Food prepping, planning & menus

[ManifestMummy]

Hi as a busy mum with a 1 year old life admin feels like chaos atm and im trying to get organised.

Please can I ask for tips from those who have a good routine, on how to decide a food menu, shopping and then prepping for the week?

tips???

Think of some meals that both you and your DH enjoy eating, then Google for quick/simple/cheat versions of those meals.
Build a few weekly meal plans that you can rotate. It saves you from having to think too hard at the beginning of each week, and you can build a store cupboard of the base ingredients needed for these recipes e.g. certain herbs, spices, sauces etc… Also, the more you cook a particular meal, the quicker you’ll get and you’ll learn where you can take shortcuts.
Try to plan in at least one meal a week which you can make in a large to keep the freezer stocked, in case something unexpected comes up which prevents you from cooking.
If your dc doesn’t like a meal, it doesn’t mean you can’t serve it again. Apparently it takes 8 to 15 times to introduce a new food before your child will accept it. Toddlers are fickle - one minute they like something, the next they don’t. Just stick to the plan!
Ear mark a few recipes which use store cupboard ingredients so you can whip them up without having to go shopping.

Do you enjoy cooking? I'm not trying to be an arsehole but it's a lot easier to meal plan etc if you like cooking rather than its just something you have to do!

This is what I do (39w pg with no2, plus have a 2yo)

I sit down one evening every night and meal plan for the week, usually whilst watching TV. I prefer to use cookbooks but have also used Tiktok for inspiration ngl 😂 I use cookbooks that aren't super fancy and are doable for my life. So a lot of slow cooker recipes for eg, I also use Jamie Olivers cookbooks (but I don't usually do the full meal as then it takes ages, I pick and choose bits of it), or recipes I know I can do quickly. A common 7 day week for us might look like:

Fajitas
Spaghetti bolognese
Slow cooker chilli
Satay chicken with noodle salad (VERY quick to make honestly)
Often something middle eastern, either a protein I will marinate myself or if I'm having a lazy day I buy premade falafel and cook them
Salad (but I always add some kind of carb to my salads and protein, not just vegetables iyswim)
Curry (but one that is quick, not one that is super involved. Often Malaysia style coconut curry or Thai red curry, if I can be bothered I'll make the Thai curry paste myself but usually buy premade because time)

And honestly best tip that works for our family regarding feeding the toddler... she doesn't get a different meal from us, but I make sure the meal she is having is not spicy in terms of chilli. She will have other spices just not chilli. If she eats it, great, if she doesn't then oh well we don't make a fuss. She gets yoghurt and fruit for dessert regardless of whether she's eaten or not and I feel like this is a good balance between not caving and cooking her separate meals, but also ensuring she's always eaten SOMETHING even if its just yoghurt and fruit 😂 YMMV with your own toddler as of course they are all different but just saying what works for us. I try not to stress if she's decided she only wants to eat a plain fajita wrap with only cheese in it for dinner lol, I know she's not malnourished at the end of the day as she's getting plenty of calcium/vitamins from her yoghurt and fruit, she's not going to drop dead of scurvy put it that way!! If you start stressing about making sure she eats XYZ I personally feel you just create more stress for yourself, you get worked up and upset, the toddler gets upset, everyone has a bad time and them no one is happy! Be kind to yourself sometimes it's fine if the only thing they've eaten is a plain fajita wrap and cheese 😂

Oo and another good tip if you have the time - try and prep some things the night before where possible. For example I always dry brine my meat the night before cooking. It takes minutes in the evening, for eg I just grab the pack if chicken out, open it and sprinkle with salt and then leave it in an old crappy tupperware container (one that gets washed obviously but is the designated "raw chicken" container) and then stick it in the fridge. It does make a big difference in terms of flavour and tenderness :)

I use the Cherrypick meal planning app. Select meals, and then it automatically populates an online basket, which you can then check and amend (depending on your preferences and what you already have in), which you can add directly to your Supermarket shopping trolley. It can create a shopping list for instore shopping as well if you prefer that. It makes life very easy!

I started, when I was still int he habit of cooking a Sunday roast or big meal on Sunday afternoon , of making a double match of a dinner for Monday - spag Bol sauce, chilli con carne sauce, various curries, shepherds pie, chicken and mushroom pie, smoked fish and brocolli pie, lasagna, hearty winter stews…
Basically the main part of the work for the following day and a second helping to freeze.

So Monday night was “reheat sauce, and cook pasta/rice/potatoes if needed” type of “turn on pots and ignore while I sort bags and children and hear stories and get post…” arrival home.

The second batch wasn’t used that week - but later in the week I defrosted the meal from a previous week to have a second easier evening, depending on the calendar.

I also tried to prepare things for tomorrow as I cleaned up after dinner tonight. Peel (and chop if needed) potatoes and veg, defrost anything frozen, pre-chop meat if needed etc. So that the following night, I could immediately start cooking rather than spend 10 minutes prepping first. And I often did enough veggies that didn’t need to be cooked that I could hand out carrot sticks or chunks of pepper for hungry toddler snacking as I cooked.

I probably did more but they’re the main things I remember (and most of them, I still do even though it’s only me now).

I’m reading through these and honestly, the "mental load" of menu planning is such a silent energy drainer. It’s not just the 30 minutes of cooking; it’s the hours spent scrolling for recipes, checking the cupboards, doing the shopping plus trying not to forget anything.

I actually work for a family assistant service (BlckBx), but even before I joined them, I was a mum of two trying to get my life into some kind of order. In my experience, the biggest game-changer isn't a better spreadsheet; it's getting the life admin off your plate entirely.

A few things that have helped me (and our clients):

• Meal Planning: Instead of starting from scratch every week, we have three-week plans that we rotate. It removes the "what’s for dinner" decision paralysis.
• Recipe Research: Finding healthy recipes that the whole family will eat and adding them to the three-week rotation.
• Delegate the Logistics: This is exactly why I love what we do at BlckBx. Our assistants handle all of it, from the weekly meal planning and grocery ordering based on your recipes to coordinating it with what’s in your diary that week.

Managing it all can be tough. I've found personally that getting help has changed everything for my family and me.
Sending solidarity!

Batch cook so you don't have to cook every night. I cook a large amount of food, or two/three meals at once (e.g two/three similar meals that have the same veg or base such as curries) and then freeze it into portions.

I do exactly the same for lunches mostly making soups/dhal and freeze into portions, then I just take what I fancy out of the freezer (it helps having an American style freezer, you can fit loads in).

Are you the sort of person who likes to go back to the same favourite meals, or try different things? If the latter, perhaps pick a weekly theme, maybe from the same cookbook and then you are reusing the same kind of ingredients in each dish. E.g. persian week, or wagamamas week, or whatever books/theme you feel like.

If you like the same things just have a recurring planner, but over a couple of weeks so it doesn't get too boring.

Have a few core recipes that are your lazy/don't need to think meals that use a lot of pantry items or the sort of veg you always have in, so you don't need to plan buying anything unusual from the shop or can rustle up without planning a meal, for those days where things don't go to plan. For me these are noodle based meals, I always have peppers, mushrooms, baby corn in, using pantry items you can make ramen, nasi/mie goreng, yaki udon etc without any planning and do what you fancy (assuming you like these sorts of foods of course, and have a reasonably well stocked pantry). You can even batch cook slices of meat so you just chuck them in too, or I always have a bag of king prawns in the freezer which can be thrown in to cook last minute.

Other don't need to think meals can be bean based. Bold beans book has a lot of great tips for throwing together meals with 5 ingredients. I always have a range of their jarred beans in stock.