How often do you cook the same meal?

[Tracey]

I try to always cook something different & OFTEN try to make someth8ng that will do 2 nights or so..


Like roast we will have with everything, but next night it might be the Roast meat with fried rice & steamed greens, then the next night might be pasta & the following will be left over pasta in baked potatoes or pies or something... So it's leftovers but a bit different, I try to not cook same thing within 3-4 wks!!!

[Lisa]

I try to avoid making the same thing twice in 1 month.
My brother and his GF come over here every Wednesday night for dinner, and have been dong so since the end of Jan, and they have never had the same thing twice since coming here, which is great for them as they are Uni students and don't get much of a chance to try different things very often, so they try them at my house

[catherinemoses]

We have our favourites, and I probably cook some repeat meals about twice a month.
I like to use Continental meal flavour bases. Stroganoff, Apricot chicken, pork in plum sauce, greek pita pockets etc. They are quick and easy, tho I don't always follow them exactly. I add extra vegies to bulk it out a bit. I try and make sure every meal makes at least 4 serves. I try things that I wouldn't normally try and if I don't like them I don't buy them again! Jar sauces are great too. Add meat and vege and pasta or rice. use different kinds of pasta...try gnocchi or raviolli etc to add variety.
HTH

[New Dawn]

As I cant cook my poor family has to eat the same thing every FN... wish I could cook I have just brought myself the recipes + mag which has some great ideas so this FN I hope I can pull my finger out and make something different... Doesnt help I really HATE food its so dull....

[Willow]

We definitely have weekly favourites but we go through phases, at the moment we're in slow cooker phase so lots of soups, stews, casseroles etc. Things like spag bol or meat and veg we have at least once a week or once a fortnight.

For ages we were in stir fry phase but we're over that now and haven't had one for ages. Lately I've been doing potato bake and a roast once a fortnight too.

[Janie]

Oh Tali I almost wish I had your problem!!! I love food too much, as does my DH, so we spend too much time thinking about it, planning it, cooking it and eating it LOL. We get so much enjoyment out of food. Well DH loves the planning and eating parts, I love all of it, particularly reading about it, cooking it and eating it!

And I wonder why I can't lose that 8 kgs!!!!!!

Depends on the season, there are some old favourites that get pulled out every fortnight or so, others we go for awhile without. Bear, I wish I had the time to cook and eat like you do, I think it's a wonderful way to live, so does DH!

[Laranna]

We rotate our meals weekly and after reading this thread I feel slack for not doing new recipes! LOL

We do spag bol, lamb casserole, beef stir fry, roast chicken pieces with veg, and DP makes a yummy pasta and also a lamb steaks with a balsamic sauce and mashed sweet potato...sometimes I'll do a tuna bake or a curry...been avoiding curries while breastfeeding as they don't go down too well with bubs, which is a bummer cause I love curries. Most of our meals we aim to have leftovers for lunch the next day.

Once DS starts going longer between feeds and having longer sleeps I hope to start making some new yummy meals as I love cooking when I have lots of time

[Sair]

If it was up to DP it would be the same every night, some store bought chicken stuffed with ham and cheese (the name escapes me for the moment) packet pasta (usually alfredo) and peas, carrots and corn (frozen of course).

I on the other hand prefer some variety but I have my favorites. We tend to go over the same menu every month but sometimes those favorites will pop up twice in that month. Hope that made sense

[The[cookie]Doctor]

LOL we have the same thing every week We're boring meat and vege people so that's pretty much three times a week. A stirfry gets chucked in and a pasta and a lasagne. Makes it easier to shop and DF is a fussy eater so makes it easy for us I guess. I used to be a really adventurous cook but DF limits my imagination.

[feeb]

We have waves of eating same few things and then not having them for ages.

Most fortnights we will have a spag bol, a roast, chicken wings and what ever else.

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

We have the same meal maybe 2-3 times a fortnight... and that's 3-4 different meals repeated and some different ones maybe once a month (that's things like fish and chips or pizza or frozen meals). We usually have a cooked Sunday dinner on Sundays, lasagne every other Monday night, I like the current Sainsbury cheap recipe cards so we have those quite a bit (that's a chicken meal and a salmon risotto atm). And there's the aubegine pasta that we all love and I can have for lunch the next day. I haven't done some of my favourites for a bit so will be doing some old favourites this next couple of months.

I like maybe about 20 dinners that I cook, but we have "easy" food at least twice a week as I'm at work all day and want time with DS, not cooking. And once I'm doing a meal I'll do it several times after that and have to force myself to do something else.

We have a new, never tried before meal AT LEAST once a fortnight, if not once a week, and often that becomes a new favourite and is done every week for a couple of months!

Wow, that was an essay, hth!

[Phteven]

I try to cook with what's in season and what's on special at my butcher.
Some things we only have once a month or less if the ingredients are season but other things we have quite often. We have lamb curry about once a fortnight because we all like it so much - I have one going in the SC right now.

My MIL cooks the same meal 19 times out of 20!!!! It is rice, salad and a sauce with meat, ginger, onion, tomatoe paste and garlic. Even on the rare occasions that FIL cooks something else she still dishes out meal A with it.
She serves it up for lunch as well as dinner!!!!
I don't know how my FIL copes. My Dad started to complain after eating 3 meals there lol.

[Astrid]

We go through phases with food. Some months it seems like we stick with the same few dishes then all of a sudden we remember a dish we have not made in ages and then our menu seems to change. Most of the time meals are based on what meat is on special or what suits us at the moment, such as a meal that goes for a couple of nights. If a dish turns out really well I will tend to repeat it frequently till I am sick of it. Summers we tend to be a lot more repetitive, basically what cooks well on the BBQ and salad.

Once we have our vegie patch going I am sure things will change.

[TheBear]

Bear, I wish I had the time to cook and eat like you do, I think it's a wonderful way to live, so does DH!

It really doesn't have to be a terribly time consuming thing if you don't want it to be, there are lots of little tricks that you can use to minimise the time spent in the kitchen.

If you get a chance, watch how professional chef's work - they will prepare a load of little bins "mis en place" full of all the raw and/or semi-prepared things that they use on a regular basis - from this they can often produce 20-30 different dishes in a few minutes. They are also very good at keeping multiple things going at once - it's no good standing at the stove doing one thing, you may as well have two or three pots going to make better use of your time.

The same techniques can be applied at home - I use a lot of little zip lock bags and vacuum seal bags to allow things to be done in stages, so I can reach into the fridge and grab bags of chopped, prepared veggies, sauces, etc to assemble a dish quickly. If I'm in the kitchen waiting for the toaster, the kettle to boil, or usually cause I've run the hot water for the washing up too hot and I can't put my hands into it - then I'll spend the time chopping or peeling something ready for the next meal, then bag it and put it away until I need it. As an example - many of sauces that I make start with frying onion, celery and carrot so it's always worth making sure that I've got little bags of pre-chopped ready to go into the pan.

The biggest time saver is a good knife and knife skills - practice chopping and cutting things properly concentrate on speed and accuracy and everything else gets faster.

One of my favourite cook books is Nigel Slater's "Appetite" - it's full of very simple, quick basic recipes that encourage variation - for example, one of the recipes is for a pan-fried veal escallope, it then has about 20 variations to serve it with oranges, parsley, garlic, oranges, nuts, basil, etc...it's great because once you have the basic techniques down you are encouraged to broaden your repertoire.

Most packets and jars are massive rip-off for what you are actually getting - especially when they are for classic italian dishes. There is a saying that "French food demonstrates the genius of the chef, Italian food demonstrates the genius of God!" - good italian food is about the simplest form of cooking on the planet, the key thing is getting the ingredient from field to plate with minimal interference. I have a friend that used to buy jars of carbonara sauce to cook a couple of times a week, and was shocked to discover that if you make the sauce fresh then all it contains is eggs, cream, parmesan and optionally ham...and you don't even need to cook it as it is cooked by the heat of the hot pasta. Effectively she was paying $8 per liter for a cream and egg solution in a jar! The directions on the pre-made sauce actually took longer than making it from scratch.

This may be wandering outside the scope of this topic....would it be helpful if I can provide simple recipes to replace the cans, jars and bottled sauces that you commonly use?

[AnyDream]

I don't repeat things very often but there are somethings that might come out on a fortnightly basis, like spag bog, or hot chicken from the shop down the road LOL! I do however have a lot of leftovers when DH is away (ie all the time right now) so I either freeze some and bring it out in a few weeks time, or vary it so it's a bit different on the second night.

I have a good friend who makes spag bog every Sunday night like a religion, it's because it's quick and doesn't require any thought at the end of the weekend.

[Phteven]

I have a good friend who makes spag bog every Sunday night like a religion, it's because it's quick and doesn't require any thought at the end of the weekend.

Nothing wrong with starting a family tradition I come from a family that likes a Sunday roast and I have to admit that the world always seems nice and stable when I eat roast on a Sunday.
We get take-away or eat out every Saturday night. It's the cook's night off :P

This may be wandering outside the scope of this topic....would it be helpful if I can provide simple recipes to replace the cans, jars and bottled sauces that you commonly use?

Why not start a new thread. I'm sure that lots of people would find it helpful

[The[cookie]Doctor]

this May Be Wandering Outside The Scope Of This Topic....would It Be Helpful If I Can Provide Simple Recipes To Replace The Cans, Jars And Bottled Sauces That You Commonly Use?

Yes Yes Yes!!!

[Salsa]

We dont repeat meals much - we do have a few quick and easys, but mostly we cook with what has been brought - usually fresh veg (typically whats got a reduced sticker and whats in season). We have basics we always keep in the cupboard such as garlic, rice, oyster sauce, tin tomatoes, coconut cream, spices etc.
We never ever buy packet or jar sauces, because they are too pricey (ie; a bottle of oyster sauce which can be used for about 5+ meals is about $4, where as a jar for one meal is $2-3) and we dont use them because we dont think they taste as nice as a freshly prepared sauce.

When we do repeat something though we could have it 2x a week.
Such as making egg fried rice, because its so quick, easy, cheap and tastey and we will always have those basic ingediants in stock.
There is perhaps some other dishes that we might make once every 2 weeks, such as a fresh fish meal. (we dont have a regular shopping day so its when ever we go to the shops and remember to get fish).

Alot of our meals are one off`s, but Im hoping to get some reliable recipes and try some new ideas of how to put things together.