Same meals each week?

[Hatscarfgloves]

I really love food. I love eating and I love cooking. BUT, I hate meal planning. I am so time poor rushing between work and child stuff that I have to do a weekly online shop. So, every week I have to plan meals and it takes ages.

I’m not sure if I can bear it (because I like variety), but I am thinking of having the same 5 meals every weekday, e.g. stir fry on Mondays, carbonara on Tuesdays etc etc. I think this would significantly reduce the time I currently spend planning the meals and doing the online shop.

Does anyone else do this? If so, I’d love to hear your weekly plan please!

There's a poster on here somewhere that does this like fab 8 week rotation thing on a similar premise to you - so same meals each night of the week but rotated over 6 or 8 weeks or whatever it is.

So Monday is a chicken dish, Tuesday a curry, Wednesday something else. It was all so simple but so varied.

I'm not describing it well but I was gobsmacked when I saw her meal plan and still kick myself years later that I didn't screenshot it

This is what we do, and you’re almost there OP.

so Monday can be stir fry day - but 1 week it’s sticky beef, next week it’s salmon, following week chicken

Tuesday you can have carbonara 1 week because Tuesday could be pasta day - carbonara 1 week, bolognaise the next. Tomato the following week

But if I switch types of meals each week, e.g. pasta night can be any type of pasta, I don’t see how that reduces the planning and shopping? Because then I have to decide which pasta to have and change the shop accordingly. Or am I missing something?

I’m afraid I was thinking of something even more boring - literally the same meal every Mon, Tues, Wed etc. Because then I’d have one shop that I could just add into my basket weekly. Or will that get too boring, too quickly?

How about focusing it on the main protein? So mince on a Monday

Wk1 SPAG bol
Wk2 chilli
Wk3 cottage pie

Tuesday - chicken
Wk1 sweet and sour
Wk2 with chips and peas
Wk3 risotto

Ok that's me done. I've surprised myself with my ideas I will check back to see how you guys have carried this on 😀😀😀

I honestly don't know why I am preaching on this post - I'm a shit cook and a shit meal planner and a bit drunk 😜

Hahaha @catin8oots You could be doing far worse things while drunk than sending recipe ideas!

I can see what you’d be trying to achieve and if you don’t think you would get bored easily then there’s nothing to lose.
We don’t do anything like this but Dh does the cooking and he really enjoys it and has the luxury of time to spend hours every evening cooking and we eat for pleasure, sat round together talking and eating.
Sil does pretty much what you’re suggesting, it’s very functional and wouldn’t make me look forward to my dinner but they see food as fuel and not much else so it totally suits their needs.

I haven’t totally cracked it yet but this is my half assed remedy to the same problem. We’re a small family of three, you may need to size up.

I get a meat delivery every week with one large great quality (organic, free range, luxury hotel, massaged and cuddled) chicken and a pack of similar pampered beef mince. I spatchcock and roast the chicken the day it is delivered which gives me a whole load of cooked chicken ready for meals the next three days: stir fry, tray bake veg, chicken pie, curry whatever. If I were a goddess I would use those lovely bones to make stock as well but I have a limit.

Later in the week I use half the mince for something like shepherds pie or bolognaise then mix the rest with breadcrumbs, egg, and diced onion and then make it into either burgers, meatballs, or like a Greek long meatball thing.

sometimes I pop the leftover chicken in the freezer for a night or two if I want to do the beef earlier and then I get the chicken out and resume the chicken plan.

I also get a veg box delivered at the same time and then the contents of that often dictates the nature of the chicken meals.

One advantage is just that the chicken, beef, and vegetables just turn up every week without me having v to do anything - but there’s still enough flexibility with the ingredients to mean not all meals are the same but I also don’t have to think too hard.

Maybe instead of planning the same dishes each week go for a general theme...so

Monday....pasta night
Tuesday...meat, potatoes, veg night
Wednesday...curry night
Thursday...fish night

You get the idea

I am not a food as fuel type, that’s my worry. But I would love to cut down time spent on planning and shopping for meals as it would create a couple of extra hours in the week to do something more interesting.

I guess I should try it for a few weeks and see how it goes. Luckily my 6 year old has a reasonable palate so I can mix it up with the cuisines to make it less boring. I guess I wanted to know if others do this and if they had a way to make it work without it being too dull. The 6-8 week rotation might be the way forward.

How about switching out to Gousto or similar a couple of nights per week?

There is nothing about this comment that isn’t fabulous. 🤣

It would be to repetitive for me but I can see the appeal.
How about writing a standardise shopping list so that stays the same each week but what you do with those ingredients varies. So for example every week you buy a dozen eggs, a bag of potatoes, a pack of peppers, a pack of chicken breasts, a pack of spinach,cans of tuna etc. But you then have rolling three week menu of what you use those ingredients for so week one eggs make fritata, chicken and spinach makes a curry, peppers stuffed, tuna pasta bake. Week 2 eggs make shakshuka, chicken marinated in garlic and herbs then skewered with salad made with spinach, tuna and potatoes are fish cakes. Week 3 chicken is stuffed with garlic butter and breaded for Kiev, tuna served on jackets, eggs go with peppers and spinach in egg fried rice. Etc etc
It would take some real ground work, a well stocked store cupboard but could work in the long run.

Dh had this type of meal rota growing up. Him and his siblings laugh about it now and despite it being fairly dull food all eat a wide range as adults.

I would recommend a meal planning app - I like copy me that, but there are others and also cherrypick which includes making a shopping list for different supermarkets.

So week one you add five recipes. The following week you can add one or more extra depending on how much time you have. Then you just allocate meals to days and make a shopping list. With copy me that you can import recipes for websites so it’s very simple. In quite a short time you could easily have 15-20 evening meals which you just rotate as you fancy.

What about ten meals you love? Invariably you'll get a takeaway one night or eat out or fancy something off plan, but then you go back to whatever meal is next in the list the next night. So you won't eat the same thing every Monday. You'll probably eat ten meals every two weeks but not on the same days.

Does that make sense?!

My grandmother used to do this. She'd make the same 7 meals on rotation, week in, week out, regardless of weather or season. As a child visiting, and then later as a teenager, I thought it was quite a strange system, and pretty boring, but now as a working mother to three DC who all like different things I am totally won over to her way of thinking.

So far I haven't implemented it in full, but definitely have theme nights (Saturday is now nearly always either chilli or fajitas; Tuesday is nearly always pasta). I'd like to just check out of having to think about it tbh.

I've been what I call Theming for a few years now, similar to a couple of posts above and it does make planning and shopping easy.

I have 6 (plus Leftovers Night= 7 days) themes and 3-4 easy meals per theme so I just do them on rotation.

Two of the themes (Fish and Mini roast with 2 veg) are for the weekend when I have a bit more time, but the weekday ones are all under 30mins.

Weekday ones are:
Pasta (veg Mac and cheese, tomato and sausage, carbonara)
Chicken and Rice (Spanishy tomato, sweet and sour, Kyiv)
Potato (jackets, steak & chips, breakfast hash)
Slow cooker (chicken, lamb, beef, honey soy chicken)
Friday fakeaway (pizza, duck pancakes, fish & chips etc)
and Leftovers.

Something I do, which may help with a 'pasta day' style planner, is have a note on my phone with a list of pasta dishes, a list of rice dishes etc so when it's time to make the meal planner for this week I can refer to my lists to choose. I copy and paste one against each day of the week. I find it takes a lot of the brain energy out of it.

I have got out of the habit now, but somewhere on my computer I have eight weekly meal plans and associated shopping lists, with a document showing what was for dinner each night which was stuck to the fridge door (to avoid being asked a million times "what's for dinner").

Every time I found a new recipe, it would be added to a new list, and ingredients added to that week's shopping list, until that week was complete.

Each week had a shopping list with everything needed to cook the dinners, right down to salt and pepper. Then I could cross off anything I already had in, e.g. tinned tomatoes, baked beans etc, so I didn't buy anything I didn't need. That helped with budgeting.

There were a few ultra-favourite meals that appeared every couple of weeks, but it generally meant we didn't eat the same meal twice in eight weeks.

It took a bit of time to set it all up, but it took the meal planning pressure off a bit.

Well, Shirley Valentine did it for years until she jacked it in and ran away to Greece.

But, seriously, it must be a thing here in Australia because all the butchers sell standard, fixed price meat packs. This is one example though has more exotic stuff from my childhood. https://sotn.com.au/products/weekly-family-pack or this https://www.buckinghambutchers.com.au/

@Hatscarfgloves if it’s what you want to do, then that’s what you should do.

What I've done is make a four week meal plan.

On Ocado, you can make "lists" which you just click one button to add everything on it to the cart.

So I have a Week 1 list, Week 2 list etc.

It takes some time to set up initially, but then each week I just click once and it's all there. Much less boring than having the same thing every week, but not any real work after the initial.

We sort of do this @Hatscarfgloves . We are a large family with various dietary requirements so we sort of fell into a rut of the same meals on repeat but now I've started to embrace it for the ease of it! Anything that reduces the clutter in my head is a good thing! Weve recently started getting simply cook boxes for a Saturday night fakeaway to mix it up a bit. We may increase this to twice a week.

Another winner in the summer months is a whole chicken either a ready cooked one or I do it in the slow cooker. Just put on table with various bits and bobs like baguette, potato salad, coleslaw, cheese etc and everyone picks and chooses what they want that's a really easy tea

We aren't that rigid but here's a rough guide.

Mon-Thurs tends to be either one night fajitas (can be with crispy chicken or regular). Or tacos. So basically Mexican. Or quesadillas with leftover chilli from freezer.

One night is pasta. Will usually be either pesto pasta, or carbonara, or spaghetti meatballs.

One night will usually be a rice dish usually curry or chilli.

One day will be a slow cooker day.

Sometimes we just do a fridge freezer cupboard rummage and wing it. There's always fish fingers/nuggets/chips in freezer for DC and DH and I like those microwave sachets of things like flavoured rice, chickpeas etc so we just throw something together.

Fri night is always pizza night. And chips and salad.

Saturday we've started getting the simply cook kits and then the DC have "kids tea".

Sun is usually a roast or lasagne, or we go out.

School holidays theres no plan as we eat out/takeaway/ shop for bits for tea and I love the break from routine!

There are some really helpful tips on here, thanks everyone. I think I’m going start by trying the two week plan so there will be 2 shopping lists which I alternate and then after a while I can put together another.

And I’ll keep the weekends out of the plan so I can still make whatever I fancy on the day and experiment a bit more. The 6 year old is really into Japanese food at the moment and it’s been fun learning to cook new dishes.

I hear you re the meal planning although I'm not sure it takes a few hours - I'd say maybe an hour a week to meal plan and load up the online shopping.

Your new plan feels like a good one. But an option if you are interested that is sort of what I do, especially when I'm bored of meal planning is that I have all my meal plans written down on my computer. It's pretty informal and not terribly structured - basically it's a computer version of jotting it all down on a piece of paper - but it means that quite often, when I'm super bored of thinking about it, I just scroll through everything because these are almost all meals I make regularly and dont' need to think too much about (and if there's one linked to a recipe online or whatever - I note that at the time so I can just get it again easily). It's very helpful when I'm just losing the will to do this.

I do also have a spreadsheet that I created a while ago with all the meals i was making at the time. I need to update that as it's even got drop down menus for me to choose things by type of food or ingredient and/or to search on.

I do also have a spreadsheet that I created a while ago with all the meals i was making at the time. I need to update that as it's even got drop down menus for me to choose things by type of food or ingredient and/or to search on.

I do this too. I also include a column for season (summer, winter, year round) as I can't face eating a rib-sticking stew in August or a main meal salad in January.

A few years ago I noticed my DH had added an entry. Under 'season' he'd put 'no-deal Brexit' and in the meal column he'd put 'turnips'.

I like the cut of your husband's jib, @MotherofPearl! That turnips quip made me laugh a lot.