Menu planning?

[4FoxAche]

A few questions for those that do it.

Do you plan breakfast, lunch and dinner or just dinner?

If you do all meals, do you have something different every day for breakfast?

Does this mean buying in loads of different things or do you alternate so you use all of what you buy (cereal for example)

Do you try and do a different menu every single week or do you do like 4week rolling menu's?

Sorry for all the questions. I am trying to menu plan but only dinners at the moment so still get quite a bit of wasted food, although nowhere near as much as before.

I plan dinners only. Breakfast is usually cereal or toast or something quick. Lunch is only me and toddler wed-fri, I work mon and tues so only weekends for 3 people lunch. I might get extra bits for that if we've got nothing planned.
I tend to have a few regular meals that appear every week or two and always try to make left overs for when I'm at work and we all get in late. My regulars are spag Bol, chilli, curry (make extra sauce), cottage pie, stew (use leftovers in a pie) which all freeze well. Quick favourites are prawn pasta pesto, stir fry, left over tagine and cous cous and fish fingers! :)
We all eat together at 6 (me, dh and 2yo ds) and always have since ds moved to solids. Menu planning means you always know what's for tea, you only buy what is needed and don't throw away nearly so much. Oh and it's easier to avoid junk/ ready meals.

I only plan for all meals when we have people over or special occassions.

Sorry posted too soon.
Also i get dh to help choose meals for week so i dobt have to think so hard!
Hope that helps

:)

I usually plan the dinners, but then I'm the household cook As it's only dp and I that I need to cook for tonight (dcs eating at GPs), I often try out meals on him that may end up being added to my repertoire for quick family meals. I have a nice ham & leek canelloni meal planned.

Otherwise I plan about 3 days ahead, checking what I still have available in cupbards, fridge, freezer, and mixing/matching ingredients and sorting out a list of what's needed.

I have to take into account that Monday to Friday there's stuff going on after school, so quick and easy meals are preferred, but I also try to make them from scratch as much as possible. Eg Wednesday I get dcs home from school then there's an hour before Ds's swimming lesson, and I get something ready to pop in the oven while we're at the pool. Especially as after tea I'm off playing darts in the league matches.

I have made tomato pasta sauces from a glut of home-grown toms last year, and DD much prefers my home made sauces over the commercial bottles. This does include those home made sauces where I use a can of chopped toms instead of our home grown ones (once we run out). And actually making and freezing the sauce worked out cheaper (and tastier) than the ready made stuff.

I have a group of meals that use simple ingredients such as minced meat, chicken breasts, things like that, so when I see packs of these things on offer, I buy and freeze, usually after I have re-portioned into the amount needed to make one meal (I need an extra freezer in the garage )

Of course, the real issue with planning is that I have to remeber to take the items out the freezer in the morning, to be ready to use for tea......which is where I have slipped upt before now