Mealplanning

[StickThemWithThePointyEnd]

Sorry about duplicate threads, also posted this in chat.

Everyone on here raves about meal planning.
I used to have a cook book that did the planning for me (calendar style with seasonal recipes for every day) but we've done a whole year of that now and some of the recipes turned out rather expensive, even when simplified.

How DO you make a meal plan? I'm guessing I'm either being thick or lazy here. I hate eating the same stuff over and over, so I usually like to pick recipes from bbc good food or some of my cookbooks mixed with the "basic" recipes like sausage and mash (which I would always faff around with as well).
I used the sainsbury's meal planner for a week, but everything from that tasted bland, and if there is something I can't stand it's spending half an hour in the kitchen to have food at the end of it that tastes of nothing.

when you meal-plan, do you use a clever website? or a spreadsheet? If I just randomly start writing down recipes it'll defy the point of trying to save a little bit of money on my shopping.

I'm 39+4 with DC2 and my fridge, cupboards and freezer are starting to look rather empty, so a tesco or sainsbury's order through mysupermarket.com is in order today. I don't do much pre-cooking and freezing because that somehow always takes just as long and just as much effort as cooking from scratch, and if there are ingredients and a recipe to follow my husband will gladly do all the cooking!

so, how do you do it?

i have the organised mum meal planner on my fridge, on a monday i have a nice cup of tea after the older two have gone to school and choose a cook book (nigella, jamie, good food etc) then i choose the meals from there (or from my recpie box) for the week with the page no. if its from the book and write the shopping list from the menu. the shopping list is a rip off section next to the menu. it saves me alot on my weekly shop and i dont have to worry about meals for the week.

www.organised-mum.co.uk/Menu-and-Shopping-List-p-39.html

I generally do the same as mellie I write down a list of who's in & when, then choose a different cookbook every week & try to find enough recipes from that.

I usually cook double what we need & put half in the freezer. I'm also pg (40+4) and my freezer is rammed full of meals for us to eat when #2 arrives

I used to really enjoy looking through recipe books, but I do find it a bit of a chore now, so I've been trying to create a months worth of recipes I can repeat (or at least use as a basis for a menu) Only problem is that now it's turned warm I want to eat different things so I'm having to start again! [sigh]

For other inspiration, there are a few threads on here where people are sharing ideas. I've also been trying to collate all my recipes here as I was getting fed up of searching through my folder full of bits of paper torn out of magazines!

I have a master list of all the dinners we like, organised by meat / fish / veggie etc.

We like to eat a variety of things, so each week I try to do 1 or 2 meat dishes, 1 or 2 fish, 1 or 2 chicken and 1 or 2 veggie.

I glance through the list of dinners we like and pick anything I fancy to fit each one. I then allocate them to each day according to whether I'll have time to properly cook or not. If I'm 'properly' cooking i.e. using a recipe, I'll always double up and we'll eat it again the second day. I don't think it's worth the effort properly cooking for just one day, and it saves the hassle of freezing it up (although I do often make 3 or 4 x portions and freeze).

Once a week or so I try to use a new recipe.

If I want to make something which has an ingredient I wouldn't normally buy e.g. yoghurt, I try to find other recipes which use that ingredient so I don't have to throw away leftovers. At the moment I'm trying to plan around using up the contents of the freezer / food shelves.

A friend of mine used to have an 8 week rolling menu plan, so she'd plan 2 months worth of meals, then re-use. She had a separate summer & winter one so you ended up eating things 3 times a year (unless you wanted things more often of course). But that's far too organised for me.