how to get healthy meals organised

[Anomaly]

I have been reading some of the getting organised threads. I read them feeling quite smug as my house is organised, tidy, everything neatly filed away. But food is a problem. We don't meal plan, food goes to waste, we eat more processed food than we should. I hate cooking, but DH likes it but these days is rarely back in time to do dinner.

I have three guests for lunch and dinner today and nothing in to feed them.

How do I change our bad habits? Where do I start?

Before I go shopping i look in the cupboards/fridge/freezer and base dinners around what we already have. For example, I have a bunch of spring onions, a tin of coconut milk and some red thai curry paste so tonight we are having Thai Pork and Peanut Curry.

It takes me a little time because I am slow and like to cook lots of different things but you could just have stuff like omelette and salad, jacket potatoes, beans and bangers, etc.

BBC Good Website is amazing. Just type your ingredients in and it chucks up loads of recipes.

Why don't you meal plan?

Start meal planning
Buy fresh food - fruit, veg, meat
Stop buying processed food

Design your meals around what you have in the store cupboard.

Absolutely meal plan! Have some cupboard staples- eg. Rice, dried noodles, pasta, stock cubes, mixed herbs, tins/cartons of passata. Then you can start by thinking of meals you like/like to cook. Stick to your list of meals and buy ingredients for those meals only and for that week only. Don't be tempted by offers/deals. Online shopping is you best friend here.
Once you are disciplined enough to stick to your list you can progress to meal planning by offers- so each week during your online shops, you can seek out offers for meat,fish, veg, fruit and meal plan around those offers.
Gradually once you get the hang of it, you can also start bulk buying offers and then batch cooking and freezing. This will eventually save you time and money so that you will have a back up of home cooked 'ready meals' in your freezer for the days when you can't be bothered or have too much on to cook from scratch.