I'm getting stuck for things to cook each week and in an effort to offer variety I'm just serving meals that aren't successful. So just wondering how often you serve the same meal or how many meals do you have in your rotation?
Probably fortnightly for things like spaghetti and basic meals like meat and veg (chicken with vegies, gravey/ lamb chops, salad and chips...etc) I do try to cook something new at least once a fortnight too.
when DH is home, we don't have the same thing at all for at least a week - and we try to make sure it's stuff he doesn't have while he's away (lives in a truck, so he gets mostly casserole/slow cooker meals that heat up ok on the road). so we do steak, roast etc when he's home. when he's not home, i don't really care - i just cook whatever is there cos i'm a girl of pretty simple tastes really!
having said that, when i do cook something, i try to cook for two nights minimum - so if i do spag bol for me, i'll eat it tonight, then again tomorrow night (or the one after) because it's more financialy viable - and second night, i'll make it different anyway (pasta bake instead of spag bol)
our usual rotation if DH home for five days would go something like this
steak and veg
stirfry of some sort
lamb chops/steak and veg
fish and chips/chook and chips/praws and wedges - really depends on what is in the freezer - always home cooked
roast and all the trimmings - left over meat goes into shepherds pie for me for the next night when he leaves (or stretches further for him if he's still home)
you can really do a lot with these kinds of meals - stirfrys (if you're not confident in fresh) can come from a jar or packet and still taste good. fish and chips type meal can be pretty much anything that is simple to oven bake. or make a coating for chicken (you can buy these - we often use either southern fried coating, or a simple burrito mix YUM) lightly fried and serve with oven baked chips/wedges/baked spuds. throw a side of frozen vegies and it's a good meal
we then mix it up a bit if we're bored - throw in enchiladas (if we feel like chicken) burritos/tacos if we feel like mince. left over burrito/taco mince makes AWESOME toasted sandwiches, or can be kept to make a mexican baked spud the next night. two completely different meals, but both tasty
baked spuds are also really simple. you can do the one above, or just fry off some trim bacon bits, onion, throw in pineapple, bit of garlic/herb butter, cheese, and top with coleslaw (i get packets of dry slaw from the supermarket cos i don't like much mayo/dressing)... it can be fairly simple to add variety like that.
now, if you're working on what meat you have in the freezer, or you buy similar stuff each week, just jazz up your veg for something different. or add a rub to the meat (garlic/onion rub is always nice) to make it a bit different. we might have steak/mash/veg one night, but have the same steak a few nights later, with roast veg.
Hardly ever - I try to cook produce that is in season, so that means that the available set of ingredients changes on a regular basis.
The whole food approach that we are using really helps ensuring that your diet is varied as you have to get inventive to use all the different bits of the animal or vegetable.
As an example...if we get some prawns, then I'll make a sauce or stock with the shells and heads (they have all the flavour), the sauce will require some seasonal veggie, and will probably be served with some sort of fish - at the moment that's fennel but will only use a little bit of the fennel bulb - so now I've got fennel to make into something, last night it was fennel, pumpkin and chicken risotto - the risotto needed a stock, so I bought a whole chook, made a stock with the bones, added the breasts to the risotto...but now I've got the legs and some left over stock, so I'm making cauliflower soup for lunch and have to decide what to do with the legs for dinner.
It takes a bit of time to get your head around doing your meal planning as a flow like this instead of thinking about individual meals - but it's a lot more efficient, and saves a lot of money as you waste much less.
There are a few recipes that appear regularly, but even those don't tend to crop up more than once a month - I keep an eye on the cookery channel, look at restaurant reviews, menus, magazine articles and then see if I can find a matching recipes on the internet when something catches my eye.
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!!!
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How often do you cook the same meal?
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