Planning a Week of Meals

FOOD · GLOBAL

Planning a Week of Meals

Why planning works, building a week, shopping from the plan and batch cooking

Most food waste and most weeknight takeaways come from the same cause — nobody decided what to eat while there was still time to do anything about it.

Build the week around reality

Start from the evenings you will actually cook. Two nights of leftovers, one of something from the freezer and one of eggs on toast is a plan rather than a failure.

Plan five dinners rather than seven, which leaves room for the week going differently.

A workable structure

Give nights a loose theme — pasta, a traybake, something with pulses, a stir fry, a roast — and fill in the details. That removes the decision without removing the choice.

Check the fridge and cupboards first and build around what needs using, which is where the waste reduction comes from.

Shopping from the plan

Write the list by aisle, buy to the list, and do not shop hungry. A single weekly shop with one top-up beats several trips, which is where unplanned buying happens.

Batch cooking

Cook one thing in double quantity each week and freeze half in portions, labelled and dated. A freezer with six labelled meals in it is what prevents a bad evening becoming a takeaway.

Leave headspace in containers and cool food before freezing.

Storing food properly

Most fruit and vegetables in the fridge; potatoes, onions and bananas out and apart. Use-by is a safety date and best-before is about quality.

Meal kits and delivery

Kits remove the planning and the shopping and cost more per portion than cooking from a list. They suit a busy period or learning to cook rather than being a permanent arrangement for most households.

Check the packaging, the cancellation terms and whether the introductory price is the real one.

Cooking with less time

A short list of meals you can make without a recipe, a well-stocked cupboard and one shopping trip covers most weeks. Tinned pulses, frozen vegetables and eggs make a meal possible on any evening.

Shopping and budget

Comparing unit prices rather than pack prices, buying own-label staples and cooking from the freezer all reduce a food bill considerably. Batch cooking reduces it further.

Track what you throw away for a fortnight, which tells you exactly where the money is going.

Cooking for one

Recipes scale badly downwards, so cook a normal quantity and portion the rest for the freezer. Buying loose produce rather than packs reduces both waste and cost.

A freezer with labelled portions is the single most useful thing for anyone cooking alone.

Starting

Five reliable meals you can cook without a recipe is enough to build on.

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