Websites for meal planning- anyone know any good ones?

[cottonreels]

Ive been meal planning for dinner for the last 3 or 4 weeks (with resourceful cook) and Im loving it grin.

Sooo good to know what Im buying in, whether I need to get anything out of the freezer and its stopped that "oh feck, its 5.30, littlecotton is starving, what can I make with red pepper and cottage cheese?"

BUT

The meal planner Im using has its limits-

Its for 1, 2 or 4 persons (what about 3?)

The first 4 dishes out of 7 cannot be changed and theres often one in there that one of us wont eat. (biggest problem)

The estimated cost for the meals I'm finding is way out.

Also I want to know in advance that the meal can be frozen _ I often want to double up and freeze a batch so I don't have to cook every night. My freezer is not big enough to double up on every meal. OK, I could do that by hand but then its not really saving me time anymore.

I think Id be a bit hopeless at doing my own meal plan from scratch.

So. What site/book do you meal planners use? If youre making your own up, is there some place where everyone downloads theirs so you can copy someone elses?

[TheArmadillo]

I don't a meal planning site, just a general recipe site www.bbcgoodfood.com/ you can search by ingredients and I save them in my binder (you have to sign in for that) in categories, so every so often I do a search for recipes on something one of us fancies (e.g. pork or salmon) and pull together ideas. I also search for ingredients I want to use up e.g. I have a load of breadcrumbs in the freezer so looked for something to do with them.

www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/ this is a site with good ideas for leftovers and tips on planning.

For a week I work out any requirements (e.g. tuesday needs to be quick and easy as dh is going out early, sunday needs a light lunch as we're going out for SIL birthday in evening), and then anything I have in cupboards/fridge/freezer that needs using up, anything that's on a particularly good offer (sainsburys had half price chorizo this week), plus something new. I make sure anything I buy will be used up (e.g. chorizo again - I will do 2 chorizo meals to make sure none left over as each recipe only uses half a sausage). I detest waste/throwing food away. Leftovers make great frozen ready meals or lunches for the next day.

I know others work around one fish night, one pasta night, one veggie night etc.

Also search threads on here for more ideas.

[TobyLeWolef]

I mealplan by myself, but I use a lot of ideas from Resourceful Cook.