Menu Planning

[jambuttie]

How do I do it?

we are looking to stop the wastage of food and save a few bucks too.

healthy eating too

I used to do this. Just write a list of each meal for each day and a shopping list to fit it!

i also used to get kids involved and put their favourite meals on a piece of paper, put all meal ideas in a hat and pull out to make weekly menu's

I remember there being many menu planners on here too that had huge lists and I just cant get one day sorted

Thanks for all the input

I'm trying to do this as well jambuttie, we waste so much food and I'm fed up on spending so much time deciding what we are going to have for dinner only to find out I haven't got all the ingrediants!!! Let me know how you get on!

Jambuttie, I menu plan now thanks to threads on this subject on Mumsnet before. It is much cheaper and we have not had a takeaway just because we had nothing in the house for well over 2 years!!

Make sure you have all the basic building blocks in the cupbard to make up a meal, i.e tinned tomatoes, beans and pulses, rice, flour, stock cubes, onions, etc. That way you dont need to buy from scratch for each recipe.

I quite often buy what is on special i.e. BOGOF or goods on half price etc and then look for menus based on those ingredients.

Hope that helps. It does make life so much easier as I cannot stand getting in from work and then having to think up what to eat. Good luck.

We plan the week's meals on a Sunday and then check the cupboards to see what we already have, what we need, and what we'll need to replenish having used it from the cupboard. We then make a shopping list and only buy what's needed. At the moment there's only me and DH (baby due in February) but our average food bill is just over £40 a week for both of us - that includes other household items like washing powder, loo rolls etc.

I keep a list of all the meals we have and add new ones any time I see a recipe I like that is quick and easy - then I just choose that week's meals from the list. I suppose it's a bit unadventurous and we do tend to eat the same meals quite regularly, but it works well for us.