I know you're supposed to go to the shop and buy what you need for the week. But I am SO fussy. I will only eat what I specifically feel like. I cannot meal plan for this reason.
With second baby on the way maybe I will be forced to snap out of this fussiness.. but oh god what if I can't?
Meal times are already stressful with just one kid coz I always have to duck out and get the supplies and can never seem to get my act together to always have bread in the house etc..
How do you morph out of lazy, spontaneous woman into super organized, awesome mum?
we have about 10 standard meals and 4 flashier meals that are our standard, and we just plan and shop in advance - and if that's not what DH or I feel like eating that night, it's just too bad ... you know at the start of the week what you'll be having for dinner on Tuesday (and therefore often for lunch on Wednesday!!) and you get out the chicken (or whatever) to defrost on Tuesday morning, you know all day Tuesday that you're having chicken korma with rice (or whatever) and so by the time it comes to cooking and eating dinner, your tummy is a-waiting its chicken korma!!
or you can leave something small to be the "option" of the night ... eg: we always have rice and noodles ready, so when we're going to have stirfry or mincey-thing (a delicious combination of mince, vegetables and casserole base...) we can have it either with rice or noodles, depending on which we feel like ... you could have rice or naan (or lentils!) with your curry, or whatever - if the *choice* is important, you can limit it to a small section of the meal.
but by planning the week ahead of time and shopping that way, we save crudloads of time - and quite a bit of money - and there's a lot less wasteage, we find.
You can still do the random decision thing - just a bit of pre-prep will make it easier. I usually decide what meat we're having each night in advance, then keep a selection of side dish staples in the cupboard/fridge. So I have salad stuff, veggies, pasta, rice etc all available, but generally won't decide how I am preparing said meat and what we're eating with it until the night I go to cook it.
For casseroles/pasta/stir fry type dishes, I make extra and freeze the leftovers. That way when I'm feeling entirely random, over it and can't be arsed I can just dig something out of the freezer and nuke it.
We try to do what peanutter does. Plan 5-6 dinners and do the plan before you shop, so you can add the needed ingredients to your shopping list. Then a list goes on the fridge with each day and what we're having, so we can defrost meat etc.
I try to pick meals that take no more than 30 mins to cook for weeknights and leave the fancy stuff for the weekend. Also meals needing fresher ingredients eg salad, herbs etc I put at the start of the week (let's face it, lettuce bought Saturday may not last til Friday!).
I don't work on Monday so often will cook something for Tuesday night ahead of time on monday eg lasagna, pasta bake or a slow cooked 'thing'.
Having said all that, I've only resurrected this concept about 6 weeks ago and I am pretty sick of meal planning already ha! In a perfect world I would have a magical excel spreadsheet with a list of meals an ingredients
Getting Organised with FOOD
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