Mumsnet Talk

thats it really.

will have to remain skint.

I feel exactly like that about it. I know I ought to. We do end up virtually not eating at the end of some months. (I admit, we do blow money on takeaways/booze/stupid days out at the start of some months too). DH and I are complete goons where money is concerned. I love cooking and am reasonably good at it, dh has two home-cooked meals a day - but meal planning is just a bridge too far for me. I deeply admire people who manage to do it though.

Dh bit the bullet and did a meal planner for us for the first time in years - it's a fairly vague one with things like "soup and rolls" for lunch, which means he then has to decide what to make the soup with, but it really helps when it comes to shopping

it's a great idea and I wish I could get my head around it. part of me just refuses to try it cos honestly my life is one big routine and meal planning just feels like the final straw. my mum told me she used to do it and I should try it. I'll check out your link miaou, thanks.

lol ssd

It's true isn't it?

I feel the same about folk who religiously do areobics/play snooker/wash the car on a particular day.

Would have me being carted off in a strait jacket very quickly.

I am a brill cook (boastful but true) but I don't

ssd, you could have read my mind on this.

Even the thought of compiling a meal planner bores me to tears so to live /eat by one would finish me off.

I admire anyone who can compile one and stick to it though. I'd love to be able to but I just know I wouldn't.

oh god absolutely

i meal plan when utterly skint

right now am one narroe rung above utterly skint

and my god I will not meal plan

i do a general - this is what is up for this week and then just make whatever I feel like for the night iyswim - so a sort of meal plan but not rigid in that every day is planned.

Helps with the shopping.

I have just made some for the first time ever

actually I found that it made things more varied than before

before I would get to Sunday night and start making a list for Monday and end up putting all the same things down on it, while all my lovely recipes languished on a shelf

so I went through my recipes and put them on a spreadsheet which dh made me (he likes making spreadsheets ) with which ones were fish and which ones were chicken and which ones were meals for 2 with wine type meals and which ones were family meals

and then I sorted planners out for a few weeks and made shopping lists.

It does sound really sad I know but as I said we eat a much more varied and exciting diet now because I did it when I was feeling inspired rather than when I was feeling knackered and thinking oh god there's no food in, better get some, quick make a list before my eyes shut. Instead of having some of the same old favourites every week or fortnight there's over a month before they come round again

last night we had salmon en croute with a watercress sauce and there's no way that before that would have come out of the woodwork on a Tuesday, which is one of my most Stressed Days

moondog I can see the car thing but you do actually have to go to aerobics when the class is on

You won't find it so tedious or boring when you are spending the money you have saved elsewhere It takes no time I literally open the larder and fridge make a quick list of what is in there and then add to it to make set meals.V easy once its done thats it I actually find it quite interesting now to see what I can come up with to keep it varied.I did it religiously a couple of years ago and saved enough money for a trip to greece!In fact need to get back to that

oh yes ssd

I know it is sensible

but what next? pinnies? blouses? DH leaning on the fireplace with a cigar while I bring him his slippers?

It's a slippery slope

I don't have a pinny

or a cigar-smoking dh

I don't actually see the connection

it's just like keeping a diary or a to do list at work

I do mine wearing pvc knickers and a riding crop It works really well

keeping a diary

<shudder>

I could just have a calendar marked Days Left Until I Die

what's wrong with writing dates down in a diary?

is life more spontaneous and fun when you forget to go to meetings?

You see I think the expressin "menu plan" is a bit off putting. I just come up with three meals for the week, make double quantities of them all and make sure we have enough veg/pasta/rice for whatever I have got in the freezer.

So I have chosen for next week mushroom and parmesan risotto, roast chicken dinner and sausage casserole. I will make them on one of the four days Fri-Mon, probably the chicken on Sunday but not necessarily if we get invited somewhere.

Then the rest of the week we will have something from the freezer which doesn't need to be planned. ATM in the freezer I have veg soup, lasagne, spag bol, meatloaf, quiche, acapulco chicken.... so we can have what we fancy from that.

big part of me knows it would be sensible but I struggle with being sensible. hardly ever go out, get a hangover with a glass of wine, same dh for years, etc etc.

maybe not meal planning is my one treu act of rebellion

( now thats sad)

plus if my kids don't get chips and chicken nuggets they moan the head off me.

this week I've made stifado (they moaned and ate it under duress)

spag bol (see stifado)

cheesy pasta ready meal done in the microwave from Asda (they couldn't get enough)

tonight pork, mash, roast veg and apple sauce (they'll be heading for the hills with this...)

I'd meal plan if I thought the buggers would eat it...........

it's quite nice thinking 'what shall we have for tea tonight' and check on the list and think 'ooh that sounds nice' and all the ingredients are already in the fridge

rather than standing in front of the cooker holding a hunk of cheese and weeping

yes, agree, meal plam refusal is my one act of rebellion against the grown up world.

Anyway it is unneccesay as I always know what we are having.

Summer: lunch salad and jacket potato, supper, jacket potato and stirfry

Winter: lunch as above, dinner roast veg and jacket potato

so my life is easy enough really

I do sometimes play fast and loose with the stirfry/roast veg.

I live life on the edge and never meal plan

yes

too cool to meal plan, thats me

MN always educates me

I never knew that malt loaf was edgy, before, and now - refusal to meal plan

you are all too fast for me

it's a scary new world Franny

I have to admit it's moving too fast for me

I actually think that the better cook you are the less you have to do this. I do it mostly because my life would be a logistical nightmare if I didn't and also I'm a a fair to middling cook at best.

In addition to this I loathe cooking so much that having to ask myself what I am going to cook on a daily basis actually makes me pretty unhappy.

I do think that being a fair cook is not a bad achievment though given how much I hate actually doing it

i meal plan

i am not boring

what IS boring though is being skint, not having any money to do anything, arguing with dh about lack of money

etc

therefore i meal plan

simple as that

I can cook

I meal plan. Sometimes. The evenings always run a lot more smoothly when we know what's for dinner that evening rather than having a mad panic at 4:45pm.

There are always meals which are interchangeable if something comes up on a given day and we can't have what is planned. Flexibility is the key. Still, I don't manage to do it every fortnight as compiling it is a chore.

i like meal planning because i get bored thinking up things everyday and iused to get to 5pm and think "oh ill make spag bol" and the mince was still in the freezer

I aspire to meal planning. My sister has a pad which sits on her coffee table and has the week's meals written on it. She makes the list on Sunday and goes shopping on Monday. It makes me very

If I tried it, the pad would be buried under a pile of unopened post in about 10 seconds flat and we would be having pasta again

Did it for a few months but found I just didn't feel like sodding pasta on Thursady night

lol tinkers

you could be living dangerously and have it on friday instead...................................

I wasn't being rude about anyone's cooking Cappucino - sorry if it came across like that.

What I mean was some people like the really creative side of cooking. i.e they want to see what they feel like cooking that day and what is available by way of fresh ingredients etc and they don't find that daunting. That is 'usually' because they are very good cooks and they approach cooking in a creative way and like thinking about food generally.

That doesn't mean that if you meal plan you are not a good cook as there are other reasons to meal plan (eg budget and time etc). However I would image that a really creative good cook would find too much meal planning a bit restrictive.

I on the other hand do not wish to think about food more than absolutely necessary so I do all the thinking and planning in one go and then that leave me free to think about other things.

My food tastes pretty good and I can follow a recipe (most people can) but I do not place myself in the category of excellent cook, maybe because my mother was one (she is losing some of this now as she is over 80) and my cooking is nowhere near as good as hers. She loved doing it and it showed.

I did one recently and we're two weeks into trying it. Have changed the order of a couple of meals and we have missed a couple so I'll move them into next week, but it's the first time ever that I know we have food in the fridge to make a proper meal!! It is easier, even though I hated the idea of knowing in advance what we were going to be eating. Also, it means I can cook some of it at the weekend to cut down on cooking during the week!

You would want to have two vegetarians, one who hates any vegetables, one who will eat everything, and one who is eating low fat. Try to find 7 meals a week to keep all happy? Impossible, so its like a cafe, some crossover meals are possible, but 7 days a week!!, can be very stressful, no ease of just doing a one pot good stew or casserole, pain in the neck...the big treat is a takeaway at weekends...or going away and getting fed!! Bliss, inbetween makes standing in front of the fidge sometimes a nightmare!! And then to have the last generation droning on a bout how 'we ate what we were given, and you just went without if you didn't!!' Yeh great, that was then, and this is now...can we deal with reality please??