To eat the same meals every week?

[BeeEyeEnGeeOh]

I'm so bored of meal planning and the time it takes to do online shopping.

Has anyone had a weekly schedule of meals, eg every Tuesday you have spag bol, every Wednesday pizza etc and stuck to it?

How long before you get bored?

Is it a bad lesson for my DCs (all under five) to be so restrictive and unvaried?

Or is it a brilliant idea that will save me a huge mental load?

And if you have done it, what was your schedule?

i do
Roast
Pasta
Rice
Jacket Potatoes
Chips
One pot meal
Burgers

This opens up options for each meal.

Roast could be any meat - usually Yorkshire pudding and different veg

Pasta - Spag bol, tuna, chili

Rice, curry, fajitas, pulled pork

Jacket potatoes, any filling, bacon and cheese, tuna, beans

Chips, pie, eggs, gammon,

Stew, curry what ever on the slow cooker

Burgers, or hotdogs chicken or beef, salad, potato wedges or chips, etc

To be fair if you're short on time and inclination, having this kind of plan is fantastic. You could change things by changing the veg options etc so it doesn't have to be exactly the same every time, but the main part of the dish can be the same for sure.

Could you do a two week rota?

I had a three week plan for a long time, so I knew what was coming up but it never got too repetitive especially once you factor in the non-standard things like a birthday tea or a picnic.

My ex's mum used to do this. There was a summer menu and a winter one and year on year they remained the same. We used to royally take the piss when she wasn't around.

I kid you not, this woman made spaghetti Bolognese using tins of spaghetti in tomato sauce (like alphabetti!) with mince in. She deserved the ridicule 😹

I don't have a schedule, but I do have a spread sheet of all the meals my family will eat, in different categories, and pick 7 meals out for the week in advance. I find browsing a list so much easier then thinking of different meals 😅I also always make more then needed, freeze the leftovers in 500ml takeaway containers, which I bought on Amazon. I think a 1 week rota would become borning after a few weeks!

I do a two weekly rota. I change it every three or four months. I batch cook twice a week so we do have a bit of freedom to chop and change what night we have things as it's just the rice/veggies I'm doing each night.

I've lost 8 stone doing that (I was terrible for throwing something quick on for the kids and then eating something unhealthy later) and we actually all eat healthier.

Our food waste is dramatically less as well.

You have to have tacos every Tuesday, that's why it's Taco Tuesday.

We do, for all 3 meals, all bulk cooked.

For example on Tuesdays we have smoothie and muffins for breakfast (each batch is made with different fruit/veg), omlette for lunch (different vegetables/herbs etc each week with a different chutney each week) and a vegetable tagine in the evening with either couscous or chickpeas.

I'm gradually increasing to a two week cycle and hoping to work up to four weeks. Much, like the lunchtime soups, is seasonal.

It's saved me so much time and emotional labour!

Instead of doing a seven or fourteen day plan, try a ten day plan, this avoids the "We have that EVERY Thursday" comments, and makes the meal choice seem more spontaneous.
Also, perhaps change the plan with the seasons, so that you're not serving stew with dumplings all through the summer.

If you serve puddings, keep them simple, so they are easy to change around, so that chicken & chips isn't always followed by apple crumble. A bit of variety will help keep people interested in the meals.

When the DC were first eating proper meals we started with a three-week rota, with one night free to try something new. After we found seven new meals that everyone liked, we add them to the rota and it became a four-week rota. And so on until it ended up as a thirteen-week rota , and only had the same meal four times a year.

Really popular stuff used to go on the rota twice so we might have a few of the meals eight times a year, and as we still had a few nights laid aside to experiment, we kept adding to the repertoire with summer and winter menus and plenty of stand-by ideas for when we got sick of something after a while.

Also tried to get a nutritional balance over each week so we had fish, pasta, white meat, red meat and vegetarian at least once a week. It was quite good fun planning it all out actually...

I don’t see a problem with it. Growing up my friends and I had the same limited menu, week in, week out throughout childhood. Same at school. Two week rota all the way through primary then a different menu on a rota at secondary. I don’t think it crosses our minds that our diet was samey. We had meals we weren’t crazy about and which weren’t popular but I can’t ever remember thinking I wished we could have something different. Both parents worked full time, we were all a bit fussy, so DM had a set of about 5 things she made and that was it.

I think this is an awesome idea

The recent 'what did you eat as a kid' thread gave ideas:

Roast on a Sunday
Rissoles on a Tuesday
Sausage and mash Wednesday
Pie and chips Thursday
Fish on a Fri of course
Saturday fish n chips

Back to Sunday again!

Takes away a lot of the mental load

Yes this ^ but I'd plan the meals so you can use leftovers, and mix it up a bit, so

roast
chicken something or other
Roast meat leftovers pie
chicken fajitas
Burgers
Jacket potatoes
Spag bol

Reading with interest. Do people have puddings? We only ever do on birthdays or Christmas etc. Just wondered.

My MiL has had a week long plan for 55 years

Monday - cold meat, potatoes, salad (summer) or peas (winter)
Tuesday - Sausage, mash, veg
Wednesday - Cottage pie
Thursday - some kind of pastry pie or quiche, veg, potatoes
Friday - Egg and chips or Fish n chips (made in chip pan)
Saturday - Cheese pie and gammon, peas
Sunday - Roast - chicken or beef; lemon meringue or apple pie for pud. Strawberries/raspberries from the garden and ice cream is the only other pudding I've ever had in the 25 years I've been going there.

Week in, week out, even on holiday. I've never known them go on a holiday which is not self catering. Exceptions only for Christmas, very hot days and vegetarian daughter in law.

Soup or salad, cheese or ham sandwiches, fruit for lunch everyday.

On Saturdays she buys the same food every week and it goes in the same place in the fridge every week.

When FiL was still working, he'd visit us once or twice a month as he had a client nearby, and I'd make him curries and chilli!!

I like the idea of the 10 day plan, or another one that isn't set around 7 days.

If it is still available, there is a really good book called Superwoman, by Shirley Conran. It contains 4 weeks' worth of meal plans.
Although published in the 1970s, I am sure the meals can be adapted for today's requirement.

We have an autistic child and found the predictability helped. We have

Risotto Sunday
Pie Monday
Pasta and something - usually salad and cold meats/cheeses or fish
Baked potato wednesday

Then 3 "surprises"

In used to do a four week plan - it would include things like cooking two chickens and freezing the cooked meat for later in the month, to make things like coronation chicken for jacket potatoes and sandwiches. I would have one main shop a month and do a lot of batch prep and cooking over a day or two, then small top up shops for fresh stuff.

Honestly, I would get bored with the four week plan, so like a previous poster I would change it up, in part to make it more seasonal as well.

I think a weekly plan could work really well - but maybe with a bit of flexibility built in, or maybe rethink the plan every now and then for when everyone is fed up with (insert name of dish here)

Briliant idea.

We did when I was a child and I still remember some (my mum doesn’t). Sunday always roast (with tinned carrots and tinned peas, never any other veg), Tuesday was pork chops and roast potatoes, Wednesday we could choose (often my dad made me bacon, eggs and fried bread) and Thursday was the chip shop! I can’t remember the other days, they probably varied. I guess it made it easier for my mum as she worked too, nights 4 nights a week. I’ve never done anything like that but I don’t see why not if it works for your family

I also do themes- so Monday is pasta - Tuesday tacos- Wednesday rice etc and then can work around it.

When I am REALLY out of ideas I go onto our local primary school website (my children do not go there) and basically copy their (very good) lunch menu. For example they have on Mondays spaghetti Bolognese with broccoli and garlic bread; Tuesday chicken pot pie with vegetable medley etc.

If you have children, you should make more effort.