When do you do your food shop & do you always meal plan?

[Jemster]

Trying to get better organised & would like to plan our meals better to eat more healthily & stop wasting food.
It seems like never is a good time to do food shop. Working until 3.00 each day, can't face it with two dc in tow after school, evenings either running them around or too knackered to do big shop (i have health condition which makes me so tired) I guess that leaves weekends, along with everyone else! Is online ordering good & when's a good day to get it delivered; in time for the weekend or the week ahead?
I've never been good at meal planning mainly because dc are quite fussy & like different things. How do you manage this if everyone likes something different to eat? Ideally I'd like us to eat one meal as a family.
At the moment I seem to go to supermarket daily as it is nearby but only ever have time to grab something for that day so am always out of stuff!
Please help me get organised by telling me what works for you!

My meal planning simply went like this - list all meals we like to eat and as I wrote it out I divided into chicken/fish/veggie/meat and then marked the ones that required fresh stuff like salad.

I shop on a Friday, click and collect.

I did have a set menu plan for a while, on a 3 weekly rotation. So Friday night would have a meal that needed salad/fresh veg and as the week went on it was freezer or cupboard stuff ie tuna pasta bake or slow cooker curry which is all from the freezer with frozen veg (peppers/onions if no fresh in) and pre-frozen chicken breast.

Made life really easy.

I go food shopping for the week on a Friday. Dd goes to either my parents/dh's parents and we'll go then. We don't meal plan and spend about an hour shopping in tescos. I haven't ever done an online shop.

Aldi but get my meat delivered by muscle foods. Always meal plan so shop takes 20-30 mins tops.

We tend to do a supermarket shop / online delivery ever couple of weeks. No supermarkets close so can be aldi, tesco, morrisons or booths depending on which direction we go in.

All meat & veg from local butcher / greengrocer on a Saturday morning once oh at work. Eggs from local farm on way home.

Always meal plan. Never throw anything away. Tend to ignore use by / best before dates.

Interesting thread. I'm amazed and impressed by all this meal planning!

I do large meat shops from the wholesale butchers every couple of months and buy whole lambs and a dozen or so pheasant direct from shoots when in season. I have two freezers- the inside one which is normal sized has ice cream, fish fingers, chips and peas. The chest freezer has bread, meat and frozen stuff from the garden, like stewed Apple, tomatoes and beans (although less this year coz it's all been shit!).

Our milk is delivered and I get eggs and veg from the garden/mothet.

The bloke does the shopping as he doesn't work. He goes to tesco roughly every week for yoghurt, crap broccoli that the kids like, ham etc

Once a month - 6 weeks he goes to asda for non perishables.

Every Thursday he buys fish from the market (for us and my mother in exchange for the eggs!)

It sounds complicated but it's bloody simple. 'What do you fancy tonight?' Hmmmm lasagna would be nice. Go to freezer take out mince and cook.

Most often we base our meal around a piece of meat and everything else comes from garden

I do a weekly online shop and have done ever since DD1 was born 13 years ago. It's Ocado now but has been Sainsbury's in the past. I really cannot understand why anyone who is short of time (i.e., most of us!) doesn't do the same - unless they either really love shopping for food as a hobby, or really need to save money by shopping at Aldi etc. When the children were smaller it was absolutely essential, especially as I have always worked - only now that they are old enough to be left alone am I starting to think it is a little dull and I might like to vary my shopping a bit.

Anyway, I have a weekday only Free Delivery Pass at Ocado. I have a reserved delivery slot late on a Thursday evening. This means I have fresh food for entertaining or just more interesting cooking at the weekend. Then it gradually becomes more basic, storecupboard/freezer cooking during the working week. There is an automatically generated order that I can edit until after 11pm on Wednesday night (or I can change/cancel the delivery time if need be).

I usually spend a bit of time meal planning (but it is not a strict plan), possibly looking through recipe books if can be bothered. We have an ongoing blackboard list of things we have run out of, and I spend a few minutes scanning the cupboards/fridge/freezer. Normally I probably spend about 20 minutes on it, unless I am planning a special occasion. However, if need be I can do it in 5 mins on the app on my phone on the train home from work. We get milk from the milkman and only very, very rarely need to pop out for anything else.

I think it would take me the best part of 2 hours to drive to the supermarket and do a whole weekly shop. And I dread to think how much time and energy it would take if I was buying stuff every day!

I only meal plan evening meals for a Tuesday to the following Monday. Lunch and breakfast tend to be the same daily so I just too up what we are running low on for these.

DH is allergic to fish and DS is quite fussy with meat so I tend to cook the same base but change the meat i.e chicken curry for DH then baked fish with rice for DS and me, or burgers for DH and me and fish fingers for DS but same sides i.e salad / chips or whatever, means making different meals isn't so cumbersome.

I shop every Monday evening after dinner, DH clears up and puts DS to bed. Works for us.

I meal plan every Friday morning and then go shopping. Every time I find a recipe I like the look of, I write it on a card and then each week I look through the cards and see what we haven't yet tried or what we have liked previously and taking into account how many meals we'll be having at home. It's almost halved our shopping bill and we eat far more variety now than we ever used too.

How old are your DC's OP? I got so fed up of food being wasted/cooking several options only for them to be fought over that I have now told the DCs that I am NOT a cafe! I will serve pasta plain with sauce on the side so that they can just eat the pasta if they wish, but that's it. We've gone to old fashioned take it or leave it, not much gets left now tbh.

I sit with some cook books and choose a list of meals, usually when the DCs are in bed, or on a Sunday afternoon. Then do the ocado order. It arrives Monday/Tuesday for the rest of the week. If we are feeling flush or having guests then I do a treat order that arrives on the Friday, mostly made up of weekend food.