Do you know on Monday what you’ll have for dinner on Friday? Or, do you stock up on ingredients and throw something together to satisfy your culinary jones of the moment? Perhaps your next meal depends on what’s open on the way home. Maybe you’re on a strict diet that doesn’t allow for variation.
I’m pretty much a spur-of-the-moment type. I’ve come home after a Trader Joe’s expedition and realized I’m hungry for something else. How strange it is to put away bags of groceries only to turn around and hit the nearest Subway or taco shop.
The funny thing is, I prefer to plan my meals out at least a couple days ahead, but usually end up doing something spur-of-the-moment. Since I am trying to drop a few more vanity pounds, I will be planning out meals for the next few weeks. We’re having beef stew tomorrow for dinner.
I want to plan out my meals, and I often try to shop to that accord. Only to forget to take the relevant ingredient out of the freezer that morning, or to find out I’m out of perishable (x) and should have picked it up on the way home from work.
Generally it’s about 2-12 hours ahead that I think of what I’m going to make for tea that night.
We often have a general idea of what we’re going to make.
Say, we’ll discuss like “hey, I saw this in the flyer, how about we make this sometime this week?”.
Most of it is fairly spur of the moment, we’ll decide only a couple hours before starting supper what we’ll be having. We just have a good idea of what is in our kitchen and what we can make with it.
Sometimes we plan a day or two in advance, but generally not much more than that. Like today, we were out all day so on our way home we looked at each other and went ‘what to have?’ but we decided tonight what to have tomorrow, as we’ll need to do some defrosting and a little shopping tomorrow afternoon (we have a lot of apples so we need ice cream to go with the planned apple crisp).
Usually a couple hours ahead, but I have a few “stock” meals that I can do easily, and I try to keep the ingredients for those around. But generally I think “I’d like to cook tonight” and then look at recipes, then go to the store.
I plan meals 4 days to 1 week ahead, but then often veer off course so my plan covers 2 weeks, with additional spur-of-the-moment meals or leftovers in between. I do like to keep a well of staples in the pantry, and I’ve been making double meals and freezing half for a few weeks now, and then dipping into them on busy nights.
I’ve found that I can’t buy produce for the whole week though, or it goes bad; I’ve reconciled myself to an additional trip mid-week on the weeks we’re really eating according to plan (ie, lots of veggies).
I really like recipezaar.com’s software for meal planning. You can save recipes to cookbooks, make meal plans for the day, week or month, and they’ve got a great shopping list feature (to make sure I don’t forget that one ingredient.) I like the fact that their shopping list tells me both amounts of each thing for each recipe, along with preparation technique (“Carrots - 1 cup shredded, 2 sliced, 1 Tbsp for garnish”) so I can figure out in the store how much to get, AND it marks a tally of which recipes the ingredient is needed for, so I can work out a last minute substitution if it turns out they’re all out of phlebotenum.
I’m a disorganised person. I buy a range of ingredients, products, what-have-you. Then, I might be coming home from work one night, and think, “Okay, I remember I have such-and-such in the cupboard, I’ll have that.” Tiredness means I go for easy stuff in the main, anyway. The most prep I get myself involved with these days is mince with onions and mashed taters on the side.
Well, I planned this week’s meals in advance (roasting part of a leg of lamb today), but normally we just buy a bunch of staples and play the “what do you want” game until I give up and make something boring or just order delivery. I used to cook frequently, but lately I’ve been terrible.
As my New Year’s resolution was to eat less crap and take better care of myself, I’m trying to get back into the habit of cooking.
When I’m driving home from work, I think about what’s in the freezer and what I’m in the mood for. Sometimes, I just figure it out when I open the pantry or the fridge. Sometimes I have something thawed, then change my mind and go another route. But since I just cook for the 2 of us, it doesn’t take a lot of planning, as long as I keep food on hand.
When my kids were home and I was housewifing it, I always planned 2 weeks ahead. I wasn’t anal about it (“We will eat this on Monday!”), but I grocery shopped every two weeks and I’d plan out 2 weeks worth of menus before I shopped, then make sure I had everything I needed for those 14 meals.
I still do this when my husband is going to be home for a substantial block of time, or when the kids are coming for a visit – then I plan ahead for as many days as they’ll be home.
But my husband has been traveling a lot for business, lately – when it’s just me here by myself I don’t plan ahead much at all, just eat whatever I can find when I’m hungry… Or, too frequently, order a pizza or pick up some fast food. My cholesterol has gone up and I’ve gained 15 pounds since he started traveling so much.
My mom used to plan out the entire week in advance, and the grocery shopping would be done once a week. This was back in my youth, (when dinosaurs ruled the earth) and we had only the one car, so this was necessary. She could not run out to the store and pick up something mid-week, although we did have bread and milk delivery, and the “egg and chicken man” would also come by once a week.
When I was first married I tried to do the same, since it was all I knew and it was thus obviously the right way. Over the years I’ve gradually changed to vague advance planning, as in “If I cook meatloaf on Saturday we can have meatloaf sandwiches on Sunday,” or “If I make a pork loin roast on Sunday we can use the leftovers in a stir-fry on Monday.” Sometimes those plans are actually followed; sometimes the thrifty plans become moldy in the refrigerator and are thrown out the following week. More often it’s on a day to day basis. Before I leave work, I call home to find out who’s going to be home for supper, how hungry they are, and what they want. Factoring in my whim for the day I stop at the market on the way home.
ETA: Another difference was that my mom relied on her garden and frozen foods for vegetables. I buy fresh within a day or two of when I’m going to use it since I do not garden.
I’d like to plan out at least a few days, if not a week, in advance. But mostly it’s spur of the moment and basically “college student style”. If only it weren’t for the fact that I haven’t been a true college student in awhile…
However, when I tried to plan it out, those plans went to hell with great regularity. I may just be gun-shy about trying again, even though not all the factors in play then will be in play now.
There’s generally meat in the freezer so I have a rough idea of what I’m going to eat during the week following a big shopping trip, but I usually decide what’s going to accompany the meal after I take a look at the staples in the house like rice and pasta. I usually come home, decide what to eat and go back out to the store before I start cooking.
