Meal planning help

Faith

I want to get better at meal planning to reduce my grocery spend and reduce food waste. I'd like to do one big shop at most fortnightly, so I'd like to plan for two weeks chunks at least at a time. Trouble is, I can never think of meals easily. I get stuck on old reliables and then I get bored by them.

Any tips and tricks to make it more engaging and less boring?

StupidLikeAFox

Yes - download an app called "Plan to Eat". You can clip in recipes from a website and build a library, then plan them, then it will create a shopping list that you can use on the app or print off.

I know there are probably a billion apps that do this, but this one is really simple to use. I've been using it for about 4 months and wouldn't live without it. I do what you are saying, plan 14 days of meals at a time and everytime I see a new recipe I go online and clip it into the library, then plan it, and all the ingredients are there in the shopping list for the next time I go shopping

the_amazing_raisin

I find a lot of online recipes to be very head wrecking

First off, the vast majority are US based which use cups and will sometimes feature ingredients which are hard to get over here

Second, seemingly every recipe now has to contain some AI generated blog post about how the author got taught this recipe by their dead uncle and it literally caused the sun to rise in the mornings, blah blah

At least most sites now have the skip to recipe button at the top

So I'd recommend trying BBC good food and maybe Pinch of Nom for recipe ideas

I recently got a couple of recipe booked called Bored of Lunch, one for the slow cooker and another for air frying. It's early days but they've been good so far, I like that the author is a home cook and not a professional chef. So the recipes tend to contain a lot of the same base ingredients and are geared towards the quantities you'd find in supermarkets

A fair number of recipes by professionals tend to have you heading out to super valu for some expensive fresh ingredient that you only need a tiny amount of and then are sitting wondering what to do with the rest of the jar

As for the actual planning, I'll admit I'm not brilliant at this myself but my general recommendation would be to start smaller and just try to plan maybe half a week ahead and then extend this out

I've found the following things to be helpful for me and I'd be interested in what others do

-Have a set shopping day (or days) so you can plan around it. Make a shopping list before leaving and try to avoid impulse purchases. If you forget something then don't freak out, just put it on the "check quantity" list for next time (more on this below) 👇

-Decide in advance what you want to cook and when you want to cook it. Are you going to have a fresh cooked dinner every evening or do a load of batch cooking in the slow cooker? Try to have your cooking days very soon after your shopping day to use ingredients while they're fresh. You can even try batch cooking multiple meals in one day, get a stew going on the slow cooker, then a roast dinner in the oven and chuck a pasta bake into the oven once the roast is finished and you're eating it. There's enough food there for almost a week of dinners

-Keep a "check quantity" list somewhere. This is a list of the basic items in your house that you need to always have. Doesn't have to be groceries, I'd argue toilet paper can be as important as food 😂. Before going to the shop, do a quick rundown of this list and see if you're running low on anything and add what you need to the list. This should stop you running out, but also stops you buying too much of something

-Some ingredients don't keep very long, so don't bother trying to buy enough fruit for 2 weeks. Either plan something else or accept you'll need to do a small shop for fresh items

-Get yourself at least one easy meal a week, like a fresh pizza or something. Living out of the freezer and microwave can get a bit boring so let yourself enjoy a fresh dinner. And sometimes you'll need a bit of comfort eating after a busy day. Just try not to live off ready meals, they're not exactly healthy and tend to be more expensive per portion

-You will have repeated meals, so maybe every 2 weeks swap out one or two meals. Pick a recipe at random and go with it, it's a chance to try something new and maybe find a new favourite

tringle

Are you going to cook daily or prep a week's meals at the weekend? Are you cooking for one or for a family? And what sort of meals do you normally have, is it meat and two veg or soups and salads, or one pot meals.

I shop and meal prep every Sunday for my weekday lunches and dinners (I don't eat breakfast). I usually make a soup, some fruit and yoghurt pots, some veg . These are stored in glass lunch boxes in the fridge. Then I make something that will reheat easy for dinner like a lasagne or chicken casserole. Salad leaves, cheese, ham and eggs make up the remainder of my shopping. Nothing processed , all home cooked but one shop and one lot of cooking and I'm sorted for the week. At the weekend then I tend to have one meal out and one large family meal that I cook.

tingtingjung

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120914646#Comment_120914646

Do you freeze your meals? I'm always afraid to do it because some products loose its taste after being defrosted...

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121172809#Comment_121172809

Tbh I've never really noticed any difference in taste. I don't freeze anything that says it can't be frozen (a quick Google often helps) but in general a lot of batch cooking recipes are designed to be frozen

Black Sheep

I think having a selection of good, reliable, accessible cookbooks is the way to go, and batch cook 1-2 dishes on a Sunday, and then plan to do 1-2 more during the week (usually simpler dishes that are quick to cook).

Diana Henry and Delia are always safe bets. I'd also add Jamie Oliver.

Online is the same idea but I prefer physical books.

Hodors Appletart

if you are getting bored by "old reliables", and also expecting to plan for 2 weeks in advance, I think you need at least 3 recipes that use the same basic ingredient - or are variations on a theme.

For example, mince beef as a main ingredient, you can do Cottage Pie, Bolognese, and a basic Chili, you can also use the mince to make burgers which are pretty different to the other three - how many are you cooking for, right there you have 4/14 days meals and can see there's enough variation that the day you roll back around to Cottage Pie you'll barely remember having it. With the burgers you can do a burger and chips thing, or something burgers in pepper and mushroom sauce with mash and veg. Mince is so versatile, and cheap. You can do any number of variations on mexican food with it too, tacos, burritos, nachos.

Another easy way to knock out another 4 days, is to plan to have Sunday Roast - say Chicken in week 1 and Pork in week 2 and Beef in week 3, then use the leftover meat for a stir fry or curry the next day - you've used veg for your roast dinner, use the same veg in your stir fry or curry. Patak's pastes are nice, and if you are cooking for 1 or two, use half a jar and freeze the other half. This is your rice/noodle meal for variation.

Do you like cous-cous? it's easy to prepare and tastes nice, get some lamb chops and dice them to make kebabs with bell pepper and onion on skewers, make a nice harissa based sauce, really easy and really tasty.

Got loads of veg about to go on the turn, all into a pot with some stock and you've got yourself a soup going on. Blend it up, and bake one of them brown soda bread packs, delish.

Have some midweek meat & 2 veg dinners in your head - pork chops, chicken kiev, salmon darnes, look out for the "special" weeks in Aldi and Lidl, where you can get Schnitzel or Bratwurst as a change for example.