2025 Meal Planners!

[Citygirlrurallife]

Here it is - all welcome, long termers and newbies, I imagine this week is leftovers leftovers leftovers and kicking off from Thursday onwards.

ive gone back to Oddbox and our deliveries now come on Friday nights so I’m going to try to force my brain to meal plan Thursday-Thursday and have delivery on Thursdays to make it happen. Won’t happen this week but hopefully from next

Wow! I’m not sure how I’ve bypassed this thread up until now! I’d love to join.

I love meal planning. I’ve been doing do since mi was 22 and am now 37! I try to make one new meal a week (although this doesn’t always happen now that we have a 4 and 2 year old). I usually plan on a Tuesday and our plans run Thursdays to Wednesday due to shopping days and work commitments etc.

Here’s ours for this week:

This week for us is:
slow roasted brisket beef with Yorkshire puddings, homemade chips and veg
ooni pizzas made with leftover brisket
Cajun prawn orzo
Chilli red pepper chicken traybake with salad
Hunters chicken
Swedish meatballs and mash
Tuscan fish with rice

Meal planning day is tomorrow so need more inspiration before then! 🤣

I am now inspired to meal plan!

@Ilovemyshed brilliant thank you. Still all very new to me but I'm going to play around with that. That's the sort of thing I want AI to do.

Ooh, so glad I found this thread! I meal plan weekly, but am firmly stuck in a repetitive meal rut. We're a family of 7, soon to be 8, I'm a veggie celiac with T1D, I have an autistic son with ARFID so he can be tricky, and a husband who is nutrition obsessive so finding meals to please everyone is nigh on impossible!

This week's plan looks like this:

M - Pulled Pork Buns
T - Chicken/Halloumi Korma, peshawari naan and poppadoms.
W - Burgers
T - Man n Cheese with Sausage
F - Homemade Fish n Chips
S - Slow Cooker Brown Sugar Chicken
S - Steak/Sausages with usual roast dinner sides.

Looking forward to finding some inspiration here!

Loving all the new people on this thread - lot sof new ideas incoming.

@HalloumiFries Oh Greek/Cypriot expert.... two questions.

1. Pastitchio ? (can't spell) - how strongly flavoured should the mince be, and how "gooey" for want of a better word should it be? [Spoiler - I find SIL's bland and dry, but I'm not sure if that's my issue or hers].
2. is it reasonable for me to be rolling my eyes so hard they might pop out at Greek in laws? So for complicated reasons, the Pastitcio that SIL made yesterday for MIL could not be eaten. MIL was coming to ours tonight. I was told that she would bring the pastitchio as otherwise it would be wasted. I wasn't super excited because of bland/dry (as above). But fine. Except then, they turned up with HALF a pastitchio. So I had to do mad scramble in the freezer to find enough food to go with it so that I could actually feed "bottomless pit" DS and "always hungry" DH...!!!! And none of them thought any of this was in the slightest bit problematic!? Even by their standards this one got me down a bit!

I’m okay at planning but often fail to execute- through mainly not shopping on time… or doing an online order that then doesn’t have stuff in it I needed.

Id love to batch cook some stuff so must sort out the freezer…

I have batch- prepped smoothie mixtures with fruit and veg all bagged up for breakfast smoothies- bag is taken out of freezer last thing and is then ready to blitz in the morning.

Rest of this week looks like-

T- Gammon, root veg mash and broccoli
W- Med veg frittata (eggy bread for kids with some tomatoes on the side!)
Th- Chickpea/passata/pasta dish from Good Food website- not tried it yet but looks nice.
F- Baked potatoes and fillings and salad
S- Fajhitas (kids will have chicken wraps)
S- Sweet potato and peanut curry and rice.

Trying to cut down on meat a bit this year…

Checking in to mark my space

Would love to join if that's ok. DH & I work full time and have 3 children, , we spend so much on food, but I hate to admit we do throw a lot away.

Plan for the week is

Sun - chicken curry
Mon- beef stew, potatoes and veg
Tues - roast pork & veg & roast potatoes
Wed - spag Bol & garlic bread
Thurs - jacket potatoes & sausages
Fri - chicken kevs & wedges & veg
Sat - fajita bowls

@Lidlisthebusiness another DC with ARFID here too - not officially diagnosed but very limited range of food eaten, it's so awkward! I have to keep the freezer stocked with his favourite chicken nuggets at all times...

I have lots of Christmas food to use up and am hoping to get some meal planning inspiration from this thread

@SpaceOP I've never made a pastitsio that hasn't been dry, stodgy and tasteless so I have zero advice there. I've had some amazing restaurant versions though so it definitely can be done. Actually, come to think of it, my mum makes a great one, although it has been years - I might have to put in a cheeky request some time.

Your in-laws sound exasperating though 😂

@HalloumiFries if you speak to your mum, let me know!

New pasta dish(tortellini with courgettes and cherry tomatoes) wasn't a massive success but could work with tweaks. DD claims she hates courgettes but I grated them instead of slicing them and she ate the lot. DS noticed the cheese in the filled tortellini (boo) but he "quite liked the tomatoes" so I might make the same dish but with regular pasta shapes instead of filled tortellini another time.

Haven't properly meal planned in what seems like a long time. It feels good to get back into it,
Tonight - root veg and butter bean crumble
Wednesday - aloo gobi traybake
Thursday - Swedish meatballs, mash and peas
Friday - Greek baked beans, feta and flatbreads
Saturday - egg fried rice
Sunday - veggie toad in the hole

I love a meal planning thread! I'm trying to cut down on the UPF again this year but also have an autistic child with some food aversions so will be interested to see plans from @DaisyWells and @Lidlisthebusiness!

My daughter has arfid so I tend to just make hers on her own 🤷🏻‍♀️ I’m lucky in that although her intake is very restricted (no meat or meat substitutes other than chicken dippers and fish fingers, no cheese, no sauces, no potatoes, no eggs, no tomatoes) she will eat almost every other fruit and veg

My main problem is that when she has plain pasta (again) and her raw peppers, carrots and cucumber (again) and her protein source (either nuts or Birdseye chicken dippers…. Again…) the other two baulk at trying new things. How do others get around this!?

This thread is amazing as I am really struggling with ideas for meal plans !

@Forgottenmyphone the root veg & butter bean crumble sounds interesting, as does the allo gobi tray bake.
Do you have any links to the recipes please?

@Randomontheinternet25

They're so quick and easy

Root veg and bean crumble https://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/vegetable-and-butter-bean-crumble/

Aloo gobi traybake https://realfood.tesco.com/recipes/aloo-gobi-traybake.html

My ADHD son also has some aversions. We find this nutritionist (on various social media) VERY helpful with hints for how you approach new meals, suggestions about what to put in them, and ideas for snacks.
My DS is just 13 and we started using this approach last year - we've seen a lot of improvement.
She suggests you start by listing the foods they do eat to get an idea of the scale of the problem - I listed more than 40 to start with though so I know we are better off than most.
We are now asking very neutrally "do you want the bolognese bake with or without the cheese on top" and he always says no, but he isn't struggling with the idea that some of us HAVE got cheese and it came from the same dish, which is progress.

www.instagram.com/reel/CvdnTYrgxDR/

@Forgottenmyphone thank you !

Can I ask how you do this without feeling overwhelmed - do you have a vague idea of what kinds of things you want to make or do you literally flick through all of your books and just see what jumps out? I really want to start meal planning to cut our grocery budget, but I always seem to just get the recipe books out then realise there is too much choice/don't know where to start and give up! :(

Great thread, really helpful

Firstly i LOVE cooking and I love recipie books.

My favourite books have mini post it style tabs on my favourite recipies....

There are also plenty of meals that I dont use a recipe for, so lots of things I just do off the top of my head etc.
Due to our busy time table some days i do a super quick meal...
Other days will be a slowcooker meal
another day i always have somthing like a pie / lasagne made on my day off, from the freezer that I just reheat that day.
another day we always have fish, which i might do as a recipe or i might just cook some salmon with veg and pots etc

I took 5 of my recipe books off the shelf...
flicked through my post it tabbed pages and added my favourites in..... slow cooker on a wednesday, quick and easy on a Tuesday etc...... I have so many slow cooker favourites they are planned until mid Feb.

I put all of our meals on my google calender so I can always look and see whats ahead.

This week ocado didnt have any pork mince (for my sweet and sour pork meatballs) so I bought turkey mince instead (for turkey meat balls planned in 2 weeks) so it was really easy to just edit the date for these meals on my calender.

Next month i'll get some other recipe books from my shelf and flick through those instead.

Planning doesnt overwhelm me. I really enjoy it and like to be ahead so it really is easy to do my online shopping without even needing to think.

I’ve been cooking since I left home 41 years ago and I’m still learning.

This week I discovered the trick for Spanish omelette of turning your warm, cooked onions/potatoes /spinach into the egg and cheese mixture to start the cooking process and THEN putting it back into the frying pan. Resulting in a cleaner, more cake-like, easier to flip omelette.

Thursday - Pea & ham soup
Friday - Chimichurri chicken and avocado salad
Saturday- Garlic chilli chicken curry & pilau rice
Sunday - Cottage pie with cabbage
Monday- Peri peri halloumi pasta
Tuesday - Steak fajita bowls
Wednesday - Tandoori chicken salad