I used to be great at menu planning, when it was only two of us and I was 'busy'. I use scare quotes around busy because I used to think I knew what that meant. Now I have a speedy seven-month old son shouting happily from his playpen, or grabbing the dog, or eating the dog's toy/kibble, or or or. The meaning of the word busy has changed a bit… and god what did I do with all that time I had before?!
Menu planning might seem like a massive pain, but it's much less stressful when you've got a small number of recipes to choose from, and you don't have to worry whether you have the ingredients on hand. It's cheaper and more efficient, with less waste – just pick recipes so you use up what you buy.
Entering babyland threw my menu planning out the window for awhile, but now that Elliot is starting to eat proper food I realise I need to get back into it or risk losing my mind. Lunches fall through the cracks at the moment, and I'm not sure how to incorporate them – they are a bit less formal, but now that it's Elliot and I together I do have to actually make something. Not just stand in front of the fridge eating forkfuls of things from various plastic containers.
This is how I go about menu planning now, which is definitely not perfect.
At some point on Thursday or Friday I sit down with my laptop, my food magazine clipping files and some cookery books with a text file open and Ocado loaded (see above). As I plug in the meals, I go through the recipe and add the ingredients straight into my grocery order. I check Eat Seasonably to see if there's something in season I'd forgotten about, and scroll through recipes I've starred in my Google Reader in case there's something in there I want to make.
Before Elliot arrived, I would also have a dish or two at the bottom of the list I would make at the weekend purely for portioning up and freezing. I like the idea of make two, freeze one – but the reality is we just end up eating more and not saving a whole lot.
As I was researching menu planning, I found a good tip: just make a list of meals for the week, don't specify which day. That way if you can just decide that day what to make, you should have ingredients for all of them.
Any other good menu planning tips are welcome, especially getting lunch planning into the mix.
