To ask you to talk to me about meal planning?

[Lougle]

Just that, really. Family of 5, 3 pre-teen/teen girls. I need to get a handle on our food budget and get more organised in the kitchen.

I'm a capable cook and the children aren't too fussy (although I have one committed carnivore and one vegetable crazy DD... An interesting balance!).

Do you use an app or a website? Do you write it all on a whiteboard? Do you plan a week or a month? Do you bulk buy and cook?

I usually meal plan fortnightly and stick to the list when shopping. 2 big shops a month.

Roughly for us it's :
Sunday - brunch then evening roast pork or chicken
Monday - roast leftover meat with rice veg noodles
Tuesday - pasta carbonara (broccoli & cream)
Wednesday - oven meal - bangers & mash or wedges
Thursday - oven meal -pork chops & oven veg/oven wedges
Fri- batch cooked bolognese so usually have a batch in freezer to just reheat
Saturday - pizzas or takeaway

Oven tray meals are our lifesaver, nigella & Jamie Oliver recipes have them see their websites (meat potatoes veg onto a tray & cook for 50 mins)

I also batch cook soups & stews and freeze when in the mood. Slow cooker also good.

Shop weekly, base meals on what’s “on sale”.only make meals guaranteed to be eaten. Huge Costco fan but have full storage capabilities. Portion out meals when batch cooking.

I plan for a month at a time and do a lot of batch cooking no app or anything like that but ds has asd and eats the same 7 dishes each week. As such our menu only changes twice a year from summer to winter menu. It does get very boring but routine is king

I meal plan and have an online shop delivered weekly. It bores the shit out of me while I'm doing it, but saves masses of time and energy through the week.
Are you going to expect your dds to share the load planning and cooking?

Are you going to expect your dds to share the load planning and cooking?

At this stage, no. DD1 has SN and DD2 has ASD. School is stress enough for them. DD3 (10) would be capable but I don't want her to feel like she gets all the jobs, so I'll just crack on for now.

I think you have to experiment for a bit to find out what works for you, because different plans suit different families.

I tried doing weekly and fortnightly but it just didn't pan out for me. Partly because my husband schedule can change on a whim so it's harder for me to do a long term plan.

Now I plan for two or three days at a time depending on what is going on. I have a vague idea of what sort of meal I want to cook on any given day. So a roast type thing for Sundays, but something easy and quick on Thursdays when we are always busy.

I think it's a good idea to take a good look at your store cupboard once a month to see what you need to keep in stock in terms of tinned stuff, herbs and spices, stock cubes and so on so you don't have to worry about those too much.

I think it's also nice to have a few meals you can make from tinned stuff without having to worry if you can't get to the shops.

I plan for the week. Meals are written on a bit of envelope from received post and stuck to the extractor with a magnet (classy, but practical). We are a family of 4, and each of us pick 1 or 2 of the meals so we all get something we want over the course of the week. DCs sometimes need a bit of guidance in their choices (they are 5 and 3yo) so we don't have 3 lots of spag bol plus a carbonara in one week! The meals aren't fixed to particular days though, so each day I pick what best suits based on mood/schedule etc. If the recipe lends itself to it I cook a bit extra for lunch the next day, although if I want to do this I have to make it very very clear to DH or hide it at the point of dishing up, otherwise it will go MIA...

I have a permanent meAl plan that is kept on my google calendar that is shared with other family members. There's 31 meals planned, one for each day of the month. On shorter months, those meals on day 29/30/31 kept skipped as necessary.
I do an online shop each week, but tweak it if anyone's due out, or whether I need to schedule a slow cooker meal etc.

When the shopping is delivered, I use it up according to the 'best before' dates of the fresh stuff. Eg even though lasagne is scheduled for 7th, I'll serve it on 5th to avoid mince going off.
Sometimes we get bored or go off of a meal, so it gets culled and we replace it with another recipe.
Most meals are cooked from fresh, well balanced and ready to serve in less than 30 mins.
Sounds a bit regimented, but it works for us.