meal planning

[mei]

For those of you here who plan their meals: how do you do it?

I want to try planning better what I eat to take advantage of the farmers' market which is in town on Wednesdays only. I usually get my veggies on Thursday for the week, so I want to try and figure out a way to buy most other stuff at the market on Wednesday - but that takes coordinating.

Do you plan out every day? Or do you kind of figure out what the week will look like, but decide on the day what to eat of what you have bought? Shop once a week? How strict are you?

Ta!

[Deleted]

My sis does it, she plans out the whole week on Saturday morning, using store magazines and tried and tested recipes for inspiration. Or a diet book if she's on one. They stick to a day-to-day schedule. Very fun when I come in, take whatever is in the fridge and put it in the wok and screw up their meal plan.

I go to the market Tuesdays and/or Fridays and get whatever is in season and decide each day what to make based on that and getting the extra's as I need them during the week either at the Turkish supermarket around the corner or the "real" supermarket at the other corner. I wish I was a little bit more organised but this works ok for now. Sometimes the husband comes in with loads of food (eyes bigger then the stomach) and then we'll be stuck eating the same thing for a week as our freezer is too small.

[mei]

thanks leanut - complication is that i have a veggie box so I have no choice in the vegetables I get. but I also want to shop more often at the farmer's market which I why I think I need to plan more. So I know what to get on Wednesdays as just getting stuff I like probably won't match the vegetables I get the next day!

Will try and put together something for this week and see how I go.

[sprite]

i start by thinking about how much energy i'll have, or if something else is going on. in the uk, we had Kickboxing twice a weeek so one of those nights would eat leftovers and the other frozen pizza.

i generally start by choosing a protein for each day, and then building meals around that.

[Tulipana]

I also plan ahead, aves us a lot of cash at the moment! We get our groceries on Fridays and the organic market is also on a Friday, so that's convenient I guess. I thought there was a list of what was in the veggie box the week you're going to get it? You may check with the supplier!

For me it's always a combo of: what did I just buy at the veggie market and what is still in the cupboard was we buy some things in bulk.

[Deleted]

I do, but I'm finding it a nightmare at the moment with the baby now eating food and with the weather being all over the place!

Generally I plan a week ahead, Fri-Fri and get my food delivered on Friday mornings.

To make it easier I also stick to a sort of category per day and then just alternate the type of meals. For example:

Fri - South American food or Far East like Thai green curry, tacos, chilli etc

Sat - family TV dinner/movie stuff like homemade pizza, burgers etc

Sun - family Sunday lunch - roast/BBQ etc depending on weather

Mon - anything goes, but often left overs

Tue - fish dish

Weds - curry

Thur - pasta/italian style

Just thought I'd mention it as it might make the planning part easier.

Oh and I also try and double up ingredients so they all get used up that week, for example if I'm doing a veggie lasagne, I'll do a roast veg cous cous something a few days later to use the rest of the veggies up.

[mei]

cool, thanks for the ideas. I think I have recipes for the coming week sorted, and just got back from the market. so far so good....

[mei]

gah. fail!

my veggie box distributor put in different veggies (partly) than planned

[tzarine]

and leftover vegetables go into tomato stock for soup!

i go to the farmers' market weekly, well i try
i buy weekly sale items at the supermarket
when i am lazy, i use indian & thai cooking sauces to which i add fresh herbs & spices
i bake way more in winter
tzarevich cooks for us occasionally, which i love
tzar makes chili, pasta, salmon cakes

[sprite]

i love that part of the veggie box, "what's this veg and how the hey do i eat it?"

[riverhorse]

I sit down once a week, surrounded by a small selection of the hundreds of cookbooks and cooking magazines I have, and write up a "menu plan" for the week. I always ask EGB if he has any particular requests (and invariably he comes back with "roast beef with Yorkshire pudding"!!) and take it from there. I always put in my main shopping list online and have the supermarket deliver it to the door - so much easier than schlepping round the supermarket (and cheaper too, as I can keep a tally of how much I'm spending and leave non-essential things off for that week if it's getting a bit much).

Having said that, I need to make a quick dash to the supermarket this morning as my teenage visitors from Germany have been eating us out of house and home and I need to restock on bread, milk, breakfast cereal, the lot!

I have been thinking about changing my menu planning to be able to get one of those veggie boxes delivered, and then plan the menus around them, with a smaller online supermarket shop, but that will depend if it can mean any savings for us now that we're down to a one-income household for the next year.

My town here has a small but quite good market on a Saturday where I'll often go to pick up a lovely piece of meat to roast and some veg, but usually always with the actual recipe in mind, rather than being inspired by what I see there.

[sprite]

we did the math and our local mixed box worked out similar prices to the big supermarket. it had a base of 500g each potatoes, carrots, and onions which we could never get through, so we ordered it every two weeks. it really forced us to up our fruit/veggie intake and get creative. although at one stage i did start giving away bags of potatoes to house guests.

they also had really good bread and some interesting looking dry goods, but only ordered those a couple of times when we had coupons, as the bread was quite a bit more expensive. but very good.

[lekker123]

mei: have you heard of HelloFresh?

It plans your meals + provides the groceries you need. I use it most weeks (I skip when it has a lot of mushrooms/gorgonzola which my husband despises).

I have the 5-meal plan which is really affordable and truth be told, most weeks I don't use them all because I'm lazy but it's been very, very convenient and is a heck lot healthier than what we used to cook.

[mei]

lekker, yes, cookie pointed me to that as well. i've looked at it, but I don't think it matches with what I want.

the goal is not to plan my meals.

My goal is to eat more local food, (mostly) organic and with the least amount of (plastic) packaging realistically possible.
The local market provides all that - and that demands a bit more time/effort by planning. so I need to figure out how to do that. a hellofresh subscription (or similar) would defeat all of the above ambitions ;-)

[lekker123]

Most of the fresh items (veg, meat and dairy) are local and also mostly organic. Some of the dry (if it's Asian for eg.) might not be organic/local but yes, there's definitely some packaging (meat, some dry items and of course, it comes in a large cardboard box;) ).

No doubt the local market is better but as you said more planning and effort! (for me, I often have a lot of wastage so it defeats the purpose of 'saving'- and I mean that in ways other than just money)

[sprite]

annoyingly, when i was working a 5 minute walk from the local market, i couldn't get there. i was generally working through my lunch hour, so annoying but it was that or give up evening activities. or get fired.

[sashac001]

I often plan a few days ahead - either just thinking about what I have in the house or what I see at the store. If I have something and I'm not sure what I want to do with it I Google recipes. I did that a few weeks ago when a neighbor gave me some zucchini. My husband doesn't like it so I don't make I often. I ended up coming up with my own thing by using a few items from a few recipes.

[mei]

ok, coming back to this thread ... this attempt at meal planning isn't going that great. mostly: i need a LOT of time to sit down and figure out how to plan my food for a week. which needs to be on Monday or Tuesday night as then I'm able to see online which veggies I get on Wednesday - but I often have other stuff on on those nights.

How do the planners amongst you work around the time thing?

Eg, tomorrow I'm receiving (winter?)carrot, red cabbage, romanesco cauliflower, small roma tomatoes, rocket and celery (stalks). (not sure of all the names in English) most things don't combine well, so i'm spending much of this evening trying to figure out what recipes to combine this in - and make a list for additional groceries to get at the market. gah.

[Tulipana]

How can meal planning take you that long? It literally takes 5 minutes, 7 minutes if I ask H_L if he has something he really wanted to eat that week.

I'll do one for you:

- Brown rice with a sauce of curry (kerriesaus) chopped celery, onions and an apple (you can add tofu I guess). If you make lots you can freeze some.

- Veggie pasta bolognese with carrot and tomatoes

- Cauliflower with boiled kriel potatoes with their skins on, stirfry some onions and garlic to top the potatoes and maybe some veggie 'bacon' (is that called facon? Hm.. teehee!!)

- Make a meal salad with the red cabbage (I hate red cabbage, s you're on your own on this one, haha) But I guess with some balgur/quinoa a salad with red cabbage could defo work. Or a meal salad with the rocket, that could work too.

Tadaa!

Maybe you are overthinking!!

[mei]

yeah, i do overthink - because somehow the ideas for what I can do with it all that fits the week, and uses up everything (without having to be loads of extras) don't pop into my head unlike you! gah...

anyway, the planning I did do has all gone upsidedown due to unexpected late evenings home from work, and unexpected guests yesterday. oh well. try again next week

[Tulipana]

I'm happy to help out, just give me a shout :-)

[lizby1]

Ooh I like surfy's idea of categories of food. I am going to copy that, thanks. It covers most of the types of dishes we all enjoy, whilst allowing for change. A friend of mine literally eats the same thing every Monday, Tuesday etc - it would drive me bonkers.

[romily]

I plan my shopping around my meals, not my meals about what is available / come sin a box - that would be much harder I guess.

I only cook about three times a week - I am unable to cook one person portions, and it also seems a total waste of time. So I cook about three meals a week - usually something quicker middle of the week, and more complicated things Saturday and Sunday, and freeze portions - I bet I am the queen of frozen food! So the rest of the days I just have to briefly heat up a meal, but it's still homecooked. Best of both worlds! To be honest, I usually don't get home until 6pm at the earliest, on the days I go to the gym often not until 7:30 / 8pm - I just don't have the time and energy to get cooking then.

As to planning - I have a bunch of tried and tested staple dishes that I rotate around, and mix that up with new recipes that I try out. As I cook my main meals at the weekend I do a big shop either Friday or Saturday - in person, I hate online food shopping. Especially with veggie I much prefer to pick things myself! Plus I am good at sticking to my list, and with the selfscanning things it's easy to keep on top of the spending. I still pick up some additional items during the week though, mainly things like fruit or veggies - I need them to be fresh, I hate it when they go a bit mush or limp.

[sprite]

you are the queen of frozen food!
i also like the idea of categories. right now the category is, 'how much time to i have to cook today?' but i'd like to move beyond that.

we keep those tilda basmati rices on hand--we stock up when they're on sale. with one of those, we really just need to cook up some veggies and/or meat to mix in and done!

[Tulipana]

At the end of summer we had a huge bunch of garden herbs on the balcony and I knew they wouldn't last until after our vacation and I had some mascarpone left from a dish. So I just bought a bucket load of tomatoes and made about 8 portions of pasta sauce for two persons. It's just so nice to be able to make a quick and easy dinner with this. I'll just add some more veggies, some minced meat, chopped ham or tuna, cook some pasta and tadaa: lovely meal. I couldn't do this though without my big freezer, so I understand it's not possible for everyone.

[mei]

ok, because some of you (ie, tulip) have immediate ideas for meals - i have a complicated list of vegetables for this week. any help for dishes to cook is appreciated.

any bright (vegetarian) ideas for:
brussel sprouts
parsnip
pakchoi
sauerkraut
avocado
winter purslane (?, winterpostelein in Dutch)
garden cress

I can manage the top half somewhat. but this is a LOT for just one week, and none of it seems easy to combine...

(oh, and I have some carrot & mushrooms lying around which I should finish too...)

[Tulipana]

Here we go ;-)

Cook the brussel sprouts for 5 mins, drain. Then stir fry with some red onion, pinch of cumin and some garlic. Its lovely with bulgur (a favorite in this house!)

Parsnip mash with sauerkraut and veggie sausage? (I know, stretching it!) Or pasnip and purslane mash with veggie sausage?

Pakchoi, probably a stirfry of some sort (veggie nasi goreng??), you could add the carrots and mushrooms.

Garden cress and avocado in a salad with quinoa?

Gah, winter is hard veggie wise!

[sprite]

avocado is nice in stirfry too--it's what i do when i get some that refuses to ripen.

[lizby1]

Really sprite? I never knew that - I'm quite excited to try that!