meal I actually like to cook and listed it on an Excel spreadsheet. Then I put the categories across the top and put an x for each recipe under the relevant heading. Some meals fall under more than one heading eg chicken casserole goes under chicken and stew.

The beauty of doing it on an excel spreadsheet was that I can sort by column so it gives me a complete list of all the recipes in each category. And I found I actually had about 50 recipes that are cheap and tasty and quick to cook but without writing them all down I would never remember them all. So this has made meal planning very easy while making sure we have enough variety

MrsE_2

maryb wrote: »

The beauty of doing it on an excel spreadsheet was that I can sort by column so it gives me a complete list of all the recipes in each category. And I found I actually had about 50 recipes that are cheap and tasty and quick to cook but without writing them all down I would never remember them all. So this has made meal planning very easy while making sure we have enough variety

I never thought of that:D

Really great idea:cool:

freakyogre

MrsE wrote: »

When I said a pasta night, I meant spag bol wk 1, lasagne wk 2, carbonara wk 3, other pasta dish wk 4, IYKWIM, so a variation within the variation.

I would like to try something TOTALLY new every week too:j

That's good if it's on different nights each week, it was a couple of other posts I was thinking of where it's Monday = pasta, for example. I know it can be changed, but I wouldn't like the thought of every Monday being 'pasta night' even if it were a different meal each week.

I'm going to plan to start in the new year so i'll have a few weeks to go through my many unused recipes and pick some out. I'm looking forward to trying them

My meal plan has had to change already as my pasta bake I made on Friday (where I halved a recipe supposedly for 6 people) has made 5 portions :eek: so I had to freeze some and in order to make space for that i've had to take something else out. I really need a proper freezer!

timmmers

I tend to plan 4 or 5 days a week and buy a main ingredient for those days to last 2 weeks...like last time I got
6 haddock fillets in batter for 2.50
4 Hollands pies for 1.80
6 chicken fillets for 3 quid

Adding chips or mash and rice etc ..and vegs to each means I can rotate the meals and have fresh vegs etc daily without being bored.

I don't use the whole lot in the 2 weeks usually, I pick up fresh but knockdown meat and save a few pies and bits so I get a more varied week later on.

I try hard to cook meals that won't require freezing but can be left in the fridge a day and used for other things...like frying mince and onions for a spag bol, use half there and then, the other half next day for a chilli or curry. Waste of time and energy freezing stuff to defrost it a day later I think.

Even rice..cook double what you need, use half...the other half for soup thickening or special fried rice (which works way better with cooled rice)...just had that for tea with chicken fillet leftoevers and prawns...awesome quick meal.

If I had a plan set in stone for what i was to eat for a month...I would come to a day when I fancied something else and would break the system. eating is at least partly supposed to be enjoyable IMO.

It's easier for me than for a family I think..but being flexible with kids would probably pay off .....they can be moody eaters like me I know :rotfl:

t

JillS_2

freakyogre wrote: »

That's good if it's on different nights each week, it was a couple of other posts I was thinking of where it's Monday = pasta, for example. I know it can be changed, but I wouldn't like the thought of every Monday being 'pasta night' even if it were a different meal each week.

IKWYM. That's why I work on an 8-day rota. My rota is on main ingredient rather than type of meal. My rota goes Day1: fish, Day2: beef or lamb, 3: cheese and/or eggs, 4: pork/ham/bacon, 5: fish (again), 6: vegetarian (usually pulses), 7: chicken (& other poultry), 8: offal/sausages/game

Lunches are much more haphazard and repetitive but this doesn't bother me too much since they're always fairly simple, quick, and easy. The main point of lunch for me is not to have a full meal but something just so I'm not starving by evening & so can't be bothered to wait for something to cook & just do cheese on toast instead.

I know quite a lot of recipes for each ingredient so my menus wouldn't be repetitive if I was still cooking for a family. However since I'm just cooking for one (me) there is a bit of repetition since I'll often have 2 or 3 portions to freeze for each meal I cook & my freezer just isn't big enough to hold 3 months worth of meals.

For those who feel that they're always eating the same things - meal planning helps with this - and save your meal plans from previous weeks so you can look back and avoid repetition. If you only come up with the same ideas, do as has been suggested and sit down & list all the meals you know how to cook - it often helps focus on this if you break it down into all the beef recipes, all the pasta recipes, all the Indian dishes, etc. - the spreadsheet idea was a really good one.

If you really do have a very limited repertoire plan on trying one new recipe a week and make a note of the ones that work - liked by family, easy to make, within budget, etc. You'll soon build up your repertoire.

maman

Like lots of others I do my meal plan around what I have in the freezer/cupboards with minimal shopping for veg, milk bread.

'Meal plan' sounds rather grand for me though as I simply draw a tiny box in the corner of my shopping list and write 7 meals there, when I get back from shopping I cut it off and keep it handy in case I forget.

My main advice is to have an inventory of what's in the freezer kept up to date and 'shop' from there. Most of what's in my freezer is whoopsied or offers.

I don't keep a storecupboard list as I just replace anything when the last one is used so it always has much the same in there. Must admit that I rarely have to replace things at full price as I always buy in storecupoard stuff when on offer too.

misscousinitt

Mine are on a spreadsheet and I tend to build the following months choices up as I go along. First I fill in what I have in the freezer/cupboards and then decide what I'm going to buy. Try to do new recipes at least once a month. Tend to put evening meetings and social events on the meal plan so I can decide what we will have.

Of course I twiddle with the final weeks meals as I'm coming up to it, and of course it doesn't always go to plan - but its almost there most of the time.