Do you plan your meals?

When DH was alive he had strict dietary needs and liked to stick to a fixed weekly plan. Now I quite enjoy being more spontaneous, though probably I eat less healthily, as some days I can’t be bothered to cook a full meal and just have a poached egg on toast. Then I realise there are veg to be eaten up! I live near Aldi so can always pick up something but I do cook from scratch, and freeze some, so there is always a portion of something in the freezer. I still tend to eat fish in Friday.

As a technophile I plan everything on the computer. The German Lidl has a website with lots of recipes that suit my style of cooking and our taste. They can be arranged in a plan and a shopping list is automatically generated from this. I shop once a week and stick to the plan, adding things like washing powder, tissues, milk, cheese and cereal.

I love shopping - the supermarket is the only place locally where I can browse things like CDs, clothes, stationery, etc, and that one hour per week is my "me time". The actual food shopping is quickly done because of the organised list.

Having said that, I do change the plan occasionally or we will go out for dinner. It's not kept to rigidly by any means, but I have to use up the stuff I've bought.

Urms, I see you have a Greggs in the street, can you resist their yummy sausage rolls?

i no longer plan meals as i am now on my own and have some walking problems, i do online shopping and and always have a stocked freezer with ready meals and bags of cooked chicken, cupboard always has packets of bens rice and and casserole mixes along with the usual tins of beans, soup etc, my meals are easy to make and i just check what i have in before i do my next online shop.

No I don’t plan ahead
I think on the day oh I ll have a, b or c today

I used to when I worked full time and had an Ocado delivery every Friday morning at 7:30am. That set me up for the week. I hated supermarket shopping, trundling round with a trolley. Time consuming and a bit boring to be honest.

Now I’m retired and we downsized we live in a small apartment two floors up from commercial. Sainsbury’s (I call it my larder), Aldi, Iceland and Home Bargains are just down in the lift so I pop in most days when we decide on the hoof what we fancy. Certainly no wastage of food. No cost (petrol in a car) to get to the shops. Town centre living suits us very well. It wouldn’t do for many though I think.

My planning is a bit haphazard. I do bear in mind what needs using up as I hate wasting food. But increasingly I find that I just don't have much appetite for what I had planned and end up having just a boiled egg instead.

Yes I plan my meals a week ahead. I can ensure that I have a good variety of food types and try to 'eat the rainbow ' for health reasons. I live alone. I batch cook as I have a limited income. Nothing is ever wasted. I cook from scratch and avoid ultra processed "food". I am 70 healthy and hope to stay that way for as long as possible.

Jaxjacky

To a degree as we have a weekly grocery delivery, but we’re always up for a change, going out, family visiting, using unexpectedly given fresh meat or veg. I can always freeze or prep what’s in the fridge for another day.

Same here.
Planning too much in advance would knock out the spontaneity of life 😂

I don’t plan for the week ahead .I do a weekly supermarket shop and . I buy the basics regarding fruit, veg and diary during my shop and buy meat and poultry from a local farm shop . I have a full freezer and decide on the day , and get stuff out of the freezer . I batch cook too.

I always meal planned when the children were small and we weren’t as well off as we are now, I stopped rather stupidly and just muddled along.

Lockdown got me going again, it makes life a lot easier and cheaper!

Yes since we eat low carb. I go through my cook books and make a shopping list based upon the meals I have chosen. Plus of course a few treats for DH

To a degree as we have a weekly grocery delivery, but we’re always up for a change, going out, family visiting, using unexpectedly given fresh meat or veg. I can always freeze or prep what’s in the fridge for another day.

Never. In our house it’s “I fancy liver/quiche/cottage pie tonight.” We have excellent butcher just across the road so it’s never a problem. My weekly shop is all the basics, what’s on offer that I know we will eat and things I fancy.

No, we don't plan meals. We keep all food items we could possibly use stocked at all times in fridge, freezer, pantry. We garden and freeze fruit and veg, also dry and package herbs.

I love to cook, all aspects of cooking - spending many hours a day looking at recipes, slicing, chopping, prepping, precisely measuring ingredients. I enjoy laying the table(s), doing the dishes, anything in our kitchen.

I have a weekly delivery so roughly plan the weekly meals and shop for them. This is topped up with a trip to the local butcher/greengrocer or M&S. Things get shuffled around if something crops up.
When the DD's left home I used to over buy then we got a Waitrose and I found I started to plan better just for the two of us.
Thursdays meal is often a use up of all the vegetables, to make room for the Friday delivery.
Years ago I had a book on household management by Shirley Conran and she suggested a three-week rolling rota of meals and I'm thinking of going back to that. I spend too much time on planning and making shopping lists.

I’ve just planned and ordered my meat from my farmer for the next 2 months😄😄. Not so bad as it sounds as we only eat meat every 3 days. And I don’t need a Turkey as an a guest at my sons this year🎄🥳

I always plan the week’s meals ahead and buy accordingly. I have a weekly grocery delivery (so no wandering around the supermarket and spotting random things) and monthly meat and fish deliveries from the local butcher and fishmonger. The freezer is always full and nothing is wasted. Meals can always be switched to different days if need be.

Oh I wish that I was organised enough to plan for a week ahead.
Very often I think of something, around after lunch, (if we have one) and delve in the freezer. Hopefully there is time to defrost, or cook from frozen.
Since I have been on chemo treatment, my appetite has gone to pot, and there are lots of things I don't fancy.
Saying that though, last night we had chicken stew with dumplings. Lovely. Tonight, pot luck.
Tomorrow, I thought of roast pork, so will have to make sure that that comes out of the freezer.
I do remember, many years ago , I saw that a magazine had printed out recipes for a whole year. That was when the children were all still at home, but I never kept it. Wish something like that would happen again. But then, I don't buy magazines any more. So no hope for me.

I dont plan .I keep my freezers ,fridge and cupboards well stocked and often decide an hour before mealtime what we'll have .My OH and I rarely eat the same thing as I eat very limited amounts of meat so even if its pasta he might have a meat based sauce and I'll have just olive oil and garlic or garlic mushroom sauce .
It has always been that way sometimes its 4 different things when GD's are here .

We started planning our meals about two years ago when we were sharing the cooking between 3 of us. I still buy meat randomly eg when it’s on offer, but I have found that by meal planning and having a shopping list we waste less. Strangely crisps are never on the list but get purchased quite regularly!
We signed up to Hello Fresh a while ago because they had a fantastic offer. The meals were lovely and no waste. Everything is pre portioned. Although they seem expensive because you are not buying a whole tin or jar of an ingredient when you only need a tablespoon of, it can work out really reasonable.

I don’t exactly plan - but like ‘Tanith’ I’m mindful of what I’ve got to use. Buying a pack of mushrooms will mean an omelette one night, but then I’m conscious that I need to use up the rest another night, before they spoil.

I have a weekly shopping delivery, so plan for the week ahead.

I largely keep to it, but am pretty relaxed - so for example I have fish, chips and peas down for today but having had a large brunch of egg, bacon, mushrooms and bubble and squeak from our roast I suspect we will almost certainly not be having another fried meal. In fact we might just have the plum cobbler and a fresh made custard - cobbler left over from yesterday.

I plan my meals a week ahead and then prepare my shopping list.

The plan is not rigid and most weeks some meals get moved around or changed. I then take into account anything left in the fridge or veg rack that needs using up when planning the enxt weeks menus.

I am always scanning recipes when I come across them and over the years I have built up an archive of a 100 or so recipes that we have eaten and enjoyed and about 20 years ago i listed these on a spread sheet, which I refer to when planning menus.

I love food and love trying new recipes and eating across a wide range of foods. It is only by having a list of recipes and planning my menus that I can ensure I eat the wide variety of foods I enjoy eating.

I was just thinking about this this morning. I sat down to try and plan my meals for the coming week and found I didn’t fancy anything that came to mind. Anyone else relate to this?