Meal planning ideas

[EncantoDaisies]

Hi all,

Please if you meal plan can you give me some inspiration of what your week looks like?

I want to cut back on take aways and spending and someone said meal planning is the best way to do it but I'm useless!

Thank you

Write a list of meals that you like to cook and eat in your house and rotate them - I do a three week list. Rarely keep to it all the time, but it informs shopping, so I have means of feeding us all for the week.

I try to cook once to feed twice - my veggie lasagne base is also the base of a chilli. The cheese sauce for a lasagne also makes some mac n cheese for freezer meals. When I make pizza, I make an extra one so we have lunch for next day.

There’s a meal planning thread on this first page that’s pretty active. With a really good mix of super adventurous types, meat and two veg types, veggie/vegans, people catering for fussy eaters, people who need to make food quickly every night etc etc. should cover all bases!

One thing I do with my meal plan is to include leftovers in the planning stage eg if I'm cooking a baked potato I cook a few and make other things out of the extra potato. Gnocchi can be made with just the potato scooped out of the potatoes.

If I get a supermarket rotisserie chicken the the carcass goes in to the slow cooker to make stock which is then used to make a French style onion soup.

I have a spreadsheet on Numbers with my meal plan for the week. As I complete it, I add the ingredients to my shopping list in notes for the week. I also have a note with recipes we’ve had and enjoyed (with links to them or the book they’re from) so that if I’m low on inspiration, I can look through a list of meals I know I like and choose from there.