Meal Planning

I am fairly new to the wonderful world of regularly cooking and preparing nutritious and yummy meals for my husband and myself. I'm not sure why it has taken til my early 30's to get into the rhythm of planning and cooking meals on a daily basis. I guess initially, it was due to the recent change in our finances and needing to cut back on our eating budget. We are expecting our first baby in about 8 weeks, and I haven't been working for most of the pregnancy. This was partly because my work is very physical, and partly because we have only just moved to the Gold Coast and I am yet to build up my client base (in professional organising) here.

So we have been living on one income, and this forced me to re-evaluate our spending and eating habits. I discovered it is much cheaper, and healthier, to cook at home every day. It took me a while to get used to this as Shane and I were accustomed to eating out regularly. He is a chef and while he is passionate about cooking, he rarely feels up to it in his down time. Fair enough too! Mind you he cooks me spectacular meals for a special treat now and then :-)

My biggest challenge with being the main cook in our home was coming up with new and exciting meals to make, and once I had, realising that I just didn't have the right ingredients in the pantry to actually make the meal then and there. So I decided to start meal planning. This was something I had read about in many organising blogs, and I was curious to try it.

This was a process I've learnt slowly and it is still evolving. I began by assembling all of my favourite recipes into a new recipe binder. I am lucky to have a vast library of amazing cookbooks thanks to my husband's passion, and I started reading through some that didn't seem as intimidating as others. (i.e. have you seen the book on current best restaurant in the world called Noma, in Denmark? I don't even recognise most of that as being food! Its more like art). A few non-chef-people-friendly books of my husbands that I love, are-

Neil Perry's 'Good Food'; Gordon Ramsay 'Makes it Easy'; the beautiful Maggie Beer's 'Maggie's Harvest'; and Matthew Evan's 'the Real Food Companion'.
I photocopy my favourite recipes from these and others, and compile them in my recipe binder. I also use magazines such as Woman's weekly, handed down to me by my mum, for recipe inspiration; and websites such as taste.com.au

Back to the meal planning. Every fortnight I sit down sometimes with my husband and sometimes on my own, and flip through my recipe binder. I usually like to plan around 10 - 12 meals for the fortnight. I find planning and shopping for a fortnight rather than for a week, much more time-efficient. When I cook, I try to make enough for the meal and also for another meal or two the following day. Sometimes I make a large meal such as spaghetti bolognaise and freeze portions which will last a long time. Good tupperware is essential for storing left-overs so we don't have to use too much gladwrap. (More on storing and organising your tupperware, a common complaint of my clients, in another blog another day!).

I make a list of groceries I need to create the 10 or so meals. I then organise the list into separate lists named by where we will purchase the ingredients. For example, we buy our meat and cheese and some dry goods such as organic tomato paste, from Aldi. Aldi have excellent quality Australian produced (very important!) meats such as Free range chicken, at excellent prices. A lot of people don't realise this, and I think a common mis-conception is that Aldi has mostly foreign produce. In fact, most of the produce especially the meat, fruit and veg, is Aussie. There are a few items that we have to buy from Woolworths much to our dislike. We buy A2 milk from Woolworths and also special cat food for our fussy little Princess (yes, that is actually her name!) and a few other things when we cant find them at Aldi. My biggest peeve with Aldi is the inconsistency, one week there'll be something fantastic and the next time you go, its no longer in stock. This doesn't happen very often luckily. They have a great range of organic items like spaghetti, tinned tomatoes and yoghurt.

We buy our fruit and veg from local markets. I highly recommend you try this, if you haven't already. I find the produce is not only cheaper, but stays fresher in the fridge much, much longer. This would be due to the fact that the stall holders buy the produce locally and sell it almost immediately, as opposed to the major supermarkets storing and freezing their produce for alarmingly long amounts of time.

So usually, I have one list for Aldi, one list for Woolworths and one list for the markets. Occasionally we will buy meat in bulk at a big meat supplier such as Patton's meats, as well.

I find this method of creating very specific lists and really sticking to them, very helpful and enables us to keep to our budget. It also creates a lot less wastage, as I know exactly what to do with what I have in the fridge! No more wondering "now what will I do with that half a cabbage" and then throwing it out the following week when its gone off.

It sounds like a lot of work, but believe me, it actually saves me time and stressful headaches caused by not knowing what to make for dinner. Its also much healthier as we can plan well balanced meals and create them quickly with ease, having all the right ingredients there. This prevents the "I'm hungry and want to eat now, so lets get take way" syndrome.

Also, just another point, I always try to make enough at the time for lunch or dinner the following day. Shane takes his left-overs to work with him, which saves us alot of money on bought lunches. I try to cook as much as I can at the one time, using the same boiling water for several vegies for eg, to also save on power. The oven and stove top can add considerably to your power bill, so its great to do things like steaming one type of veg over a pot of another veg cooking. Efficient, healthy and enviro-friendly cooking!

I hope this has given you some inspiration to try meal planning. I was a slow-starter but now that I'm there, there's no going back for me!