Meal planning - love or loathe?

[liketocook Profile]

I'm a big fan of well stocked larders suffs
I always "shop from home" first, then see what might be offer re fruit & veg etc. and then decide my plan, the vast majority of this week's meal plan is from stuff I already have. My order this week was mainly fresh staples, veg and a couple of bits for lunch sandwiches plus some things to replenish my larder goods. The only protein element I've had to buy for our main meals is halloumi.

Thursday's tend to be my really can't be bothered cooking night Kacey so I always aim to have something easy that day. If there's just me it often ends up as a "something on toast" night.

[Kacey Profile]

We have to walk home past a really decent chip shop, on those 'can't be bothered' nights I have to really restrain myself! It's not just the chips, Its the thickly buttered bread I'd want to go with them!

[Suffs Profile]

Further to my earlier post, I've just come back from the farm shop with a roasting chicken, two pork chops, sausages and gammon steaks. The chops are for this evening with baked sweet potato and sweet corn.

Saturday we'll have our usual homemade pizzas, and then the chicken roasted on Sunday with squash, potatoes and runner beans, and cold with baked potatoes and salad on Monday.

On Tuesday I'll use the carcass and whatever meat is on it to make a sort of chicken and veg soup with herby dumplings for supper and then the rest of the soup will do for some lunches.

Then on Wednesday and Thursday we have the choice of sausages, gammon steaks or whatever we have in the freezer, which includes an oxtail, minced beef, pork belly slices and jerked short ribs, as well as local cod and 'skate' from the harbour and a pack of 'seafood mix' bought to use for a paella 'one day' ... or if the courgettes are producing well next week I might make a quiche (we've almost always got plenty of eggs) ... so as you see, I do plan, but very flexibly.

We've almost always got potatoes, onions, celery, carrots, garlic and green peppers, lettuce and squash or sweet potatoes in the veg store, and we have runner beans, courgettes, cucumbers and Cavolo Nero in the garden, and peas in the freezer ... and we still have a few tomatoes rescued from the garden before the blight hit. It'll all be used ... nothing goes to waste here. If it doesn't get used for a meal it'll be frozen, pickled or chutneyed.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

I'm a bit of a half and half

I plan carefully if having weekend guests or for some other special occasion, but generally it's an outline

When I was working and cooking for 2 it would be a rough plan before I went shopping - 2 meat, 2 fish, more salad than last week, remember we are out on Thursday - that's kind of thing

When I'm cooking just for me, I might plan a dish I actually want to make, or I might plan batch cooking, I love having a freezer full of not just whole dishes but things like little pots of cheese or tomato sauce so I can chop and change at the last minute, which I do a lot, especially recently

If I buy something like a half shoulder of lamb, or a chicken or just roast a big cauliflower, anything that leaves a lot of leftovers, I always have an idea of what might happen next

[liketocook Profile]

Yes a whole chicken, a gift that keeps on giving if you're a solo or small household. As it stretches so far you definitely need a use up plan I find. Often these days rather than roast a whole chook I'll take the legs & wings off and just roast the crown. It does us a couple of meals plus stock and carcass pickings but you still get the roast chicken "experience" which suits me (who doesn't like a carcass to pick at? ). Similarly if I ever see lamb legs on offer I buy a few then bone and portion them. I usually get 3 small joints (the last one was a decent amount for two plus next day sandwiches), a couple of steaks and I dice the boned shank and any trimmings for curries etc. The bone gets roasted and used for stock. I like the versatility this gives me future use and as it's boned doesn't take up masses of freezer space. I watched a YouTube video and was surprised how easy it was to break the leg down into the component muscles though I appreciate not every can or wants to do this type of thing.
I've just invested in a couple of packs of sturdy Sistema dressing pots, they're 35ml and just the right size for portions of pesto, chilli paste etc.

[KeenCook2 Profile]

NB - food is rarely wasted.

I'm afraid I take that to a whole new art - I simply cannot bear bowls going unscraped, pans not cleared of their last remaining edible morsels ... I sometimes think that I spend more time in making sure the cake bowl is scraped properly than actually making the cake
OH is used to me now, woe betide him if he washes up something before I've finished with it

Like Sue, we do both.

When I do Christmas, I plan the timetable and write down exactly what needs to be done when, down to the minute.
I've kept my plans over the years and it's quite funny looking back and seeing how the ambition/list of things to do has got less and less over time!

In the days when we used to have houseguests, I would be very organised, planning the menus and making sure we had everything in.

Generally we try to have a rough plan over the week. If there's any fish in the freezer we'll try and eat it on Tuesday night as our rubbish is collected on Wednesdays and it means we don't have a problem with any left over fishy bits and pieces or packaging ponging up the bin ...

Otherwise we talk about it the evening before, looking at what needs to be used first. If there's an absolutely crucial ingredient missing for something we want to try, we'll either sub it or get it the next day, depending what it is.

We tend to eat mainly veggie - not for any particular reason but just that we often don't buy much meat - it is usually part of the Waitrose 3 for £10, or a large chicken.

I think we've talked about this on other threads, but I see a recipe I want to do, realise I don't have one or some of the key ingredients, and by the time we've got them I've forgotten what it was I was going to make ...

I was like that with artichokes recently. It was ages before I went to the Turkish shop to get some frozen artichokes and then couldn't remember what I had wanted to try ... when a friend was looking at our Alison Roman "Nothing Fancy" I noticed I had put a bookmark at the diy marinated artichokes and I remembered

[liketocook Profile]

Lol poor OH KC2, I thought I was bad for bowl scraping etc. but I'm a pussycat in comparison though DS2 might say otherwise.
I need tomato sauce for later in the week but have exhausted my freezer stash. As weather wise it day for the house I've been busy chopping veg and there's big pan of it now chuntering away on the hob to replenish stocks.

[halfateabag Profile]

Oh dear, I'm a very messy planner..... I am sometimes drawn to recipes I get excited about and save them on the LH side of the apple mac, then it's always there. More often than not I am drawn magnetically to the reduced to clear shelf in the supermarket. For example, yesterday in Amesbury, while he got fuel for the car, I popped in to the store for milk. Came out with that plus reduced wild salmon x 2 and a piece of hake, so that is supper on Tuesday.

The other day I bought 2 huge bags of fresh coriander and FLP. The coriander was made into a type of pesto and tastes delicious on slices of toast with fresh sliced tomato from the GH. Half of the FLP went into the tabbouleh the other half with go with the fish in some way. So I suppose I am a bit of a messy planner in that respect but pleased to say that nothing gets wasted in this household.

[Pepper Pig Profile]

FLP?

[scullion Profile]

flat leaved parsley?

[Stokey Sue Profile]

flat leaved parsley?

I hope so, it went into tabbouleh

[Rainbow Profile]

flat leaved parsley?

I hope so, it went into tabbouleh

[northleedsbhoy Profile]

Abbreviations are okay provided that the first time their used in a document/post they’re written in full with the abbreviation to be used in brackets beside the full name. Like PP I didn’t know what FLP was until scully explained it.

In the good old pre Covid days I very rarely knew what I was going to eat on a daily basis as I was out 5 days a week and picked up something from the supermarket each day. The two days I stayed in I took something I’d made previously from the freezer or I’d roast something I’d bought for that purpose.

Covid actually made me buy weekly and I confess that I struggled with that as I was not used to planning what I was going to eat. It got slightly easier once I was able to get deliveries because I could just put down the staples like bread, milk etc knowing that I had about a week to finalise the order.

Even now I still struggle to plan and at times I look at what’s in the fridge/freezer, decide there’s nothing I fancy and nip to Sainsbury’s in town for inspiration. Organisation is not a concept I truly grasp .

Cheers
NLB

[Badger's Mate Profile]

I've always reckoned that abbreviations are harmless fun if you don't know what they mean. Over the years I have had to work out EVOO, DD and so forth. Any that eluded me would be answered by just asking; nobody minds, no harm done. Generally the context is a pretty big clue, FLP in a tabbouleh probably doesn't mean 'Feeling Lucky, Punk?'

[Stokey Sue Profile]

I think they are fine if fairly standard or a new coinage that’s entertaining

There was a bit of discussion a while back over rtc which confused me for a time, but now feels to me like a standard term when discussing food shopping, but I think some people still find it novel (it’s reduced to clear, for anyone still in doubt)

[Earthmaiden Profile]

Agree totally with Badger's Mate (BM). There are still a few common abbreviations that confuse me. I finally gave in and looked up ETA. It has always meant 'estimated time of arrival' to me which made no sense as used here - I had no idea it meant 'edited to add' as well.

As for FLP, wouldn't have got that in a million years. I never use it.

[scullion Profile]

I had no idea it meant 'edited to add'

hahaha - i keep meaning two look up that as well - it also means estimated time of arrival for me, too.
i had to look up iso, too. that one still doesn't fit the bill, to me. i would use fao.

i only realised it was flat leaved parsley because of the tabbouleh reference.

[PatsyMFagan Profile]

For me too ETA has always meant 'estimated time of arrival' Never got ISO - would use FAO. Another of my favourites is IIRC ...' If I Remember Correctly' as my powers of remembering and recollecting these days is slowly getting less

[Stokey Sue Profile]

i had to look up iso, too. that one still doesn't fit the bill, to me. i would use fao.

Yes, that one has always puzzled me, I only search for people who are missing, and ISO is International Standards Organisation

i only realised it was flat leaved parsley because of the tabbouleh reference.

Yup, not sure it’s a standard tla (three letter abbreviation) though

[Pampy Profile]

I'm still not sure what the likes of DD, DS etc mean. And to me, RTC always means ready to cook!