Aibu to think all meal planning is for "budgets" what do you eat if you're not on a really tight budget?

[hardhatonforthis]

I think we are stuck in a rut. I don't want to eat beans or parsnips every night?
Don't like hello fresh.
Shop at ocado because it suits us for a variety of reasons.

What are you eating this week?

I meal plan on a rolling one month menu because I hate deciding what to cook each day and because DS is autistic so he likes to know what we're having in advance (so he can refuse to eat it, of course!)

Me and DH are vegan, kids eat meat.

Every month is the same in general but with variations, eg different curries, pasta, soups etc.

I do a big Tesco delivery every fortnight then top up as required.

Next week is
Saturday - katsu curry, rice, broccoli and poppadoms
Sunday - pan fried salmon or veggies sausages, roast potatoes and kale
Monday - eggs or tofu scramble, potato waffles and peas
Tuesday - stir fry
Wednesday - Jacket potato with beans or chickpea 'tuna'
Thursday - Pasta and pesto
Friday - houmous and salad wraps
Saturday - another curry - tofu masala

If I didn't meal plan we would probably have pasta or toasties every night.

We meal plan for two reasons:
-not eating crap or buying takeaways (we decided to reduce takeaways as I'm trying to lose a few kg)
-less waste. We buy exactly what we know we'll actually it, rather than bin it

I've just bought this book in the effort to be more organised

https://www.amazon.co.uk/7-Day-Basket-basket-week-meals/dp/1472263634/ref=mpssa111?adgrpid=71400367390&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpNCKpak5gIVDbDtCh26QwRsEAAYASAAEgL3afDDBwE&hvadid=335521187179&hvdev=m&hvlocphy=9045081&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=16797492346527849729&hvtargid=kwd-659663978612&hydadcr=201051779377&keywords=7+day+basket&qid=1577949322&sr=8-1

@CaptainPovey this happened to us

I was very very very sick as in bed bound for almost a year. I have some unrelated to meal planning pointers:

Sometime I could go out of the house in which case my husband would bring me to the foodhall at Marks and Spencer and take me to the fruit aisle and also to the sandwich and the ham and salami bits and ready meals
I would just point at anything I wanted (often I didn't get to eat it, back at hospital)

Otherwise-
He would go and take photos of the walls of food and I would look on phone zoom in and say what to bring home

Or he would get a selection in and then take a photo of our fridge and the counter at home and I would tell him what to bring me at hospital or upstairs depending on where I was

Marks and Spencer Do some smaller portioned food like half portions now and they didn't do them when I was sick but they are good for people who can't eat much.

Please don't forget to take care of yourself
My husband really really neglected himself and three years later although I am better his mental health isn't very good and I feel so guilty xxxx

I meal plan so that we only have to shop once a week. Our budget is £100 a week for family of 4 so not particularly tight. This week it is
Roast beef
Slow cooker chicken curry
Burgers
Fajitas
Beef and guineas stew
Chicken kievs
Veggie chilli

Gammon and roast veg
Chips with chilli and cheese
Lemony gnocchi
Shepherds pie
from www.gousto.co.uk/menu

also
Noodle soup from the Thai bar
Yorky from the cafe
Chocolate rolls from the bread van

I meal plan based around whatever the Aldi or M&S fruit and vegetable deal is. This helps me to have different meals each week, introduce a variety of fruit and vegetables into my diet that I wouldn't normally eat and ensure I get my five a day.

This week at Aldi the deal is celery, red grapefruit, peppers, spring onion and radishes.

I usually put the ingredients into the BBC Good Food website menu search and see what recipe suggestions are thrown out.

I don't budget because I don't need to but I meal plan as I don't have a car so going to the supermarket constantly isn't an option. And there is only DS and I so I don't spend loads anyway.

Next week we are having chilli (which will last us 2 days as I make portions for 4 people), carbonara pasta with salmon, garlic chicken with new potatoes and veg, and a takeaway on Friday. Saturday will be something quick. Sunday I do a roast.

I do meal plan with a budget but its actually not the reason i started.

Basically we were stuck in a rut eating the same meals, neither of us were natural cooks so had a limited selection.
Meal planning for us involves hunting new recipies or saying "i really fancy xyz" so that our diet is varied. i can see if all we've planned to eat other the next week is pasta so can add something different in the middle. Its stops that vacant staring at the fridge or people asking me whats for dinner

It was also to stop me me buying 8 different curries just because i fancied curry the day i went shopping.

The second biggest benefit for us is less food waste. Ive never been the sort of person that can just build meals in my head while shopping, or can open a fridge and think of a dish with the contents so without meal planning i was forever ending up with odd bits that didnt really go together eg picking up a seasoning packet but none of the ingredients needed as id already passed that bit! Meal planning also helps us use things better so if something only needs a pinch of fresh parsley, having a plan for the rest of it. As 2 people we found the waste before of using half a tin etc was high.

Equally i useit to give me maximum time before i have to go shopping again eg cooking double and freezing, using longer life ingredients last. We tend to do one shop every 3 weeks.

Our meal plan for the next weeks includes "nice" foods not chosen for budget

I meal plan for our family. We have a generous “budget” of £200 max a week for food. The budget is because we always have a “budget” to plan where our money goes and gets allocated (savings, investments, holiday fund, diy or other house fund, mortgage, cars, entertainment, etc), but we’re living on salary of over £150,000

We’re mainly following Slimming World meals and choose according to what we want to eat as opposed to price of ingredients. We’re choosing more fish and vegetarian meals to be more healthy - that’s our meal planning. I also write out and put on our fridge the dinner meal plan for the week though mainly that because DH will choose meat/chicken for lunch when we have a vegetarian dinner planned as I’m still trying to educate him that essential protein “his body needs“ comes from other sources than just red meat or chicken.

We do an asda online order every week as it saves time I meal prep to save waste and to stop us from eating as much shit or takeaways.
I have an order coming tonight
Friday- Vegetable and lentil soup with tiger bread
Sat- Salmon, herby potatoes and salad
Sun-roast beef dinner with all the trimmings
Mon - lasagne and salad
Tues- chilli (using leftover lasagne sauce) with rice
Wed - stir fry
Thurs- freezer tea and chips

@hardhatonforthis I'm sorry you were ill for so long. My DD has very very severe ME and has been bed bound now for almost 7 years. Food is very hard for reasons of hypersensitivity to taste and smell and exhaustion. When I get to go out ( rare because she cannot be left alone due to her unpredictable fainting and vomiting) I take photos of food in say Waitrose ( our nearest shop) and send them to her and she replies x to the ones she will try. Every day at home I take a photo of what I thunk she might be able to manage and send it and she x if she will try. She's been NG tube fed. We hate food now tbh! I'm glad you are not so sick now. I'm convinced when DD revivers from ME she may have food issues due to the NHS crap she faced when they insisted she was anorexic because 'people with ME don't have food issues'.

Like others I plan meals to avoid waste. We have a veg box and I find it much easier to sit down once a week and plan the week’s meals around what is coming. Weekdays are veggie, meat/fish at weekends. I look online for recipes as well as using recipe books which use vegetables as starting point, eg Nigel Slater’s Tender.

@CaptainPovey food and feeding my DD brings me to tears many many days, I now know the calorific value of almost every food in the planet. One day I had a paid for carer in so I could get some time for myself. I broke down in tears in Waitrose because they no longer stocked the only thing I had been able to get her to eat for the last two weeks! I now mainly do it all online so I can see what they have in stock. I totally feel your pain.

I meal plan and am not on a tight budget - just makes shopping more efficient.

This week:

• beef shin ragu with pappardelle
• grilled lamb loin with fattoush
• vegetarian chilli
• miso glazed salmon, sushi rice, and sautéed greens
• Serious Eat's Detroit style pizza
• vegan japanese curry

I subscribe to the New York Times which has a great food section, including a "What to Cook this Week" and "What to cook this Weekend" which are great for ideas. I also peruse Serious Eats for their ideas (all their recipes work out really well). Prevents getting into a rut.

I meal plan to save time, money and have less wastage. It also allows me to see that we are eating a variety of foods and getting enough vegetables in our diet. We had a leg of lamb, roast potatoes, carrots and parsnips on new years day. The rest of the week will be dhaal and rice, hake, kale and potatoes, veggie lasagne and chicken curry with naan to finish off the week. Any extra or left over portions are usually frozen for when I do not want to cook.

We aren't on a tight food budget but meal plan for lots of reasons, including getting variety, range of food groups, time efficiency and avoiding waste - what's not to like? Really helps to plan ahead for the nights DH and I are both at work and we have about a 30min window to get something decent on the table for the kids.

This week's meal plan includes:
Prawn curry, dhal, rice and naan (double portions to reheat later in the week)
Plaice fillets in parsley and parmesan breadcrumbs, new potatoes, broccoli, carrots
Harissa chicken traybake
Linguine with bacon, borlotti, tomatoes and crème fraiche
Chicken tacos

I don't meal plan, but I have a really well stocked storecupboard so can create an infinitive variety of meals depending on what fresh food we have in stock and what needs using. Maybe only once a week will I think ahead and know what we're having tomorrow.
I do a big shop for storecupboard foods about once every 3-4 weeks, and top up with fresh stuff from our local market or town centre supermarket whenever I'm passing it - maybe 3 times a week.
I almost never throw any food, fresh or cooked, away. Just use it up as it needs using.

Yes, we keep our cupboards well stocked so all we actually plan weekly is meat/fish/veg. It also means we can chop and change easily if we don’t end up fancying one or two of the meals we had planned to make.

@hardhatonforthis here is our meal plan for next week:

Chicken bake with lemon/garlic/thyme/olive oil and onions, peppers, courgette, tomatoes, with couscous.

Hot charred cherry tomatoes with yoghurt, along with houmous, falafel, grilled pita and a salad

Lamb tagine with preserved lemons and apricot, with rice

Baked sea bass with puttanesca sauce and pasta dressed with lemon, parsley and olive oil

Puff pastry mini tarts with a variety of toppings, with pear wrapped in Parma ham

Steak and jacket potato

Lamb chops from Sainsbury's butcher counter totally lush ocado do restaurant thick steaks not too expensive either. Some Diane sauce chips and salad. Sainsbury's do battered potato slices in the veg section which are lovely with steak too. Or some mussels and white bread and butter. You get them in the bag soo easy to prepare. Salmon or beef wellington. Maybe a nice bit of sea bream.

Also the prosciutto and mushroom finest pizza is like it's straight from a pizza oven in Italy

We meal plan so we can shop weekly, to avoid waste and so dh knows what he's cooking (he does almost all the cooking.)
A typical week might include;
Vegetable chilli burritos
Fish pie
Lasagne / bolognaise
Chicken or chickpea/spinach curry
Prawn or chicken risotto
Falafel, couscous and flatbread
Beef and ale pie
Singapore noodles
Baked Gnocchi, bacon and tomato sauce.
Some budget meals, some more extravagant. I couldn't be doing with getting home every night and trying to decide what to eat.

We don't really meal plan but I buy meat and veg that I know can be versatile (e.g. I'd typically buy things like chicken breast, pork fillet and beef mince) then I can make a meal out of it by supplementing from the freezer and cupboard.

Tonight is sausages and potato dauphinoise. Lunch was ham and cheese crepes with cucumber and tomato salad. Yesterday was quiche for lunch with salad. Have also had lasagne and pasta with the leftover mince in sauce.

No real financial budget, more of a time budget. We plan meals so that we know what we need with minimal waste and no faffing of what to cook before we need to get the DCs out to where they need to be

Have you had a browse of the Ocado recipes section? There are some tasty looking recipes in the winter warmers section and from the ingredients list, plenty are definitely higher budget meals. Not sure if supermarkets still do them, but Waitrose used to have laminated recipe cards you could take away and they had the shopping list at the top.