To struggle with meal planning this much?

[Freecuthbert]

I'm a good cook and enjoy it, but I find meal planning hard work, can't really get my head around it. I have to research recipes and work out the right amount of ingredients for our household, write a list of what we need. But once I go through all that, pick what we want that week etc, it all ends up as odd bits of this and that ingredient and just not feasible at all. The food shop would cost me a bloody fortune! So then I have to try and whittle it down and plan the meals strategically so they share ingredients etc so things don't go to waste and I'm not overspending. It takes me hours tbh... I feel like I'm doing it all wrong.

I can't even look in my cupboard at bits and think up of meals out of that. I'm rubbish at remembering recipes as well! I have to look everything up, it's a nightmare. We're not the kind of family who could eat the same meals week in week out. If we ate the same thing every week I'd go right off it. We have some tried and tested favourites but they're more monthly than weekly if anything... wouldn't be favourites anymore if had more often than that tbh. And we love trying new things often.

I'm using gousto at the moment for 4 days a week because of this, so I only have 3 days a week to struggle with meal planning. But those 3 days now end up being a cop out. Mixture of fending for ourselves out of the freezer, takeaway, dinner at family's, quick stir fry, steak and chips, picky bits. We just have one child who is 12 months old, so it's easy to sort something out for her dinner when I'm not cooking properly... don't worry she doesn't have to cook a frozen pizza for herself or tuck into a medium rare steak!

Is it really meant to be this difficult? Or am I meant to just suck it up and have a set rota of meals that simplifies things (but loses a lot of joy for us), or spend hours on meticulous meal planning? Is there a secret app that basically plans all our meals and creates a shopping list? Honestly I don't mind cooking from fresh every night as long as the food is tasty and not monotonous.

Would love to shave some money off our food bill tbh, we are low income but not struggling and I'm frugal with lots of other things.

What are some of the meals you make, o what kind of food do you like? I don't understand what is getting wasted? Do you have a spice rack? A tin cupboard and a fridge? You don't need much.

We tend to have the same simple meals during the week as we don't have as much time then at the weekend, make something a bit fancier or more indulgent. I meal plan on a Tuesday night and order online shop from Tesco click and collect. I tend to use the same veg each week, it lasts for at least 2 weeks in the fridge so don't always order it every week, what's left helps me plan the week after - onions, garlic, carrots, brocolli, green beans, peppers, mushrooms, salad, cucumber, tomatoes. So this week...

SUNDAY - roast chicken etc
MONDAY - chicken satay noodles with stir fry veg
TUESDAY - Jerk pork steaks, coconut rice and green beans
WEDNESDAY - Spag Bol, garlic bread
THURSDAY - Beef mince tacos (bought a big mince so half on Spag half on tacos)
FRIDAY - crispy chicken wings and salad
SATURDAY - Enchiladas

So all I needed was wraps, garlic bread (keep in the freezer), noodles, rice, pasta (dry so always have in cupboard), potatoes, and a few condiments. Don't need recipes for any of these, just normal foods but not boring?? I only follow recipes for curry really. I don't understand why it's so hard. Boring yes but not hard.

@Freecuthbert

U said u don't like standard English meals so what kind of meals do you eat?

@Beancounter1

Stop jumping to ridiculous conclusions about my kitchen. You think I have empty cupboards and freezers and have food literally knocking about my house and don't even know how to store dry goods?

To be fair to Beancounter, we can all only go on what you've written, and the way you have posted is suggesting exactly that......your ridiculously complicated looking up of recipes for every single meal; your comments about not knowing what to do with 1/2 packets of food; not being able to make a meal without a recipe; and so forth does suggest you have never been in a kitchen before.

And yes I'm aware people may buy in bulk to save on money. However you seem completely oblivious to the fact that many in this country can't afford the privilege of buying in bulk due to lack of money and space, same for having a spare 3 weeks worth of meals

but you have already said you are spending £35 on 4 meal ( !!! ) EVERY week. However, buying a large bag of pasta and keeping it in (which is what people are talking about) is NOT expensive or needing a lot of money.

As a pp -Wrong way round- pick veg and meat (cheap) build meals around same veg (and sometimes meat).

@Freecuthbert I could have written your post... I am exactly the same as you!
Can't remember recipes even ones I've made 1000 times and always feel I need to have an exciting meal each day.

What I've done to cope is:

I have a spreadsheet of my fridge/freezer/pantry items which I use as a master shopping list so I don't always have to remember the basics that we need.
Friday night i sit down and I pick 1 recipe book or 1 website and I pick things I fancy and make a weekly meal plan of things I'd like to eat. Then I do an online order of the new ingredients and basics from my spreadsheet.
I stick to a basic plan for having the same things for breakfasts and lunches, always making double of meals to have for lunch or to freeze. My food shop arrives on a Sunday night and I'm off work Mondays so I batch cook and use my slow cooker to cover the days I'm working (soups/fritattas/salads etc).
I allow at least 2 dinners a week to be basics ie omelette and salad/jacket potato/English breakfast so don't need to plan or buy much for those and I keep 1 day at weekends free so we can go out or have a takeaway.
When a recipe goes well I write it in a notebook and eventually plan to make this the basis of a rotating meal plan when I have enough recipes.
That works for me but I do still have a lot of ingredients sometimes leftover so I do a lot of veggie soups for work lunches as I could use leftover tins of tomatoes/lentils/coconut milk or any veg in those.
Its stressful but I can't find any other way that works for me

@Freecuthbert Ah right, sorry I misunderstood!

Anyho, I would just try make it simpler, use jar sauces to start. Make a plan of firm family faves to fill those 3 days and go from there. You could do a pasta dish, curry or a veggie rice and a roast just to get into the swing of cooking, maybe your partner could cook one of those days too.

Make a list of your favourite meals and rotate

@BookFiend4Life thanks - that noodles recipe looks right up my street!

Have you not got loads of Gousto recipe cards hanging about that you could mea plan with?

@Kite22

No, my post is not suggesting exactly that at all. I'm on about half packets of perishable foods, don't have the freezer space to constantly be storing bits and pieces in there, as well as random ingredients I would rarely use that end up taking up space in my cupboard, space I don't have much of. I have pasta etc in the cupboards. You can only go on what I've written, sure, but do I really have to spell out the bloody obvious? It's extreme to jump to conclusions that I keep no food in the cupboards because I find meal planning a massive headache!

I like nosh for busy mums and dads. Uncomplicated food. There are weekly plans and shopping lists.

@Sxxyfing

Well at least someone here understands what I mean! 😂
I keep a spreadsheet for all financial things and track all purchases etc, so maybe I could do something similar with food. Would probably take a while to get it set up and running but sounds like an idea for sure.

Im overseas but the online supermarket gives me the option of making my own shopping lists. So Ive made one for quesadillas, one for brunch, peach soup etc. I can just add the whole list to my basket, and delete anything I already have. Is that an option?

@Freecuthbert
I've just started mine but it's helped me to get on top of the shopping list bit of it, which was taking ages when I added it into the browsing recipes bit. Honestly I spend a long time on all of this but I have no other way that works.
I do feel like if we could just suck it up and go for basic meals like meat and 2 veg and spag bol etc it would probably be really nice and so much simpler but I just want to try new things and go through stages of wanting to eat different cuisines and ingredients.
Add into this that I calorie count so every recipe i have to create in my fitness pal to work out the calories, it's all very time consuming!

Honestly, if you're making 4 healthy gousto meals a week then you're absolutely allowed to have as you put it either...

Mixture of fending for ourselves out of the freezer, takeaway, dinner at family's, quick stir fry, steak and chips, picky bits.'

I am one of these that can make a meal out of bits and bobs in the cupboards and love making something out of nothing but it's just blurgh every day, totally sucks the joy out of cooking.

Seriously, you don't have to make a hot fresh, healthy home cooked meal every single night so don't be so hard on yourself. If your current meal situation works then it works and there's nothing wrong with it. 😊

@Freecuthbert also if you have any spare room in your house, get another freezer or a chest freezer. It's saved me so much time and energy. I have a whiteboard stuck to it with an inventory of what's in there... probably making myself sound really weird now but it makes life work for me

We like to cook but have always been very bad with meal planning - it means lots of last minute dashes to the shop and much too much food waste. The thought of having the same thing every Wednesday is deeply depressing but what we recently decided to do was come up with a theme for each night - so pasta on Mondays, a traybake on Tuesday, for example. That makes choosing recipes for each night a bit easier but still means we have lots of flexibility over what we actually eat and obviously no one is stopping us changing it up. We do try and think about the ingredients too - if you need a big packet of spinach for one thing can we incorporate it into our menu later in the week. We have agreed that on a Saturday we will spend 20 minutes or whatever planning the menu and then doing an online shop. You do have to commit to that but so far it is making life much easier!

Maybe you're too dependent on written instructions. It's a bit like satnav; people are reporting that they can't do short, regular trips without instruction because they're not used to engaging with the process. Maybe if you break down a few key elements like white sauce, Italian-style tomato sauce, basic Thai, Indian or japanese flavour profiles, you could become more flexible with ingredients.

@Sxxyfing

Oh wow, that sounds like a lot of work! And I feel like if I was having the standard spag bol, cottage pie etc I'd get so bored of it quickly and would be more likely to get takeaways on a more regular basis. Tbh I used to get more takeaways in the past to take away some of the stress of meal planning, and now we don't have takeaway often, maybe every other week or so. So even though Gousto is quite costly imo, we are spending less now on food than before. But I'd still like to cut that cost. I do agree with other PPs that I'm putting too much of an expectation on myself... but it's not the image of being perfect mum cooking amazing meals every night I care about, I just enjoy cooking and love trying new dishes all the time while also hating monotony and meal planning.

Also as someone else said the roasting tin books are really good. We do cook from scratch every night but I’m very much into maximum tastiness for minimum effort especially on a week night.

I like the BBC good food magazines as they are good for seasonal inspiration and stop me getting stuck in a rut.

I follow a rough plan of
Roast on Sunday,
Cold on Monday
Pasta or rice on Tuesday
Fish on Friday.

Then I only have to plan three days. I also try to mix up cooking days and lazy days. Fish finger sandwiches are very popular and I try to have a few meat free days.

This week we have; Sun - roast pork with rhubarb Mon - cold pork & brioche buns, Tues - mushroom stroganoff & rice, weds cannaloni made with crepes (Nigella recipe), Thu - Egg & chips, Fri - salmon & couscous, Sat beans on toast, Tom kerridge beans recipe, possibly with sausages.

I haven't really the full thread but I just keep things really simple so it's pasta and pesto once a week.

Salmon and New potatoes or smoked fish
Steak or roast beef on a Sunday
I batch cook curries chilli and stew and I put my hand in the freezer to defrost whatever so that saves a lot of thinking mid week -
is that an option for you ?

Always get chicken fillets and in my cupboard I have peri peri sauce or fajita mix or Thai curry kit or whatever.

@CouldIhaveaword
Yes I definitely rely on instructions and I hate straying from what a recipe says as I worry what if x ingredient is the key component that makes the dish and cutting it out ruins all the effort I put in. I'm like that a lot in life tbh, always want to follow instructions/plans and like the comfort of knowing what the right thing to do is. Sorry if that sounds ridiculous!

Hi OP

I generally have one meal at the end of the week like an asian broth soup/ stri fry / pasta with hidden veg/ veg curry where it really doesn't matter exactly what veg you put in it.

I also shred and freeze any cooked chicken so I've got some protein to put in

I find I can meal plan 5 meals and then use leftovers for the other ones

I hate uncertainty in general. Like someone said they might pop over this weekend. It's basically hampered my weekend because I'm quite laser focused on this person might turn up, and expecting them to turn up at any time! And so I'm always "ready" for them, feel like I can't relax. I don't know what the plan is so it makes me worry. I guess I'm like that with meal planning basically is what I mean.