Meal Planning

 Hi there! 

Oh, I do love to be as organised as possible for meal times. I find it makes life that little bit easier.  

Of course, life happens and meals get pushed back. We cannot predict the future or know if and when we’re going to have those days that we just don’t fancy what we have planned. Although how great would it be to be able to predict the future? 

We have loads of cookbooks that are scattered throughout the house, (kitchen, living room and study) we do try and keep them together.  

The best way I find to plan meals is to sit with two notebooks.

Notebook 1 

The first notebook will have what I plan for certain days, keeping it in date order. A diary would probably work great for this too.  

I go through the different cookbooks and try and spread out any meals that are similar, just so we have a bit more of a variety each week. I’m sure we would happily eat different pasta meals every day for a week.  

I write out the day and date leaving a line blank under that. Once I’ve found a meal, I think we would enjoy, I make a note of it as well as which cookbook it is in and the page number.  

I find that doing it this way, I can try and plan as far into the future as I can. The notebook can become a little messy in places from meals being moved around.  

I also note if some of it can be frozen to make an easier meal choice later in the week or month.  

Notebook 2 

The second notebook is to note down any ingredients that are needed for the meals planned for a week.  

I write the meal name in the margin and then note down everything that is needed just so nothing is missed off the shopping list. I then can go through the cupboards and cross off anything that we have.  

Anything that is left on the list is the items we need to purchase for that week. 

I tend to rewrite this at the bottom of the page, just so it’s easier to read and go through when doing our shopping. We can then group together any of the same items to see how many we need.  

The cupboard/fridge/freezer check can be done closer to the day that we do our food shop 

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I try and keep the cookbooks in the kitchen contained to the ones that will be needed for the upcoming week so we’re not trying to find them just before we start to cook dinner.

While I plan meals for us during the week, I also plan what I will be taking to work for my breakfast and lunch, which is only 3 days a week now. 

 

How do you do your meal planning?