Meal planning

Thanks JoJo. I liked SW when I was on it and it helped me meal plan too. I think since I've come off it i've let things slip and need to plan a bit better.

We plan our meals every week without fail. My friends all think it's really strange but it is a huge help with budgeting and eating healthily.

This week I've made big batches of chicken curry, shepherds pie filling, bolognese, chilli con carne and chicken casserole. I am really organised and freeze it into portions so we always have something for last minute meals. I can't help with recipes though as I make it up as I go! I love winter cooking

Maybe I need to get out more.....

I do our weekly shop online with tesco. I use their recipe site to choose what we're going to have and then add the ingredients directly from there to the shopping basket. It did take some getting used to. I ended up with 4 bunches of spring onions one week because I added them from each recipe! You can pick which cuisine you want, how many calories, ingredients to include or avoid and you save all the recipes to your binder for future reference.

Thanks for the replies. CIAT that sounds like a plan with batch cooking as my time is limited!

Icklefee I didn't know they did that. I'll check it out.

We just started doing this to save money and had our first meal from it tonight. I have tried to make it balanced as much as possible but allowed a couple of sneaky treats !

Our non pork dishes are:

Frittata, haddock risotto, pasta and meatballs, homemade curry, toad in the hole, spag Bol, Cajun style chicken drumsticks , stew and a couple of lunch meals if that's any help.

I do this quite strictly when i'm eating really healthy, usually write down what i'll be having for breakfast / lunch / dinner and snacks etc, then do a shop online so I couldn't sneak things into my basket in the supermarket ?
I probably won't be much help with recipes as we're veggie but usually like things like cottage pie, spag bol, pasta bakes, chili con carne, chicken curry etc go down well (all made with quorn for us) & we'll have our quorn roast on the odd sunday when we can be bothered

I've got a big folder with print outs of all my regular recipes and have a list on the front of my fridge for what we're having for that week

I have to plan every meal for the week or my shopping bill is outrageous and then I end up wasting half the food.

When I do curry, chilli, soups I tend to make double or triple what I need then freeze it in individual portions for the days that I cant be arsed to cook.

I have hundred of cookbooks, I get 4 out before I do food shopping and pick recipes based on what I still have left over.

I also batch cook a lot (got 2 big freezers) using my slow cooker and stock pot and get either plastic pots or foil tins from the £1 shop - at the moment I have about 2 weeks worth of meals in the freezers

I have been meal planning for 4 years now, I now cannot stand going to the supermarket with no idea what I need to buy or what I am going to make!

So of our repeat favourites are Spag Bol, Chilli Con Carne, Curries, Pasta Bakes, Risottos, Sausage and Mash, Fish/Chicken with Roasted Vegetables, Homemade Burgers, Stirfrys and the oh so imaginative 'some kind of meat with potatoes and veg' which occasionally makes an appearance when I can't think of what to cook!

I batch cook, and make good use of my slow cooker.

I have to plan other wise I end up walking around asda like a zombie, snapping at C and chucking anything in the trolly, usually come home with loads of stuff, but nothing to make meals of.

I plan a bit differently to anyone else I know, as I plan around carbs not protein/meat despite not being veggie. I plan in two potato meals (one usually with gravy), two pasta meals and two rice meals. 7th meal always goes down as miscellaneous to ensure we can use up leftovers or there's a meal out or to take into account things that don't fall into the potato/pasta/rice categories such as pizza and pie & peas.

I have a loose 6 week rolling meal plan, with an supplementary list of additional meals, so its not even really an effort anymore.

Me too. I love using my slow cooker as it makes everything so easy and I love coming home from work and not having to cook.

Meals we have include- beef casserole, chicken casserole, chilli, sausage casserole, sausage and butterbean cassoulet, bolognese, meatballs, chicken fajitas, asian beef stir fry, pea and ham risotto, chicken risotto, enchiladas, spicy chicken pasta.

After moving we had a really good couple of weeks were we shopped and planned for lunch and tea but the last couple of weeks it has gone out of the window and I am feeling frustrated with myself and our diet- I am bloated and my skin is a mess.

I walk past a couple of markets most days but because I don't tend to have cash on me I end up at the crappy little tesco that hardly has anything decent in and is well over priced.

You guys have inspired me I am going to try to get back on track on Monday.

I love winter cooking too! Need to get myself a slow cooker I think, I've never had one and they sound brilliant!

I love my slow cooker.

No cook book suggestion thogh, sorry. I just do the same as I would normally but add less liquid generally.

I am terrible at meal planning - I don't plan at all and seem to spend a lot this way. I always find whenever I try new recipes I spend a fortune on ingredients that I then don't use again so the trick I guess is more planning and combining them. We have a slow cooker that I've never used and the recent posts have inspired me to try it so I might try to plan my meals better to. I need to stop eating so badly too.

I think the slow cooker will really help with this. Once you get in the swing of it anyway, it really is easy and it's so rewarding walking into the house and smelling dinner bubbling away.

This sounds gorgeous - this is going on my list to try next week!

A friend gave this link to me this week so not shopped with it yet but worth a look sounds good and some nice recipes too

I'm a member of a couple of slow cooker fb groups - want me to add you to them?

Could you add me please Tray if I email you? Thanks for all these suggestions, my slow cooker is coming out for Winter!!

We we used to plan, but got out of the habit. OH is a bit rubbish at thinking ahead, so it's always up to me and I do well for about 4 days of the week, then fail the rest and usually end up having takeaways FAR too often. I need some more recipes to add to my list as usually end up eating the same thing too often and then we get bored. Doesn't help that our freezer is really small, may be better when (if) we move house.

How many recipes does this involve as this sounds like a great idea?

As we have a few favorite meals which we're happy to eat more than once in the 6 weeks, then there are a few duplicates, and some get switched out as they're far to summery for winter, or vice versa, a minimum of 36 meals as I only do 6 nights planned, and leave one to fate/left overs/going out/what we fancy walking around the supermarket.

The list is on my computer at work, I'm back in on monday, I'll have a look and give you a better idea then.

This is this week (I don't assign days, just pick one off the list each day, making sure anything we need comes out of the freezer)

Pizza (misc meal, I demanded pizza!)

Sausage & mash

Steak, dauphinoise, green beans and baby carrots

Prawn & chorizo linguini

Spag bol (batch of 8 portions going in the slow cooker later, each serves two)

Chicken teryaki & fried rice

Nando's chicken, spicy rice & salad

We are half-hearted meal planners. Some weeks we are great at it, others not so much. OH is irritated with me at the moment because I am on a low carb diet in the lead up to our wedding and he thinks that means we can't cook together or plan anything. I believe this is just an excuse for him to eat crap! When we do plan it really helps with our budget and healthy eating, but we to find it hard to be imaginative with different meals - I can't imagine thinking of enough ideas for a 6 week meal plan! Sometimes we also have 'freezer' weeks where we only buy fresh veg and the rest of our dinners have to be using up bits in the freezer. This makes for some interesting meals! This is usually when we are skint.?

Yup - no probs

It came about after I'd planned 6 weeks in a row, had a mental block, and as it was saved on an excel sheet I cheated and did week 1 again, then week 2... you get the picture! lol

I think thinking of 6 weeks initially is pretty impressive! I have enough trouble thinking of a single week! ?