Meal Planning

[Ella]

Just signing up to pick up some tips.

[Ella]

If Lucy is still on BB can you give us all some of your 40 meal ideas?

Or anyone else for that matter. Maybe if everyone sticks up all the recipes they put in their meal planner and we could swap recipes or something, I'm just new to meal planning so will need a bit of help getting started!

[PumpkinZulu]

I love meal planning...I'm doing it right now LOL. I usually only do a 7 day meal rotation as it's just DF and I, so we don't need to be TOO organised. This week looks something like this:

Monday (tonight) Lamb Tagine
Tuesday: Spicy sausage and goat's cheese with fettucine
Wednesday: Beef Stroganof
Thursday: Haven't decided yet, some variation of lamb chops
Friday: Takeout, woohoo
Saturday: Home-made pizza night, probably a salmon, caper, marscepone pizza, a zucchini and sundried tomato and a mediterainian lamb and rockette. Nom.
Sunday: Pfft, whatever. Feeling lazy. Thai chicken and noodle salad probably.

I usually just look at what we have in the pantry and base it off of that. Atm I'm cooking our meals at my mums house because she's overseas and my 18 yo brother wont feed himself if I don't cook DF and I usually buy meat in a fortnightly or monthly shop in bulk from the market and freeze into portions (for example, if mince is on special in bulk, we'll get it and divide it into 1 meal portions and freeze in bags). We keep the pantry items updated regularly and constantly add to what we have so that we have a broad range of things. We tend not to buy greens etc in a weekly shop, we usually pick up one or two nights worth of fresh ingredients on the day we need them as we have Footscray market right on the way home, and I've found with the way I plan our meals it works out cheaper to simply pick up (for example) two carrots and a lime than buy a big bag of carrots, because they'd probably not get used as well itms?

I also use my weekends to bake brownies, cakes, biccies etc so that we have something for desert or something to nom on whenever we want...either that or a self-saucing pud is easy to knock up after dinner.

[Tinsel]

I am in a rut with the nightly meals and have overwhelmed myself looking in recipe books and online.

I am on leave without pay for another year too so am looking for good value meals too. I can't even remember what we used to cook over the years.

What does your weekly dinner menu consist of?

[minnie]

Can't believe no one has written back to this! I'd love to share my weekly menu with you.

We are vegetarian so no meat, no fish but eggs, dairy ok. Means your meals are usually cheaper than cooking with meat.

So, the things we most regularly have (in winter) are:
Curry- maybe a pumpkin, chickpea, coconut milk one or a tofu and vegie green curry or Dahl with rice and naan bread.
Soup- my fave at the moment is a vegie and cannellini bean one, where you puree half the soup with the beans and it turns it really creamy. Also love roast pumpkin soup, potato and leek or minestrone. Such a yummy, healthy meal with a big chunk of fresh bread.
Pasta- tonight is was creamy mushroom spaghetti with peas, greek yoghurt and parmesan. We love vegie lasagna but the recipe changes all the time. It might be made with lentil bolognese, brown lentils and eggplant or pumpkin, capsicum, spinach and zucchini. I love a simple penne with lightly steamed broccoli and cauliflower, toasted breadcrumbs, parmesan and lemon juice.
Sometimes we have a pie- lentils done with celery, carrot, peas etc, tin of tomatoes, few sauces and herbs (just like you would mince) and topped with mashed potato, like shepard's pie. Or vegie pasties.
Fritatta- found an awesome recipe the other day, which was macaroni, chorizo (I used soy sausages), zucchini, cheese, corn and eggs, served it with home made chilli jam.
Polenta- my favourite dish in the world is crispy polenta with home made baked beans and feta. Or crispy polenta with mushrooms done with garlic, honey and balsamic.
Sometimes we just have soy sausages, mashed potato and steamed carrot, broccoli and beans. Hmmmmm, comfort food!
Every Friday we have home made pizza. My partner makes a great base and we make a garlic pizza and another one, which may be roast veggies, feta and pinenuts or potato, rosemary and garlic or BBQ sauce, soy sausage, capsicum, onion (kinda like BBQ chicken pizza)

Let me know if you want any recipes!

[Rouge]

There's a thread or two on this tinsel I'll add this to the thread that is already there.

[Teeki]

We try and make ours really simple, as we both work hours which mean we can't get to a butcher or green grocer for the really good stuff. The work hours also mean we don't really want to spend very long cooking. Generally we would have:

Steak with mash & peas & carrots in winter, or a salad in summer
Chicken Kiev or Cord en Bleu with same as above
Pasta, something like ravioli with a stir-through sauce
Stir-fry, any variation, love it!
Roasts in winter on weekends
Warm lamb salad with baby spinash, pumpkin cubes, julienne carrot and pine nuts
We also like to change the vegies - sometimes there's steamed broccoli & cauliflower, and grilled pumpkin & tomato (that's my fave)
For the meat, although it's just from the supermarket there's a section that does local Barossa steak, so we always get that and use a marinade - yum!
We also like homemade pizzas, but we usually buy a base and go from there

[Tinsel]

Thanks Rouge. I had a bit of a look but obviously not in the right spot. I will love looking over this thread and thanks for your lists Minnie and KTee. Your dishes sound delish!

[BekZ]

I have to get back into meal planning as well. I found my grocery bill was lower and I didn't have to think every day about what I was going to make. My meal planning style is quite simple. I have a list of meals that we have regularly. Then once a week I check what is the cupboard first and then think about what meals go with what I actually have in stock. Then I write up the weeks meals. I take into consideration how much time I have to prep or if DH is home etc.

Over the week I will have a new recipe to try, a slow cooker day, a roast night, rice/pasta dish, left over/slacko night (usually after slow cooker/roast night), bbq or pizza night.

Here are some meals on the list

Slow cooker
Sausage hot pot
Lamb shanks ( not often)
Beef roast
Chicken drumsticks
Beef strog
Corned beef

Pasta/Rice/Noodle
Spag bol
Chicken thai curry/rice
Chinese chicken stirfry
Stirfry
Vege noodle stir fry

BBQ
Warm steak salad
Sausages and chicken things bbqed with salad and steamed baby potatos

Roasts
Chicken
Lamb
Pork neck

Other
Chicken/pork/veal schnitzel
porl/veal meatloaf
Sheppards pie
Satay chicken wraps/Soft beef tacos
Home made pizza (usually Friday/Saturday nights)
Chicken and noddle soup
Pumpkin soup

[crumpet]

i loooooove meal planning!!

just yesterday i sat down and made a list of meals we both like( my DH is reasonbly fussy so it can be hard, he isnt a vegie type bloke) and then put them into a weekly list.....

i always have a meal a week that is easy like nachos, toasted sangas, baked potatos for those nights i cant be bothered cooking funnily enough they are generally DH's fave nights!!!

heres my 4 weeks worth ive just done:

WEEK ONE

Monday – Spaghetti Bolognaise
Tuesday- Shepherds pie potatos
Wednesday- Chicken Parma with Salad and chips
Thursday-Homemade pizzas


WEEK 2

Monday- Lamb and Cous Cous
Tuesday- Burritos
Wednesday- Crusted Lamb fillets and vegies
Thursday- Toasted Ham Cheese sandwiches


WEEK 3

Monday- Tacos
Tuesday- Crispy Salt and Pepper Chicken ( cheap and cheerful cookbook pg 48) & Salad
Wednesday- Hamburgers
Thursday- Baked Potato’s


Monday- Ritz Chicken, Salad and oven chips
Tuesday- Pasta Bake( recipe in pink folder)
Wednesday- Chicken & Veg Rissotto(recipe in pink folder)
Thursday- Nacho’s


we only need 4 days worth coz fridays are takeaway, saturdays if we dont go out i grab something basic at woolies( usually with no nutritional value like hot dogs ) and sundays MIL cooks for us at her place.

then ive got the grocery list for what ill need as well for each week so then i can check the freezer, fridge and cupboards and do my list before i do my online shopping!!

slightly anal but works well!

[Tinsel]

Thanks Bek and Crumpet. I feel so bad that I haven't branched out so much with my cooking but this is just the motivation I need.

[Netix]

I just googled "meal planning" cos I need help (I thought I would google then look on BB, cos if the Man sees me on BB all day at work, he may get cross ), and I clicked on one of the results. Guess where I ended up. Yep, BB articles! Ahh, does the world revolve around BB????

[Early Kids]

I need some help meal planning, the problem I have is that we have two very different diets to consider. I need a low-fat low-calorie diet and the kids need a high-fat high-calorie diet (they are on a calorie diet where I need to add butters, oils, etc to their food)

Am hoping someone might be able to give me some pointers please.

[Danielle_NZ]

My goal is to start meal planning but my gosh I am lost... we shop monthly so it's a HUGE task to start and I have 3 days to do it in... opps....

[chody47]

Start listing all your fave recipes lol! I'd also look in some books for a couple of new ones. We are trying to cook a new recipe every week or two at the moment. We were getting into a rut eating the same things all the time....

We plan out meals a fortnight at a time. To make things easier we often cook two nights worth of a particular meal at once and freeze the other portion for later in the fortnight (or month for you). Not only does it make planning easier (less meals to think of) but it saves time on busy nights too!

[MrsBexie]

I need to start meal planning too!
I really need to try new recipes as well because I am getting sick of the same ones.

I dont eat any red meat (only pork chicken and fish) but dh does so that makes it hard! Also left overs are needes for lunches!

We have a classic picky 2yo but iam at the stage now where I am just going to make whatever I want cause I am almost 30w preg and if she doesn't like it tough! Haha.

Sooo recipes ladies!! Fast, healthy and easy!

[Danielle_NZ]

Had a great day today, downloaded some trial program for meal planning and added 20 odd mains so far just need to add sides :-)

[Nelle]

When we meal plan (it's sort of off season at the moment here lol), I list one or two recipes and go from there - for example if something has chicken breast, I'll cook extra and maybe shred it for soup or enchiladas later in the week. Same with things that we often have leftovers of, like sour cream. If I use sour cream with Mexican, we might have it on soup or baked potatoes later. If you're planning longer than a week, I bet that would work really well too for making double batches of things like bolognese and freezing half for the next week.

I never planned weekends, so if we missed a meal we could make it up on the weekend, and also with more adults home it's easier to run to the shops, cook something complicated on a whim, or you know, have takeaway.