How do you plan your weekly meals?

[Bubb13Wrap]

I find it such a chore.

I use an app called Plan To Eat. It creates shopping lists from your plan. And you can repeat 'menus' - e.g. I have a four week menu that I use as a starting point and adjust to the specifics of the week (after a few months when bored I change the menu).

It costs, but they have a v good black Friday offer most years.

I'm following for ideas. I NEED to do this but I never can muster any enthusiasm for it. So many unrealised ideas!

I sit with my Filofax once a week and my favourite cookbooks. Check the fridge and freezer first (I’m so sad I have a spreadsheet for the latter). Choose two meals to batch cook on days I’m more free. Choose two easy ish meals like pasta or baked potatoes. Two nights are previously batch cooked things and then the final day is either a roast dinner or fish.

looks like this:
Sunday roast dinner
Monday cottage pie (1 to eat, 2 for freezer)
Tuesday Baked potatoes
Wednesday batched pasta either macaroni cheese or puttanesca
Thursday omlette
Friday lentil dahl
Saturday Mexican chicken

I love looking up recipes before I do the food shop. I try to find ingredients that will be used across a few different meals. As a general rule for me DH and two young DS I do-

Roast on a Sunday, plus cook something like a spag bol that can be used later in the week. One night is usually home made soup with a cheese toastie. One night I do a quick tea- jacket spuds, beans on toast type thing. One night usually pasta. Two nights for more exciting things and new recipes- usually Tuesday and Friday as can get out of work early on those days

I have always planned my week's meals. If I didn't I'd be forever running to the shops. Every week I have -
a mince meal
a chicken meal
a fish meal
a "shite tea" which is basically something quick and easy
a new recipe - usually from Instagram or BBC Good Food or Pinch of Nom

We used to have a roast dinner most Sundays but the cost has become prohibitive so maybe every 4-6 weeks now.

Following and hoping someone can motivate me to do this! I still CBA after 43 years of living independently as an adult.

We have a selection of foods in for breakfast so we can have what we fancy on any particular day:
Cereal
Toast (with peanut butter, marmite, jam)
Smoothies
Yoghurt
Granola
Selection of fruit, dried fruit, nuts & seeds

Then we have the same lunch and dinner for 2 consecutive days, so I cook Monday/Wednesday/Friday only.
Lunch is a sandwich (toasted, bagel, panini, wrap, pitta to mix it up) or eggs (boiled or fried with avocado and toast) or jacket potato (with cheese and salad)
Dinner is a slow cooker meal - I follow bored of lunch and jules lazy cook on Instagram for ideas or I’ll just do a basic bolognese, chilli, chicken curry, chicken soup, beef stew, tuna pasta bake - basically recipes I know off the top of my head

Basically minimal cooking because I CBA but don’t want to eat rubbish

Sunday we eat out, takeaway or buy picky bits of

I go shopping a couple of times a week and buy what’s on offer and what looks nice. My Dad ran a restaurant and taught me how to cook. So as DS says we won’t know what’s for dinner until Mum opens the fridge. I have a lot of base ingredients always. Maybe something you fancy, the chick pea dish was really nice and just all chucked in the air fryer.

This week

Roasted chickpeas with various Mediterranean style veg and Chorizo pieces with a chilli sauce and covered in cheese with a salad and pita bread.

Egg fried rice with peas and stir fried chicken with 5 veg and spring rolls.

Duck pancakes with stir fried veg and char siu buns, I didn’t make the buns

Pork steaks smothered in crème fraiche and sun dried tomato pesto, with baked spuds and veg and salad

Couscous with basil pesto and sun dried tomatoes with falafel with a little cream fraiche and some roasted veg

Defrosted some vegetable soup I made a while ago with olive ciabatta and a salad with crispy bacon and feta cheese.

I made a list of all the meals I knew everyone liked, plus the ones that only one or two liked which I kept for when the others were out. I've also got an extensive list of recipes on my phone that I've found online and then tweaked.

For the weekday meals I often ended up choosing what to have based on what carb I was going to serve it with. Dunno why, it just seemed to make it easier. So I'd pick between rice/couscous, pasta, potatoes, noodles, or bread (pizza, wraps etc) and then decide what to have with them based on what needs to be used up and what we haven't had for a couple of weeks.

I'd batch-cook something every weekend or two to keep in the freezer. Having pasta sauces, chilli, curry, tagine and mashed potatoes sitting in the freezer made it a lot easier. I liked to also try out a new recipe every week, time permitting.

At the weekend I'd try to do something more elaborate at some point but then the other day would likely be more minimal. I've got some excellent soup recipes that don't take that much work and one of those plus some bread from the bread maker was ideal.

I use an app called RecipeKeeper. You can save recipes by snapping a photo of them from a book or magazine, or type in your own, or it will “scrape” them from a blog or website. It will automatically generate a meal plan for you, or you can make your own, and it will generate a shopping list. You cane put recipes into courses, categories etc, and search by ingredient, or style, or whatever tag you’ve created. I paid a one off fee, and it’s regularly updated with new features. I usually get it to suggest two or three recipes, then fill around that with standards like bolognese, jackets, pizza etc.

i also try to batch cook. I have a notebook of ideas to do on a Sunday for the week. (Photo attached).

Gousto. Best thing I ever did.

In a Friday before I shop at the weekend I sit down with my partner and we choose 3 or 4 meals each for the following week. I put the list on the fridge and shop accordingly.

It works for us as I hate having to think of all the meals and either of us can get on and cook. We don't plan it down to days and don't always stick to the plan.

My meal planners are normally for a month as I get 15% off for food where I work but only once a month for pay day. I plan
1 fast food a week; burgers, hotdogs, pizza, chicken wraps
1 pasta meal; ragu, lasagne, chicken pasta, mac and cheese, sausage and mushroom pasta, courgette and bacon tagliatelle, meatballs and tagliatelle
1 fish meal; salmon encroutes, teriyaki salmon, sriracha salmon, breaded fish and chips
1 rice type dish; risotto, sweet and sour chicken, chicken and cashew nut chinese recipe, sometimes incorporating the fish with the rice meal. The rest is
Stirfries, chicken kiev, roast dinner, jacket potatoes, pork chops, omlettes, brekkie dinners. As the weather gets colder il be making stews, casseroles and pies. Bbc good food is normally where I get most of my inspiration but I also like to use the schwartz range sometimes for a quick dinner. Hope this helps 😊

We don’t really.
Dh goes to the butchers at the weekend and buys whatever looks good. I order the weekly online shop with the basics and then most days we will cobble something together or zip to the supermarket for specific ingredients that we need to make a particular dish.
There is always a random configuration of people home for dinner so we just deal with it day by day.

I bought this cookbook a few weeks ago and although only did it for 2 weeks thus far, found it quite useful as you get a shopping list and it tells you what you can prep in advance.

The Ultimate Meal-Prep Cookbook:... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1948703580?ref=ppxpoppmobappshare

I have porridge every morning. My lunch is usually either a portion of last night tea, jacket potatoe or a omelette.
Monday- Thursday we do vegetarian. I usually plan Monday morning, I have set days for certain foods-

Monday- salad/ omelette /fritters /jacket potato
Tuesday- pasta dish
Wednesday- rice dish
Thursday- soup/lentil stew / bulgar wheat dish
Friday- steak/chicken/lamb/gammon /fush/salmon and chips, peas
Saturday- Indian/Chinese/mexican/Thai
Sunday- roast/pasta bake/ stew/greek kamb

Placemarking for some inspiration.

Grabbed a pack of lolly sticks wrote a meal on each one included things like "freezer dive" and "new recipe" and then we just pull 7 sticks each week.

A mixture of "what do I have in the freezer", Pinterest where I have hundreds of recipes saved and a repertoire of favourite family meals.

I do something along the lines of:
Main meat meal
Something involving leftover meat
Vegetarian meal
Fish
Something cheese/egg based
Using up what is left in the fridge
Pizza

I do carbs in rotation, so potatoes, rice, pasta, bread, noodles, repeat.

you get the idea, something with mash, then a curry with rice, carbonara, pizza, chicken chow mein. Then back to spuds, fish and chips, chilli con carne, chorizo pesto pasta, wraps, beef stir fry.

works a treat

I buy M&S or cook ready meals twice a week and add veg and salad, , Saturday and Sunday I recipe cook new things and other 3 nights will be interchangeable between fish, pasta dish, chilli, bolognese, sturdy, sausage and mash and veg etc - depending what we fancy- always have the stuff in to do any of them

Also following with interest as despite being almost 50, I have still not got the hang of meal planning

To be fair, I found it easy enough when it was just me to cook for - but now I have:

Me - vegetarian
DP - who moans if he's given a meal without meat
DTS1 - incredibly fussy beige eater
DTS2 - thankfully a very good eater but stodgy foods only - cottage pie, sausage, mac & cheese etc

It's the combination of all of these which makes me give up at the first hurdle

I did find the Eat Your Books website useful, when I subscribed to that - just didn't get quite enough usage to justify the subscription fee. I'll definitely take a look at the other apps mentioned here - the Batch Lady and Bored of Lunch cookbooks are great too and often on 99p Kindle deals.

@calishire that meal prep book looks very helpful! I also like the Sarah Rossi books for meal planning, she has lots of free recipes on the Taming Twins website as well.

@EveryKneeShallBow I am in awe of your neat recipe keeping!!

If anyone has a website/ app that also helps with using up leftovers, that's my current challenge... for example, I have tons of fruit (apples/ peaches/ apricots) which needs eating up, and I can't think of much to do with it apart from fruit compotes and maybe crumbles...

Peaches -
half, bake and serve with mascarpone
slice roast and serve as a salad or pizza topping with rocket, prosciutto, cheese (burrata/goats cheese/feta/halloumi), tomatoes…

I don't meal plan.

I wake up and decide what we want for that day, and buy food for just the one day. No food waste!