Meal planning...which way works for you?

thriftlady_2

You could try making a week's plan based on categories of meals rather than specific dishes. That way you have a lot more flexibility.

For example

Monday - baked potatoes, cold meat/pie/smoked fish and salad

Tuesday - pasta and sauce

Wednesday - Universal pilaff (from the Tightwad Gazette) -rice/barley/bulghar/coucous + leftover meat/tuna/seafood/cheese/beans +veg
makes a different meal every time

Thursday - sausages/burgers/fish fingers/fried eggs + chips and beans

Friday - curry night

Saturday - pizza night

Sunday - a roast or stew

Curries and pizza can be varied endlessly, so you can make them with what you have to hand and they can be veggie if you want.

Vashti

Actually, my lot are not that bad really. I think I am quite an imaginative cook, but recently I have found the Asda yellow sticker ready meals to be such good value and they are so easy to bung in the oven...perhaps our meals have become a bit boring and a bit repetetive. As I said, I need to get my enthusiasm for cooking back.

Thanks all for helpful and informative posts!

Dotmatic

Vashti wrote: »

I am sick to the back teeth of trying to plan a healthy, tasty variety of meals seven days a week for two adults and two adolecents.

It seems like I have been standing in supermarkets for years...like Groundhog Day...trying to remember when we last had Cheese and Ham kievs and salad.

:rotfl: I can relate to this, I feel that my life revolves around trying to provide healthy, cheap meals for my family.

I find this works for me, I look in the cupboards to see what we have left on either Thurs or Fri, sit down and write on a pad of paper the days of the week with gaps to write in the meals. Thursdays is (home-made) pizza night, we have this every week so I put that down first, Monday I nearly always make a very large lasagne depending on what ingreds I already have, we make that last over 2 nights and pad out with lots of veggies and jacket spuds, that just leaves weds, fri, and the weekend, I fill in the gaps with other ideas, if we need extra ingreds they go onto a shopping list which I buy ready for the weekend.

I'm scouring the boards at the moment looking for new meal ideas.

I've recently taken up the grocery challenge as we'd fallen into bad habits buying items that weren't on the shopping list but things have to change so we'll see how it goes from now on.

Ytaya

Vashti wrote: »

Actually, my lot are not that bad really. I think I am quite an imaginative cook, but recently I have found the Asda yellow sticker ready meals to be such good value and they are so easy to bung in the oven...perhaps our meals have become a bit boring and a bit repetetive. As I said, I need to get my enthusiasm for cooking back.

Thanks all for helpful and informative posts!

Whether or not this works could depend on your personality type, but if you get tempted by the yellow stickers, try making a game with yourself. See if you could make the same thing cheaper, or healthier, or tastier, or whatever else floats your boat. I know it sounds like a kid thing, but it's the kind of thing I enjoy doing! It makes life more fun!

Mrs_Miggins_2

I started meal-planning last Autumn, and it's made my life so much easier! I have 2 DDs and DH, and this is how we do it:
Each member of the family gets one meal choice for the week BUT they're not allowed to have the same thing as anyone had the week before - that's 4 days done, then one busy night we alternate hm pizza and jacket spuds with fillings. That's week nights sorted. Sat is fry up brunch, and Sun is roast something.
I usually use "my night" (and sometimes DHs) to even up the week nutritionally or incorporate leftovers or introduce new meals.
We discuss this over the weekend, and I then do weekly shop on Sun or Mon.
I used to find cooking the evening meal a real drudge (even though I enjoy cooking) - it was the inevitability of it all. Now I can do it on auto-pilot, and the girls are happier to eat up our choices, as they think it's fair because they see us eating their choices.
:beer: for meal planning, OS and MSE!!

filigree_2

I don't know how to post a spreadsheet and I'm not even going to try, but here's how it goes roughly:

Chicken
Beef/Lamb
Pork
White Fish
Veggie
More chicken or other poultry if it's cheap
Oily Fish

And repeat every week. That way if I find cheap mince, it goes in the freezer until a "beef" day and we have spag bol. If I make a huge slowcooker casserole, it gets frozen in portions and dished up on the appropriate day till it's used up. I think we need to eat more fish and having a plan jogs my memory otherwise I'd drift towards the meat options.

Then I have columns on the spreadsheet for veg, accompaniment and extras eg:

Leftover chicken ---- onions and mushrooms ---- curry paste and coconut ---- boiled rice

In the last column I write the shopping I need to get. Oh dear, this sounds really nerdy!

The spreadsheet helps me to see what ingredients need using up, so if I buy eggs for yorkshire pud then I'll plan another meal to use up the remaining eggs.

Strictly speaking I suppose I don't actually plan the meals, I just buy what looks good and use the spreadsheet like a calendar to make sure we have a variety every week. This helps me pace our meals so we don't end up eating BOGOF sausages every day for a week. I know what we're going to have for every meal for the next three weeks and all I need to shop for now is occasional fresh fruit and veg, milk and bread etc.

I don't drive and I have Sainsbury's and Lidl on the doorstep, so it's convenient for me to shop nearly every day which is a) flexible and b) gives me more opportunities to rummage on the Reduced shelf

So - food first, meal plan second.