In thinking that meal planning can’t be out of the ordinary?

[Fono]

I’ve always operated a system within my household where I will sit down every Sunday morning and plan all of our meals (lunch and dinner) for the following week and then formulate my shopping list based on everything we need specifically for those meals. This means we have minimal wastage at the end of any given week, prevents over-buying and everyone knows exactly what we are eating and when.

I have a board in our kitchen where I’ll write up the meals for the week and recently every time I’ve had a visitor to the house I’m met with the same shocked reaction about meal planning, like it’s a completely foreign concept.

I’d never previously thought that I did anything out of the ordinary and I’d assumed most households did this? If not, I’m genuinely interested to know what other families do? Imo given the cost of living crisis, meal planning is more important than ever!

Interesting. What is the meal for the 31st? Special or way down everyone’s list?

I live 15 miles from the nearest Sainsbugs and 50 miles from the nearest Waitrose, so I always meal plan and order a food delivery once a week. As PPs say, it means no waste, and one always has all the required ingredients. I grow my own herbs, plums, rhubarb and blackberries, too.

I do it in my head, but I don’t write down an exact menu for each day.

To be honest with 2 primary school age kids our meals are fairly boring and repetitive so I basically buy pretty much the same things every week and just check my freezer and cupboards regularly so that I’m keeping on top of my stock

The actual weekly menu depends on who’s doing what and what the use by dates are on stuff. Usually I make a big bolognaise/chilli/curry at least once a week and freeze a few extra portions so that’s an easy dinner I just get out of the freezer before work once the fresher stuff has run out.

I don’t really worry about floury v waxy potatoes or fresh herbs. Maybe one day our meals will be more adventurous, but at the moment I’m just glad they eat what they do.

Also I just improvise if I don’t have the exact ingredients.

We dont plan beyond a deciding what veg we fancy before shopping.

We know there are say 20 recipes we regularly make, many are based on tins like tomatoes, chickpeas or (kidney/black/butter) beans or a dried item like lentils, soya protein, pasta or quinoa.

So its just some of those and some basic fresh food like mushrooms or squash and it's a meal. Doesnt need much planning when most of your food is tinned or dried

I don't meal plan and IRL I don't know anyone who does, so I voted YABU. In fact, until I joined MN I'd never heard of it! I find MN a strangely fascinating place though full of people who do stuff that I don't.

I shop online and I buy 5 meals but I don't plan what days we eat each meal it's more based around the bbf dates. If it needs to be eaten that's what we'll have.

I meal plan so we have a couple of veggie meals , a couple of pasta/lentil meals and a couple of fish meals
Usually only shop for 3 or 4 days at a time though so I can alter it if I want to

I am fascinated by this level of rigidity.

What do you do if someone invites you out for a meal?
or you just aren't feeling well enough to cook, or even eat the planned meal?
or you just don't finish work in time to make the planned meal?
or if you get the munchies for a fish and chip supper / Indian takeaway / whatever your treat of choice is ?
Or you have a sudden hot spell and no longer fancy the heavy meal you had planned ?

etc
etc

I meal plan monthly (albeit only dinner, no lunches. I used to plan weekly but the week came around far too quickly I felt like I was constantly planning). I might change my mind or shuffle meals around depending on the dates of meat & veg that I get/will it last, or if I'm particularly tired one night I'll pick up a pizza at the supermarket and either freeze that day's meat or cook it the following day instead if the dates are long enough to move everything on by a day. I don't know anyone else irl that does this or everyone is really surprised if I ever mention it anyway. My mum just bought lots of meat and veg, froze the meat and decided the night before what we'd the night before and defrost the meat overnight. She hated having to think about what to cook every day. I did this too until I met DH, it's a habit of his that I adopted and I feel it saves both mental effort and wasting food.

I meal plan for an entire year at a time.

Wow, a week in advance sounds like hard work to me, a whole year? Surely it mist end up more expensive if you can never take advantage of what's on offer one week or pick up yellow stickered items.

I think part of my aversion to meal planning is because I worked somewhere with meals provided, the same food on a weekly rotation for a year. It gets old pretty quickly even when there's no effort involved other than turning up and eating it.

I admire the positive outlook into the future on the annual plan.
With my luck this would jinx me and I would end up with 7 allergies😂

That is some effort there

Yes, it can’t be very seasonal, and is it adjusted to the day of the week and activities thereon?

Why?

i had a huge white cabbage - average size really but they are big!

so i planned meals around it
sausage yesterday
and an amazing cabbage and bean soup tonight!
i am not adverse to meat free dishes and i think that helps.

I have this with cauliflower now scored nearly 3kg beast. Couldn't say no.to it needing good home.
I have plan for about 3rd. The other 2/3? Fuck knows, but it will be delicious 😂

I have no idea what other people do. It would be a very odd thing to come up in a conversation with friends?

But yes I plan what we'll eat and buy food accordingly. I don't write it up on a wall or whatever so there is a rigid set menu for specific days; I will swap meals to different days depending on free time that day to spend cooking, but will buy ingredients for certain meals for that week and then cook them over the week. I presume that's fairly normal and people don't just buy random things from the supermarket then try to figure out what to make with them like some Masterchef challenge?

The way the OP meal plans wouldn’t work for me. I do it the other way round and take the weekly flyer for the supermarket (I don’t live in the UK) look at what’s on offer and buy that and plan meals around that. Nothing worse than planning all your meals, going to the supermarket and finding that all the deals are on things that are not on your list. Waste of money. I never pay the full price for anything. Whatever’s on offer that week is what we are eating.

I don't meal plan but also don't waste food. We keep most meat in the freezer and have a selection of veg/cheese/milk etc that will get used through the week. With 3 teenagers in the house a full fridge seems to empty pretty fast, it's rare we have to throw stuff away and common that I have to shop again because weve run out of milk despite buying 16 pints at a time.

Whatever works for you though.

Because I don't buy most of those fancy ingredients you mention and rarely follow a recipe to the letter (or at all). Generally you can substitute something similar into a recipe so I buy things I know I'll use regularly in lots of different recipes not something specific for a specific dish.

I've never noticed any problem making any potato dish with the bog standard big bag of potatoes I buy every week.

Re your mexican example I would always have tacos, beans and spices in the cupboard, frozen mince and frozen chopped onions, fresh red onions and avocados (I buy lots of these cos I use them all the time), plus squeezy garlic, coriander and chili, and lime juice. All sat in the fridge and bought when they run out. So I can have a Mexican dinner on any given day I fancy it.

And cheese obviously

We will plan meals out so that we get the right stuff on the shopping list each week. We are quite short on time in the evenings so it makes sense for us to do this way. My mum has always done this too - I probably learnt it from her although I think that was more from a money point of view rather than time.

I get the same when guests see my board ! I meal plan on a Wednesday and get shopping delivered for a Sunday so kids have enough for packed lunches .
Dinners are planned but I buy the same things each week for packed lunches. I eat in work , dh eats in work three days and has lunch at home the rest of the time - sandwich , noodles , leftovers etc
We generally have no food in the house by Saturday as shopping delivered on Sunday - I do a fruit, bread , milk , meat top up on the Wednesday so we have gotten in to a habit of eating lunch out on way home from morning sports .
I need to figure out a way to keep something for Saturday ! Saturday dinner is usually freezer food or pasta bake

No, never done this, except maybe at Christmas. I don't have a problem with food waste, more running out of things, but I live 4 minutes walk from the supermarket, so not usually a problem. Always going on foot stops me from overbuying!

I like to cook to recipes, so meal planning suits me as I always have the right ingredients to hand.

I don't have the ability or confidence to cook ready steady cook style. This means that veg boxes don't really work for me either as they are too random.

Meal planning and ordering the shopping online takes DH & I between 20 mins and and an hour depending on how many new recipes we look for.

One night a week is often DIY for eating up leftovers or batch cooked freezer meals. There is flexibility as I get two deliveries a week so I don't need to use up the short life stuff first. UK households apparently waste 30% of the food we buy. My wastage is so much lower now that I've changed to meal planning and 2 deliveries a week. Popping to the shops is not usually necessary in the week.

We all have different lifestyles and preferences so I don't think meal planning suits everyone and I don't know anyone else in RL who does it, but it really works well for me.

I have to plan. Otherwise I end up with total mind blanks when shopping/staring into the fridge.
I’m a good cook and absolutely able to throw things together if required - as long as it’s not required after work, with a hangry child when my brain has stopped working and I literally can’t think of a single thing we eat.
My plan isn’t completely rigid and I do shoogle things around/substitute ingredients.

I accept that not everyone is a perimenopausal, anxious mess though and can cope with making decisions on the hoof!