[Closed] Doing weekly meal plans - great idea imo

We buy food and when it runs out we buy more. We've been doing this for a long time now and it seems to work really well

I want to buy food no more than once a week and have it delivered to my door if possible.

This requires a degree of planning but means I don't have to wander around supermarkets with two young children in tow and then get home only to realise I've forgotten to get margarine or something.

horses for courses, innit, random shopping or planned shopping, whatever works for you and your family.

tesco.com is quite good for that in that they 'know' what all the things you usually buy are. So you can go to that list and quickly tick all the standard items you need .

Dunno if anyone has mentioned it yet but this website is worth a look:

[url= http://www.wrap.org.uk/images/r_col/13363_LFHW_logo5.jp g" target="_blank">http://www.wrap.org.uk/images/r_col/13363_LFHW_logo5.jp g"/> [/img][/url]

I can't plan where or when I'm eating [b]today[/b], never mind later days...

Spreadsheet? I find them a useful tool for resource planning in a department with 800 people, but to use them for a shopping list is insane

Our network admin had a database table. One field was the aisle number of the item he was going to buy, so he could sort it before printing into the order he'd visit the aisle in the shop.

bet it used to screw him up royally when tescos had a "midnight shuffle" 🙂

miketually - Member

Our network admin had a database table. One field was the aisle number of the item he was going to buy, so he could sort it before printing into the order he'd visit the aisle in the shop.

I don't micro manage every part of my life. I delegate that to my significant other!

I think its dangerous to introduce work techniques into your home life. Next it'll be 'Performance Measurement' and that can only be a bad thing...it'll only end in tears! 😉

its all in my head.all of it.i cook i know what we have what we need and dont need to plan the meals cos hey what if the weather on that day means you fancy something else.

mind you i might not be normal as i do cook three meals a day all from scratch.

hilldodger - Member

.....and one of the suggestions for how to reduce it was planning out your meals for, say a week.....

Is there an app for that ??

How facetious!

[code]

[/code]

... of course there is an app for that

http://www.flavourgasmic.com/2009/04/epicurious-widget-for-the-iphone-finally/

There's no waste in our house hold. Luckily I work part time so am able to visit local shops, buying food a couple of days in advance, all fresh and in season.

Oh yes, we always have a store of baked beans 'just in case'.

Next it'll be 'Performance Measurement' and that can only be a bad thing...it'll only end in tears!

Funny you should mention that, I was only just mentioning to the wife that her annual performance appraisal must be due soon

We had all sorts of ace, weird meals when we got a veg delivery each week. We had no idea what we were going to get each week, or even what it was after we'd got the delivery sometimes, so we had to get creative.

I can't understand food waste though - chop up veggies and simmer them in tomatoes with random spices or herbs, then eat it with pasta, rice, watever.

We waste a lot less food than we used to buy being more organised.

Same, while not exactly a planner we're both often out and about doing stuff so we tend to plan a weeks worth of meals and cook them in a random order. I was getting fed up of wasted food and now we're much more efficient while not being too dull. It also means you have to have a large selection of wines just in case ...

i go to the shops hungry , buy loads of cakes, chocolate and other crap and eat it all on the first night , thn repeat. works for me.

Its interesting though. My cousin dropped round with his missus unannounced so i cooked them tea. In the time we had a couple of drinks i had made a base tomato sauce (garlic, herbs, tins toms - reduce), made pizza dough, heated the pizza stone and assembled toppings (salami from fridge, mushroom, chilli, pineapple etc). Cheese mix from freezer. So we had hoem made pizza and a salad from the garden. They were absolutely stunned that i didn't have a frozen pizza ! They were genuinely stunned that we _cook stuff_ from scratch. Look, i'm no chef but I don't buy processed foods (other than cheese mix which has been grated). Looking at what people buy in the supermarket it seems to be processed food more often than not.

um.... I don't want to piss on anyone's parade here, but every time I go shopping I mentally run through what I'll have for dinner this week. It's the only way to ensure that a) I have the things I need for dinner and b) I don't end up with a freezer full of useless food. So 'sausages, lamb cutlets, mince for chili (that's 2 nights), pizza for Wednesday when I'm working late' and so on.

If you only 'mentally' run through it in the supermarket, don't you end up eating very similar stuff all the time?.

I tend to spend half an hour planning out what we're having, using our cookbooks, or recipes on the internet for ideas, and usually end up making at least 2 things every week that we ain't had before. I'd say that's more interesting than just walking about the supermarket and ending up with 'chops and mince'?.

I think there is a distinction between having the same thing every night week in week out is very different than planning your meals a week in advance

Precisely.

This is my first in an ongoing series of stuff I cook and eat in 20 mins

very much toward the simple end of things but some people have no idea how to even start.

I just thought it would be great if people on here submitted their how to vids as well

Tastes better than it looks and to be fair Canadian ingredients are shit.

Can't wait to get back to the UK for soome proper food - mmmmmm pork pies

Yes PlumChef

I tend to be able to remember what are staples are 🙂 Its not exactly rocket science! Food and cooking does not need IT bringing into the equation, it should be an organic/creative experience.

My brother in law cooked a recepie that said to cut the meat into 3cm chunks.. hell he had a ruler out!!

We just know what the staples are and w rite down any extra ingredients for any meals we havent cooked before or rarely do.

:o)

Doing meal plans sounds about as exciting as collecting shirt buttons & only marginally more useful

I can only imagine the repercussions & chaos that would be ensue if the wrong meal was cooked on any particular day - there'd have to be a 'drains up' de-brief, at the very least 🙂

Was plumbers meal just some kind of meat product fried in a pan with some garlic added at the end on noodles?
Although to be fair that's pretty much a standard French evening meal.
We're trying to plan a little more in advance than previously, doesn't always work out but then variety is the spice of life. We have stopped having a massive shop and buy smaller quantities as and when as this seems to be the best way to reduce waste.

My mum has always made a weekly meal plan for as long as I can remember. So for me it seems pretty normal. However, because I'm a student and cook for just myself, I only need three 'meals' and just use the rest as leftovers. I'm a bit of an erratic eater though, and find it hard to judge the quantity of food I'll need. No food seems to go to waste though. (scraping perfectly good food into the bin should be a crime)

I have tried online shopping before, but I hated the hassle with the site always freezing, the number of plastic bags they used when the food arrived, and some of the produce wasn't always amazing..
So yeah, I do pick up food I wouldn't have normally, but I'm happy to spend that little extra treating myself on some reduced blueberries or maybe a nice dessert. And if I pick up half price meat/poultry I can just use it in next week's meal plan.