Does anyone use a 4 week meal plan or similar?

[Gardenwalldilema]

I am beyond frustrated with meal planning and am considering a rolling plan. This has been met with disgust by DP / DC, but they can either come up with ideas or piss off frankly.
Does anyone use a rolling plan, is 4 weeks enough to avoid boredom? Any tips? Thanks

This has been met with disgust by DP / DC, but they can either come up with ideas or piss off frankly.

👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

I would personally do 2 weeks rather than 4 due to boredom, but I am a single person so it’s easier compared to feeding a family!

Not sure what happened to the emojis, it was supposed to be applauding your quote

No but I am considering it. I’m sick of trying to think of meals everyone will eat

4 weeks is plenty to avoid boredom. It probably give more variety than your used to. I bet you don't have more than 28 different dinners you use regularly.

I leave one day blank, to allow for flexibility if someone wants to do something specific or to go out.

I think it's time to take over a family chore from your DP and let him do meals from now on. Perhaps ask him to suggest a chore that currently takes him an hour a day, plus an hour meal planning, plus the shopping? And you can start doing that instead.

To actually answer your question, I can't plan more than a week in advance - I have tried but I have to do the shopping weekly anyway as we don't have a massive fridge, and even when I tried to do 2 weekly it all gets derailed middle of the second week by leftovers, spontaneous takeaways, forgetting to take something out of the freezer etc. So now I do it every Sunday looking at the fridge and have an online delivery every Tuesday.

What I DO do, though, is repeat meals that we like with flavouring variations. Eg I do a lot of all in one traybakes/one pot meals, so it might be chicken thighs on a traybake once a week with potatoes, but I will do it with a different veg (sprouts/broccoli/green beans/peppers/onions) and whatever seasonings I have to hand (honey mustard/smoked paprika/lemon garlic rosemary etc etc)

Yup I do 4 weekly rolling plan. Different meal for tea every night for a month.
Works well, keeps cost down. I never have that what's for tea moment.

Oh I I shop weekly for the ingredients and only do week nights so that creates the flexibility for left overs getting used up and spontaneous takeaways etc

I'm on week one of this, I wrote down every single family meal we have into sections veggie, beef, bacon & sausage, eggs, fish and chicken. Then started to pick from each to make up weekly meal plans and found it came up with 8 weeks worth of meals! 😳

However that's with the proviso that Saturday nights are usually pizza nights (which apparently never gets boring) and that one night of the week could be done by anyone.

It's the not having to think about it which I enjoy the most. Good luck.

Thanks for all the comments, I'm definitely going to give it a go.

I'm thinking to keep it quite loose, e.g curry / traybake / roast, that way I can hopefully use whatever is here or I fancy and it's not too prescriptive.

I'll report back in 28 days

I do four weekly plan. Much easier to plan batch cooking in too. Obviously it's not 100% rigid, but so much better than losing the will to live every week when it comes to writing the shopping list.

Yes I have in the past and it was great!

If I did a chilli I'd freeze enough for a second meal and plan it in in for week 3 or 4. Same for casserole etc

I kept two day per week free flexibility for leftover/ meal out or take away and one day from the store cupboard so a jacket potato or omelette etc.

Other meals were a mix of from scratch and convenience eg shop bough quiche or pie with fresh veg.