Who Plans out their Dinners?

i've got a couple new years resoluations which revolve around food- one of them is to try a new recipie every fortnight.  the other is to do a better job of planning my meals/shopping trip (too many trips to the store for this, that and the other). 

does anyone else do this?  any tips? 

next week- going to make a big chicken on sunday and then use it to make enchilladas & then stew later in the week.

we've been doing this lately in an effort to get dh away from ready meals & incorporate more fresh veg.

so far so good!

how far in advance do you plan?

how far in advance do you plan?

just a week.

I do this to help myself stay on a budget for food - otherwise I do what you do and make too many trips to the store which gets expensive....

I plan one week at a time - I write down seven recipes I want to make and all of the ingredients I'll need for them (which also forces me to look in the cupboards and keeps me from duplicate buying!) The only little issue is that it's tough to keep veg. good for a week, so days 6 and 7 tend to be something involving potatoes, LOL. What I need to do is do a mid-week veg. shop but that requires more organization than I have to offer at the moment. 

I do it for the week ahead.  We don't have a car and butchers etc are always closed by the time I get out of work, I usually buy my fresh stuff on the weekends and plan my meals around it.  Then by the end of the week when there is none left, I rely on pastas etc.

I kind of plan when I do the grocery shopping for the work week. 

And if I don't plan, I always have staples on hand so that I only cook with what I have.  I also have a rule that during the work/school week, I cook only what takes an hour from start to finish.

We have a basic plan for normal weeks and it involves:

Roast on Sunday
Leftovers monday
Something simple on Tuesday and Wednesday
Pasta at least once a week
Pizza on Saturday (homemade)

In there somewhere is usually a crockpot meal, lots of salad and seasonal veg.  We don't ever eat dessert.  we eat a lot of chicken breast and I have a multitude of things I can cook with that. We like potatoes and brown rice.  We also like Mexican so we have tacos/fajitas a lot. 

Now that I have a freezer, I can do some long term planning like making big pots of spaghetti sauce, soup, chili and freezing some for other meals.  I can't wait! 

We have no real room to plan.  I have a general idea each week, but Tescos is right next door so I just get what I like.

We usually have at least once a week
1. Fish
2. pasta
3. some kind of stew/soup/chowder
4. homemade pizza or if the brothers are coming perfect pizza
5. leftovers of stew
6. roast

And something else I guess, we might do a bought roast chicken/ready meal/buy one get one meal at places in town the Cambridge explorer has great deals.

I plan one week at a time - I write down seven recipes I want to make and all of the ingredients I'll need for them (which also forces me to look in the cupboards and keeps me from duplicate buying!) The only little issue is that it's tough to keep veg. good for a week, so days 6 and 7 tend to be something involving potatoes, LOL. What I need to do is do a mid-week veg. shop but that requires more organization than I have to offer at the moment. 

Thats pretty much what we do, we write out what we are going to eat during the week and then we only buy what we need. Its much easier and cheaper this way. I do have like a certain amount of dishes that I cook on a regular basis, also, I BBQ year round on my gas grill outside (yes even in the rain with an umbrella) so we eat lots of meat and grilled veggies. I like to shop a my local merchants and thats cheaper too. We still spend a lot of money on food unfortunately....we like eating.

I plan one week in advance.  I have a Tesco delivery for dry goods & house stuff and every Wednesday I get a delivery from Abel-Cole for organic produce & eggs.  They also have lovely pies and soups which I order occasionally so I'm not cooking constantly.

Not having a car and a 2 mile round trip walk to Sainburys prevents me from running to the store every other day.  We hardly ever eat out, the boy gets soups or sandwiches when he's working but thats about it.

Making the chicken on Sunday and having it for other meals early week is a great idea.  Lasagna's are great and tend to freeze well.  Turkey/meat loafs are great and make excellent sandwiches the next day. 

I'm big on soups, which last me a few days.   

I have a vague idea of what I'm going to do about 1 to 2 weeks in advance, depending on what I've bought at the butchers at the weekend and picked up at Sainsbury's.  Then I hit Lidl for the things that are cheaper there, and the meals shape up.

I like to have alternatives, just in case something doesn't thaw out in time, or someone has eaten something I planned to use (with a husband & two teenagers at home, that happens quite a bit!).

Like last night I had turkey steaks.  But no idea what I was going do with them - Greek marinade and rice, or cream sauce with veggies and egg noodles.  It's nice to have a choice.

Before Christmas, I did something the kids & hubby loved.  I planned menus based on what I had in the house, but not what day they would be on.  And I Google'd images of those meals (bangers & mash, fish & chips, enchiladas, hoi sin wraps & stir fry, etc) and printed them out with the meal described next to them, like it was a menu in a diner.  I put it on the fridge.  They loved it, and they kept away from things I'd be using in meals.  Plus it was easier if my husband had to start meals for me because of late trains.

I plan on starting doing that again soon!

I try to plan a week in advance, but we still end up running to the store far more often than I would like. Some of that is planned, as we can't really fit a week's worth of groceries in our fridge. And some of it is due to oh-no-we-ran-out-of-something or I've-changed-my-mind-about-what-I-want-to-eat-tonight or (most frustrating) a-critical-ingredient-has-gone-bad-in-the-fridge. It doesn't help that our local, i.e. accessible without a car, shopping options are pretty crummy. We get by fairly well, but it often means hitting four or five different shops to get everything.

I'm also trying to improve my planning and shopping habits, as well as cooking more from what I have on hand. One thing that seems to help is sitting down in front of the fridge once a week and going through what's in there, then planning some meals around the stuff that needs to be used up. I'm trying to cut down on the ingredients that go bad or hang around forever either because they were purchased for a planned dish that didn't get made or because they were left over from something else.

i've got a couple new years resoluations which revolve around food- one of them is to try a new recipie every fortnight.  the other is to do a better job of planning my meals/shopping trip (too many trips to the store for this, that and the other). 

does anyone else do this?  any tips? 

next week- going to make a big chicken on sunday and then use it to make enchilladas & then stew later in the week.

Excellent plan! I make a list and am sure I save more by plotting a week of menus. I write them up on the IKEA blackboard in the kitchen so everyone knows what they're going to be eating..

I can only handle the supermarket once a week or it would do my head in. So I do things like freeze milk in case I run out!

Make sure you use the chicken carcass to make stock!  Comes in so handy...

I plan the week's dinners, look at recipes, make a list of only those ingredients we'll need for those recipes. Then I add to the list our staples we'll need for breakfast and lunches, as well as TP, laundry soap etc.  Finally, I take off the ingredients that need to be fresh for the last couple days, and the excess that won't fit in our tiny fridge.

My husband takes the list and does the big weekly shop.  I stop at the grocery when I pick up the kids from school mid-week to pick up those fresh ingredients I took off the list, and anything that may have been forgotten or overlooked.

We plan out anything from 4-9 days in advance - usually no more than 7. It's hard now, though, as being pregnant, my appetite is really off. Some nights I don't want a meal at all and just have toast or something. So we need to be pretty flexible. DH has a few back up meals he'll make when I don't want anything. We're both home all day most days, so we also have to have good lunch things on hand (I take mine when I'm working). We're also always having to go get milk. Sammy drinks a pint a day, we both drink tea and eat cereal, and I crave milk like crazy. So we're going through it a lot!