What problems do you face with meal planning and how do you solve them?

[leokorr]

I'll go first 😁I have two main issues with meal planning:

1. It becomes repetative very fast, since I don't know a lot o frecipes.
2. It is hard to prep for everyone in the house, since tastes could greatly vary.

I was constantly looking for new recepies, but it is also time consuming so now I'm looking into how to automate it (maybe with some app or smth)

There are very few meals we all enjoy together which makes it very tricky. DH is easy going and will eat anything but the kids, they are opposites in taste, one likes cheese the other doesn't, one likes sauce on pasta , the other doesn't, they all like carb heavy meals and I prefer to eat more protein and veg. I end up making 4 variations of the same meal sometimes and it drives me crazy.

To overcome it, DH eats whatever I've made for myself, maybe salmon or pork with veg and the dc get boring flavoured rice or pasta. I wouldn't dare serve the DC salmon, I couldn't let it go to waste when they refused it. I do also get DH to make dinner for the DC and him and I'll make my own, usually when they are having pasta or fried rice.

The trickiest thing for me is there are so few meals everyone will eat. One child doesn’t like macaroni cheese, same child doesn’t like veg lasagne, I’m vegetarian so that rules out a few easy dinners too. So there are really only a handful of dinners that I can make that will reliably be eaten by all.

I am going to just start doing a two week rotation. And I’ll be pushing it to even find two weeks work of dinners that everyone will eat. It’s fucking TEDIOUS!!!!!!

My God me too. My final child is off to Uni this September then I will be living alone. The sweet relief of not having to cook tea again is making me feel happy already! I will live on toast and crunchy nut cornflakes 😄

I tend to plan for 5 days now ,
We are 4 or 5 ( during the hols) adults .
I try to think of balanced meals across the week approx 1/3 meat, 1/3 fish/eggs , 1/3 vegetarian ( includes dairy but not eggs.
One person doesn't eat lamb.
Everyone else probably has a few preferences but not enough to stop them eating a meal.
I try to shop seasonally ie not buying multiple things that have flown the world and avoid UPFs but am not militant.
I have to think about who will be cooking . DH likes to cook things he knows well or for which there is a good written recipie rather than an idea.My DSes are more confident but one of them works parish so hasn't time for a big performance.
On the days that I cook I can spend more time.
When it was just two of us I could plan and shop for the whole week but with more people there is the probability of people going out and I don't want waste.
I have a notebook that I write successful recipies in for future weeks.

Decision fatigue 100%

What I have started to do and it helps when I remember, is each evening when cleaning away after tea I have a quick check of the calendar to see what we have planned for that night then try and think of an idea for "this time next week" tea, IYSWIM?

That way I'm only having to think of one meal at a time which seems to make it slightly less overwhelmingly boring. Then Sunday night I just review the list to make sure I'm still excited about it

But yes I'd also happily also just graze on whatever is in the cupboards each night. Doesn't need to be a coherent meal. And I say that a someone who bloody loves food especially eating out

I think it was days of batch cooking that killed the love for me - 101 variations on a tomato sauce that ended up still being samey

Try the cherrypick app.