Meal planning

[Night Elf]

So I'm thinking of going back to meal planning, especially now that I have a larger base to pull dinners from. I've been using Hello Fresh for quite a while now and I do have some I've remade on my own. I get two boxes a month and those are only 3 nights so I have lots of days in the month that need to be filled. 

 

Once upon a time, I just wrote out our dinners on a piece of paper and hung it on the refrigerator. I'm going to need something more than that this time. I need to know in advance what food items I'll need to prepare these meals because right now I'm just going to the store 1-2 times a day. 

 

The meal planning forms I'm finding online include breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. That's too much planning. We don't have a formal breakfast and lunch, except maybe some weekends since DH is home all day.

 

How does your plan work? I'm thinking I need to have a finished plan by Saturday because we do our big weekly grocery shopping Sunday morning. I am also thinking of having so many original weeks, then rotating them so we aren't having the same dinners every week, which is what we were doing before I started cooking what I call real meals. Before we would have one meat, potatoes or rice, and a canned veggie. We pretty much had the same dinners the same nights of every week. I need more variety than that.

[regentrude]

If I were shopping only once a week, I would buy 7 proteins (meat, fish, eggs, tofu), a large assortment of whatever vegetables are looking good/in season/on sale, and replenish staples of starches (potatoes, pasta, rice, grains) and staples of other ingredients I always have on hand (oil, vinegar, cream, butter, nut butter, etc)

Then at cooking time, I would select a protein, a starch, and whatever veggies go with it and cook that in whatever way sounds appetizing to me. Simple. No "plan" needed.

Edited December 28, 2017 by regentrude

[Night Elf]

If I were shopping only once a week, I would buy 7 proteins (meat, fish, eggs, tofu), a large assortment of whatever vegetables are looking good/in season/on sale, and replenish staples of starches (potatoes, pasta, rice, grains).

Then at cooking time, I would select a protein, a starch, and whatever veggies go with it and cook that in whatever way sounds appetizing to me. Simple. No "plan" needed.

 

But I want to cook from specific recipes. Before Hello Fresh, we did pretty much what you're suggesting, but we had such a limited menu. Once a week we had broiled chicken, broiled pork chops, steak, spaghetti, and sometimes tacos. We bring in food three times a week because we just didn't have any other dinners we wanted to eat. We were in a bad rut. That was why I joined Hello Fresh and it's been wonderful to eat such nice prepared meals that are more than one meat, one starch and one veg on separate portions of our plates. Spaghetti was the only regular food we had that was a one dish meal. Once in a blue moon I'd make shepherd's pie but it wasn't a favorite. I need a better recipe.

[regentrude]

sorry, no help. I don't use recipes. I also have a picky eater and always cook modular meals so every family member can select which components they want.  That does not mean it has to be boring, because there are dozens of ways to prepare a certain cut of meat, or a particular vegetable, add sauces, spices etc.

[Annie G]

Since you have a stack of Hello Fresh recipes why not just start making those a couple times a week to round out the family favorites? Also, start by making  a list of the foods your family enjoys, including what you choose when you get takeout.  So if you like Panda Express Orange Chicken, look on Pinterest for a copycat recipe.   But start with a list of what your family likes. 

 

I would suggest branching out from canned veggies because there isn't enough variety there.  

[Night Elf]

I cooked modular meals for years because of the kids, specifically my Aspie. We pretty much stuck to what he'd eat and we tucked in sides that appealed to us but it wasn't a variety. Like we'd have mashed potatoes several times a week. Since ds, my Aspie, started working and wasn't eating with us, and dd was away at college, it was only DH and I cooking and eating and we've been having a ball eating different foods. I plan to stick with that. We're not finished with Hello Fresh yet. We even stopped eating out 3 times a week and now only do it once a week. Ds eats out nearly every night but he pays for it with his own money. I no longer worry about making sure I have food for him. He said he's always preferred to eat out. He ate what we cooked at home, as long as he liked it, because he had no money of his own. So now he does and he just eats differently from me and DH.

[Night Elf]

I am actually working on meal planning right now.  Like you, I can't just whip up whatever looks good, because I will ALWAYS be missing something.  In fact, I actually DO plan a breakfast, lunch, dinner and even dessert, exactly because I need to know what food items to buy.  I also plan my grocery list to the dollar too.

 

Now, if you aren't wanting to plan breakfasts, you could just leave the breakfast and lunch parts of the templates blank.  On weeks where I just don't have the time, I do exactly that.

 

Right now I am actually working on planning out six full weeks of menus.  Which yes, is a lot, but this is my week off school and if I just get it all down now, it saves me time during the weeks we are doing school.  (tomorrow I am going to plan 6 weeks of school too.)

 

First, I just took out paper.  On it I wrote six categories.  Chicken, Beef, Pork, Turkey, Pizza, Pasta, and Seafood.  I try to do one of each of those every week.  So for 6 weeks, I wrote 6 dishes under each.  So for example, under beef, I have Meatball Stew, Pot Roast, Roast Beef Manhattans Marlboro Man Sandwich, Corned Beef, and Swiss Steak.  I like to try lots of different recipes, so I scour my recipe books while I am doing this.  So now, I have a total of 42 dinners written down.  They are NOT all different.  I have chicken noodle soup down three separate times because Dh LOVES to make it in the winter.  Most weeks, we just have regular pizza on Fridays, but occasionally I like to change it up and do something like a deep dish pizza or my mom's pizza burgers.  So some are certainly just basic dishes that we have and enjoy often. 

 

If all you are wanting to do is plan 7 dinners, then you could just stop there and maybe go in and add some side dishes too.

 

For me, once I have all those dinner dishes planned, I go and assign those in my planner template (just pulled from excel).  I do this so that I can work around other things we might have going on-holiday get togethers with family, or days that DH is off work and wants to grill, or whatever.  Once I have all the dishes assigned to days, I go back and plan the breakfasts and lunches.  Most of those are similar every week.  Sundays we do a big breakfast, usually like bacon and eggs and pancakes and hashbrowns, etc.  But during the week, it's usually just stuff like cereal or pancakes reheated/toasted on Sunday.  I still need to make sure I have enough cereal though, so thats why I write it down :laugh:   Same thing with lunches.  Just stuff like nuggets, peanut butter sandwiches, etc....but I need to make sure I buy enough bags of nuggets, have enough bread, etc. 

 

 

That probably is more complicated than what you are asking about. 

 

Actually it helps a lot. Thanks.

[OrganicJen]

Since we make most everything from scratch, meal planning is essential for us. What I do is... I do a day of baking so I can make several loaves at once for the week...I look over the veggies we have like now we have beets and turnips and parsnips waiting in the ground for us so I plan recipes that will make use of anything like that we have available....of those recipes, any that are casseroles I double and freeze one and if it's something like a roast chicken with the root veggies from the garden I make 2 chickens at once and use one to just eat and the second is for soup or stew or something like that the next day. Sometimes it's a roast instead of chicken but I usually still cook 2 at once and that is usually our main meat for the week since we don't eat it every night and cooking 2 at once gives us enough for 2 or 3 days. I usually do pasta of some kind at least once a week so I make the noodles ahead if I can when I'm cooking something easy like a roast so that on the day I make a pasta dinner the noodles are done and waiting in the fridge. Since I do at least one meal a week that I double and freeze, then one night we can have an older freezer meal from the fridge too. That all feeds us for most of the week so usually I just have to choose a couple of other recipes that I just choose from what looks good the day I'm making my list. Then lunch is sandwiches with the bread I baked the one day so that's easy. So in reality it's really easy to plan in one day since I basically choose a meat to make 2 of at once, a casserole to double and freeze one, a pasta, and a couple of other recipes which vary each week. What makes it work for us is some things follow a formula where I double up on cooking to get more out of one night of cooking so having a formula that works for us like that makes it easier to plan so I know 2 night at least I'm making double of something etc and the recipes can change but it still is easier than planning 7 totally different meals.

Edited December 28, 2017 by OrganicJen

[OrganicJen]

Oh...and breakfast and snacks...about once a week I do a big batch of homemade granola that we eat usually with yogurt for snacks, and I flake a batch of oat groats and make a muslii type mix we have for breakfast some days. Other days is pancakes or waffles from random grains I decide to mill for that week, or eggs and bacon, or just steel cut oats I do the night before in the crock pot.

Edited December 28, 2017 by OrganicJen

[OrganicJen]

This is another reason I have to plan it all out....So that on Sundays, I can go through and whip up whatever bread or bagels or cookies that I want for the week all at once.

Yes it is so nice to just do it all at once. I usually use the same dough for a lot of things so if I need buns for a meal I can do buns to replace one of the loaves if I need.

[OrganicJen]

Plus we always have things we just get each week like fruits etc that are for snacking. Apples and citrus usually. So I don't put those on the list. We tend in the winter to eat things we've canned or dried or frozen from our garden as much as we can too. In summer the bulk of our diet is fresh from the garden food.

[OrganicJen]

Another thing that helps me is that I use a big legal pad to make my list so that I can have space to make my list in sections so that things are separated by food group. Then I go around and get out the meats from the freezer I need for that week etc and cross off each item as I find it in the house... I shop my house first, then what's not crossed off I get from local farms, then what's left I get at the store if I can't make it.

[Zinnia]

I use a cheap spiral notebook. One side is my meal plan, and the other is my grocery list. As I plan out a meal, I write the ingredients on the grocery list.

 

I do try to look at my week for any late nights, meetings, etc, so I can plan easy things for nights that need it and the 4 hour roast can be a different night. I use recipes, and I will just not down where it came from on my meal plan (like the magazine page) to make it easy.

 

Before I sit down, I have an idea what we have a lot of (Oh, we didn't eat all the lettuce this week, I should plan a mai n dish salad early this week), and I look at the sales flyers (oh, Kroger has pork loin for 99 cents/lb, let me fi nd a recipe to use that).

[Night Elf]

I don't store a lot of food. I have on small pantry and one refrigerator that has the freezer on the bottom. It's just not a lot of room. We do have things that last a while like oatmeal, canned goods, some boxed snacks, cheese, peanut butter, stuff like that. But for the most part I have to buy a week's worth of food in one go unless I don't mind going to the store every day which is usually not a big deal. It's only a few minutes away. 

 

I like the idea of shopping sales. I haven't done that in years! I used to coupon back in the day when stores were giving double coupons. I saved a good bit of money. Then the site where I was getting the lists of what foods were on sale that week and what coupons to use and where to find them seemed to stop showing things that we used. I was using the site less and less, so I just canceled my subscription. I rarely use coupons now. We just go in, buy what we need without looking at the prices, and are done with it. 

 

I'm getting a Hello Fresh box next week. I think I'll work on a meal plan starting tonight and going through Sunday of next week.

[Carrie12345]

I don't understand the need for a complex system.  That's not a judgment. I have overly complex systems for other things, lol, just not this one.

 

Piece of paper.  List of 7 (or however many) dinners.  List of needed ingredients for those dinners.

I do use Alexa through the week to catch the odds and ends we think of, and then I ask her what's on my list so I can add them.

 

My store's website will let me shop right from the circular, so I rely on that to fill in breakfast and lunch items. If I decide not to place an online order that week, I'll print out the list it created and bring it to the store.  I usually shop my own produce, though.  I like to see what looks good that day.

[Sandwalker]

I use a cheap spiral notebook. One side is my meal plan, and the other is my grocery list. As I plan out a meal, I write the ingredients on the grocery list.

 

I do try to look at my week for any late nights, meetings, etc, so I can plan easy things for nights that need it and the 4 hour roast can be a different night. I use recipes, and I will just not down where it came from on my meal plan (like the magazine page) to make it easy.

 

Before I sit down, I have an idea what we have a lot of (Oh, we didn't eat all the lettuce this week, I should plan a mai n dish salad early this week), and I look at the sales flyers (oh, Kroger has pork loin for 99 cents/lb, let me fi nd a recipe to use that).

This sounds like something I could do, thanks. :)

[Sarah CB]

I do seasonal planning and plan out three weeks of dinners. I look at what's going on during the week - some days I need easier dinners or one-pot dinners because of what is on the calendar. I try to have a balance of different kinds of foods. I also plan to have more "fun" meals on weekends. 

 

I make a grocery list for each of the weeks and print out the entire schedule. This gives me three weeks of unique meals before I cycle through them again. It's enough variety to not be boring, but it's not a lot of work to plan out and it also allows me to use up any weird ingredients that I might need for certain recipes.