Roryrory- I sat down one day and worked out my rotating meal planner.
Mon- Meat & Veg
Tues- Something New (something we haven't tried but saw in a magazine that we thought was yummy)
Wed- Takeout (DH has karate this night)
Thurs- Meat and Veg
Fri- Tortellini
Sat- Meat and Veg
Sun- Favourites (we made a list of all our favourite things, and rotate them each week)
What I have started recently is transferring all our favourite reipes into one recipe book. I then do 5 meals from that & then try 2 new meals buying whats on special or with what I have in the pantry or freezer.
I've only been doing this 2 weeks but it seems to be the easiest so far.
I was doing a bit of reading about this last night (just two of the books I have on this topic are "Confessions of an Organised Homemaker" and "Don't Panic - Dinner's in the Freezer" - I told you I was really into this sort of thing LOL) and one idea I got was to use a rolodex (business card holder) and use it as an index system. Instead of the "A" tab, for example, I could turn that section into "vegetarian" and put behind it either written out recipes or references to particular pages in cookbooks. You could have sections for meat dishes, quick/standby meals, desserts, and so on. Limeslice, this could be a way of starting to actualy use some of my books!
Bridg I am also liking the idea of having a regular pattern, like Monday being the day I try something from a new book, or Friday nights being a meal-from-the-freezer night.
DB I think the card system could also work like the one you have set up, plus i have a recipe book with my "staples", such as my golden syrup dumpling recipe, and so on.
One thing I read last night was sage advice to me - if all you do is collect recipes, doesn't make you a better cook. It makes you good at collecting recipes! So I am going to get back to cooking and stop stressing about perfection
Definitely longer than 10 minutes, if you want variety. If you want the same things over and over then yeah less than 10 minutes easy. And if you want the meals to be things like spag bog, meat & veg, tuna mornay, sheps pie, meatloaf etc.... then it's even easier (not that I'm saying there is anything wrong with eating that all the time ).
I do have an awesome excel spreadsheet. That you can put meals into and it saves them in a drop down menu, so you it's good to add things you've already made, but you still need to add things you make. And it will make a shopping list from the ingredients. I also like to have a few backup meals in the freezer/cupboard that don't need to be defrosted so I can make them if I don't feel like what's for the menu that night or we forgot or timing sucks. I also try and have at least 1 curry, 1 stew, 1 batch of ragu in the freezer at any one time. And since I got my pasta machine I'm going to have at least 2 kgs of fresh pasta frozen at any one time
And if you get a mincer or have one you can mince frozen meat which is also handy for those don't want it/can't be bothered/forgot nights. We also have tinned Tuna on hand for this too.
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