Thursday, August 15, 2013

Back into meal planning

My experiment with the one month meal plan was a success. We ended up cooking 4 meals per week and each was 4 servings, which works out to 16 servings per week. That seemed perfect for us most weeks. D doesn't take leftovers to work every day and we like to leave some space open for having dinner with friends.

In the real world, not all recipes make 4 servings, so just aiming to cook 4 nights a week doesn't quite work. Instead, I try to plan for approximately 16 servings per week, however that breaks down with the meals.

I have a hard time thinking of meals when confronted with a blank page, so I use categories to jog my memory and make this more mindless. My categories are meat (1-2x per week), beans/lentils (1x), pasta (1x - can also include pizza because hey, it's all carbs!), eggs (1x). I don't use every single category every week but it helps keep things from getting too repetitive. Eventually I'd like to get my recipe binder re-organized into these categories so that I can flip through easily and pull things out.

meal planning sunday
{meal planning sunday}

On Sunday morning (ideally) I figure out what ingredients I have left over from last week, like an open carton of broth or sour cream. I try to pick out recipes that will use those up because I hate throwing away part of a container.

I fill in the grid with the recipes we choose. If they're in my binder I pull them out, otherwise I make a note of which cookbook I'm using and what page it's on.

At the top of the page I quickly jot down our schedule for the week, if we have anything coming up. We usually make plans with friends first, then work in our krav classes around that, then figure out which meals make sense where. This is flexible during the week because we make last minute plans pretty frequently (the major upside to no pets and/or kids!). I schedule the meals based on the prep time vs. my free time. If I know I'm going to have extra time one night then I'll assign some prep tasks for meals later in the week. I had a free night on Monday this week, so I caramelized onions and made pizza dough for later in the week while my lentils for that night were cooking. If I know the week is going to be crazy I'll choose recipes that make a lot of servings and are good cold, like this orzo salad or this couscous salad.

I check the pantry to figure out what we need and then make a grocery list split into a few parts - there's a space for that on the right hand side of the page that I can tear off. The planning system takes a long time to describe because I'm so wordy, but it's actually quick. I do this over my Sunday morning coffee and the entire process takes 10 - 15 minutes tops. I go straight to the farmers' market after I make the list and get the bulk of my produce from there. Regardless of my list I always get 1 - 2 heads of lettuce, chop them and wash them and then leave them in the salad spinner in the fridge. This way I can throw together salads to go with the meals. I used to be really reliant on the packaged greens from Trader Joe's but this is much cheaper and takes me about 5 minutes total.

I pick up the other groceries as needed during the week. I tend to not buy any meat until the day we're going to use it. There's always a chance something will come up and we won't cook according to the schedule and wasting meat drives me crazy. I always buy meat from the counter so I can get exactly the amount we need and I don't have to figure out what to do with two extra chicken thighs. (There's more info on how I handle eating meat in this post.)

If we're having friends over I can usually just pick out the best sounding meal on our list for that week and double it. Or I'll swap in something more company worthy at the last minute. And add a dessert.

So far this is going really well and it has the added benefit of allowing me to keep our grocery spending in check. If I'm making something that uses three kinds of pricey cheese, then I'll try to have the other meals that week be a little more spartan. Having lentils/beans at least once week helps a lot. We're still working through that giant bag of black lentils I ordered a few months ago. I've been feeling good about our $350 a month grocery budget and then realized the other day that it's actually only $300 a month. No wonder it's sometimes tight the last week. I might give us another $20 - $50 a month.

I'm not sure if it will be useful to you or not (cooking habits are so specific!) but I'm including the PDF of my planning list here. I know that trying to come up with meal ideas can seem difficult, but I find it so much easier when I break it down into categories.

Click on the little down arrow icon to download the file for your own use or you can just view it and print it out directly from Google Drive.

14 comments:

  1. This is wonderful! I'll definitely give it a try. I've done this weekly (on and off) for years and it takes such a load off each week to not get that blank look every afternoon around 4-ish. Thanks for the chart.

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    1. I know! I started meal planning for my family when I was 16 and I was really good about it for a long time so I KNOW I can do it. But somehow when it's just D and me I fall out of the habit and we end up eating scrambled eggs multiple nights a week because I just can't face figuring out what to make when I get home from work. Somehow the chart makes it easier for me. Hopefully you find it helpful too!

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  2. I'm green with envy. 10-15 minutes, top? Please! lol- I wish it only took that much time for me! I've tried planning everything out like this, but it would take way too long. BUT. Worth it.

    I need to get back on the ball & start again. I came across www.ziplist.com a few weeks ago & have been meaning to take advantage if it. There's a recipe clipper (think like Pinterest toolbar button), you can upload your own recipes (in theory to weed out the family approved misc magazine clipped recipes currently held in a 3+" binder), meal planner from any of the recipes saved to your account & auto generated shopping list...

    You're my hero today for this!

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    1. Well, I think part of the reason it takes me less time is because I have a lot of experience with it, even though it's been a while since I've done it regularly.

      And the other thing is that I'm fine with eating the same things fairly often. We're actually branching out a bit more now that we're doing this system, but if I'm left to my own devices I'll eat the same meals every week! Having the recipe binder is crucial to cutting the time. If I was online searching for recipes it would take hours!

      Have never heard of ziplist but I'm super curious! I'll have to go check it out. Thanks!

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  3. What do you eat for lunch during the week? Do you just do the leftovers from dinner the night before, or do you go out? I'm trying to bring my lunch to work most days to save money, but I tend to forget about lunches when I meal plan, which doesn't turn out very well!

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    1. I try to bring my lunch everyday! D eats out with his office at least a few times a week. For us, the 16 servings definitely takes into account lunches. If you have a family, you'll need to adjust accordingly.

      If we eat in every night during the week, that's 10 servings. We don't eat out much during the week, so that's pretty steady. Weekends are anything goes, so I don't factor them in until later.

      If I take lunches every day that's 5 lunches (in reality, I don't always cook on Sundays, so there aren't always leftovers for Monday and sometimes I buy that day).

      With 16 servings, that leaves D with one day of packed lunch per week. He doesn't always use it so we might have more leftovers. I'm trying to figure out meals that would be easier for him to take to work but his office usually eats together if everyone is there, so it's a little unusual.

      Wiggle room - Sometimes I have lunch meetings, or we go out one night, or it turns out that a recipe claims to make 4 servings but they're so huge it's more like 6. So we usually have a little extra food towards the end of the week. At that point, I'll look at our weekend plans and decide whether we'll be eating in enough to get through them. If not, I'll skip the last meal I planned for the week. I usually leave the last meal of the week as the one that uses the least perishable items so that I can roll it over into the next week if necessary.

      We almost never have fewer leftovers than planned, but if we did, I'd probably throw together a quick two serving omelette as an extra meal.

      Whew. Sorry that's so long! You have to take lunches into account when meal planning. I love leftovers anyways, and I really hate spending money on endless Subway sandwiches or something, given that I don't have many quick options around my office.

      I'd recommend trying a week where you calculate how many servings you make and then just see where it falls. If you have enough for lunches and dinners, you can make that number of servings your goal from then on. Tweak as necessary.

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  4. I have been following your blog for several years now, and I am always in awe of the thought, care, and painstaking organization you put into your systems, homemade cards, trackers, docs, etc. I truly admire it and think it it is exceptional! I used to meal plan and then I married a man who, until recently, refused to eat leftovers! Now we are in a different stage of our lives and since I pack lunch for our daughter every day, healthy leftovers are key!

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    1. Awww... thanks, dear! I am so grateful that D is on board with leftovers. I always think it's funny when people don't like them - I sometimes like the leftovers better than the actual meal!

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  5. Hi Rachel...I just stumbled upon this post by accident...and really appreciate the in-depth snapshot into how you've made meal planner work for you. I'm curious to know if you've ever tried an automated meal planning solution. There are quite a few out there. I've spent the past year and a half working with a team to develop a new meal planning solution that provides comprehensive meal planning-shopping-saving support ...it creates the plan for you based on your personal/family profile settings using recipes with ingredients that are on sale at your local grocery store. (We're also working on integrating Freezer/Pantry management, as we speak.) We are currently in invitation-only beta, but if you have any interest in giving it a try, I'd be happy to provide you with an access code to get in. We are building this to answer the "What's For Dinner" call, so your feedback would be most welcome given that you've mapped out your own solution (and clearly given this a ton of thought). I suspect you'd be able to offer us some really valuable input. If you're interested, let me know and I"ll share the link with you. Best regards, Renee

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    1. Hi, Renee! It sounds like a really comprehensive system! It would be fun to test it out. Full disclosure - I've never tried any of the meal planning systems because they always seem more complicated than my paper and pen method, so I'm a little prejudiced. But if the initial time investment isn't TOO crazy, then this sounds awesome. The freezer/pantry management would be an amazing feature. Does it involve building your own recipe database or does it start out with recipes built in?

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  6. This is so great. Thanks for the in-depth walk through of how you plan! I've been meaning to get back into meal planning, and I think this is just what I needed.

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  7. Love hearing about your meal planning. It can be so hard but I think the key is to take time on Sundays to do exactly as you said... plan!

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  8. What are some of your favorite bean/legume based meals? This is a category I am woefully inadequate at, but would like to improve on as I have trouble sticking to a reasonable grocery budget. Beans and lentils would help out a lot, I think!

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    1. Hi, Heidi! yes, the beans help a lot with the grocery budget!
      I love black lentils with caramelized onions (which I've posted the recipe for) and basic red lentil dal (also posted), and coconut curried dal for a more indulgent version (posted) so those are some of our staples. I could eat the black lentils every week.
      We also do bean burritos, or TJ's cuban black beans on a toasted corn tortilla with a poached egg on top (so good, so fast).
      I use Mollie Katzen's recipe for skinny red beans and rice, which is a nice weeknight meal and really tasty, especially with cornbread. I can't remember which of her cookbooks it's in, though.

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