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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??