Meal Plan Like Me
It seems like not a week goes by when I don't see some friend posting on social media about they don't know what they want for dinner. When it comes to making dinner at home, this is a completely alien experience to me. While I've talked about the food that I typically eat (both before and after losing weight), I haven't talked too much about the process.
By both inclination and profession I am a planner, so rather than buying a pile of ingredients and saying "what should I make today?" I specifically pick out the recipes that I plan to make and then buy ingredients to make them. Boiled down, my process looks like this:
1. Select recipes to make.
2. Build grocery list based on those recipes.
3. Buy groceries.
4. Schedule meals.
5. Cook meals.
This is simple and straightforward enough, but there are a lot of secondary questions that go into these steps, particularly the first one.
An incomplete unprioritized list of questions I ask myself when selecting my recipe list for the week
Note: I say the week because for years my pattern was to do all my grocery shopping on Saturdays. Now in pandemic mode, M and I try to buy 10-12 days worth of groceries at a time, and we worry less about which days those fall on. The pattern still holds.
- What new recipes do I want to try?
- Has M specified any preferences for the week ahead?
- Are there are any ingredients in my fridge or pantry that I need to use before they go bad?
- Do I have plans any night of this week that would require quickly prepared meals or crock pot meals? This was obviously way more important before the pandemic, but even during the pandemic I have nights with Zoom calls or other events that would preclude cooking long complicated meals. Regardless, if I only have 20 minutes for dinner due to plans, I need to take that into account.
- Do I have any plans to eat dinner out? Obviously, that's a non-issue during the pandemic, but in normal times things like baseball or dinner out with friends need to be accounted for.
- Do I need to generate a lot of leftovers? In non-pandemic times, if I'm going to be eating dinner out two or three days in a row I typically try to make something large like a pot of soup or a casserole that will generate leftovers for lunch to cover that entire time period.
- Related: do I want to make something particularly time consuming (like baking bread or a more time consuming soup), and if so do I have a day I can fit that in?
- What's the weather like right now? I'm probably not going to make French Onion Soup in July, for example, nor am I likely to make a cold gazpacho in December.
- Is anything on sale right now? I don't spend very much time looking at grocery circulars or clipping coupons, but I do keep mental tabs on what fresh fruits and vegetables are likely to be available, and certain times of the year do lend themselves to other ingredients, like Lent and seafood. If you can get fresh strawberries, make fresh strawberry dishes!
- Have I already selected a recipe that has a special ingredient in it, and if so do I want to make other things with that ingredient to use it up? This happens a lot with fresh fruits and vegetables.
Having taken all these questions into account, I write out the recipes I want to make on a pad of paper. This includes the name of the recipe and the cookbook or magazine issue it is in and the page it is on. This process is facilitated by my having gone through every new issue of Eating Well and marking interesting looking recipes with post-it notes, so when putting together a shopping list I can just turn to those notes. Back on the recipe list, I also tend to put an asterisk next to recipes I've never made before so I can double-check them the night before to make sure I didn't miss instructions like "marinate for four hours" or something else that would be unfortunate to be reminded of 30 minutes before I want to eat.
I then use a piece of notebook paper to write out my shopping list. During this stage I double-check my pantry against the recipes to make sure I'm not missing anything. I usually group my list together by recipe so if I can't find something I can make substitutions a bit more easily, but if I have a really long list (typically if I'm hosting a large event) I usually rewrite it to be grouped by aisle of the supermarket to make things a bit faster in the store. I also leave this note paper on my counter during the week so if I use up a staple I can just add it to the list right there.
Pre-pandemic I would always go to the West Side Market and to Giant Eagle, and occasionally to other stores like the Mexican grocery store. I'd put an asterisk or a little star next to ingredients at specific stores to make it easier to do the shopping. Now that we're buying almost everything via Giant Eagle curbside pickup, I mark the ingredients that I need for a specific recipe are marked with an * so when M plus it into the app she knows to ask me if it's not available.
Fun fact: I have actually been slowly working my through all the random paper I had left from college. I think I'm almost done with them.
Having done all this, buying groceries is pretty simple. Nowadays M handles it all through the Giant Eagle app. Pre-pandemic I would go to the West Side Market first and then hit other stores in order from "farthest to my house to closest to my house."
Once all the groceries are home, I usually assign certain meals to certain days. This process uses some of the questions I asked when building the recipe list, and adds a few more:
An incomplete unprioritized list of questions I ask myself when assigning a meal to a given day
- Are there ingredients that I have to use before they go bad, and if so when will they go bad?
- Is this going to put something that smells bad in my trash can (ex: fish wrappers), and if so can I make that on trash night? Not that I can't take the trash out any time I want, but I'd rather not take out half empty bags if I can avoid it, and even if the trash is outside in the dumpster I still have to walk past it in the summer. Might as well minimize that if I can easily do so.
- Are there recipes I picked to make on certain days for scheduling purposes?
- Do I want to have some ingredient two or more nights in a row? If it's tomato season and I've got lots of fresh tomatoes, quite possibly. If it's canned black beans, maybe not.
I then take my recipe list and write the correct day of the week next to the recipe. In the pre-pandemic world I would do this for almost every recipe. In the pandemic world we've got a lot less activities going on, so very often I don't need to assign a day.
From here, it's time to cook. Well, almost. Every night after dinner, I look at what is planned for the next day, or if nothing is specifically assigned for the next day I pick one. This lets me take meat out of the freezer or otherwise do any preparatory activities that may be needed, like getting up early the next morning for crock pot prep. I also review recipes I've never made before at this time. Occasionally I realize at this point that I've screwed up and have to audible to a different recipe, but better to learn that the night before than at dinner time the next day, or worse halfway through making something.
I'm not going to claim that I never screw this up. There are certainly days (pre-pandemic) when I have to swing by the store to grab something I've forgotten, but thankfully that is a rare occurrence. On the whole though, you can see why I usually don't stand in the kitchen wondering what I'm going to make for dinner that night. One other benefit is that if I have something planned for dinner, I virtually never go out to eat instead of cooking.
By both inclination and profession I am a planner, so rather than buying a pile of ingredients and saying "what should I make today?" I specifically pick out the recipes that I plan to make and then buy ingredients to make them. Boiled down, my process looks like this:
1. Select recipes to make.
2. Build grocery list based on those recipes.
3. Buy groceries.
4. Schedule meals.
5. Cook meals.
This is simple and straightforward enough, but there are a lot of secondary questions that go into these steps, particularly the first one.
An incomplete unprioritized list of questions I ask myself when selecting my recipe list for the week
Note: I say the week because for years my pattern was to do all my grocery shopping on Saturdays. Now in pandemic mode, M and I try to buy 10-12 days worth of groceries at a time, and we worry less about which days those fall on. The pattern still holds.
- What new recipes do I want to try?
- Has M specified any preferences for the week ahead?
- Are there are any ingredients in my fridge or pantry that I need to use before they go bad?
- Do I have plans any night of this week that would require quickly prepared meals or crock pot meals? This was obviously way more important before the pandemic, but even during the pandemic I have nights with Zoom calls or other events that would preclude cooking long complicated meals. Regardless, if I only have 20 minutes for dinner due to plans, I need to take that into account.
- Do I have any plans to eat dinner out? Obviously, that's a non-issue during the pandemic, but in normal times things like baseball or dinner out with friends need to be accounted for.
- Do I need to generate a lot of leftovers? In non-pandemic times, if I'm going to be eating dinner out two or three days in a row I typically try to make something large like a pot of soup or a casserole that will generate leftovers for lunch to cover that entire time period.
- Related: do I want to make something particularly time consuming (like baking bread or a more time consuming soup), and if so do I have a day I can fit that in?
- What's the weather like right now? I'm probably not going to make French Onion Soup in July, for example, nor am I likely to make a cold gazpacho in December.
- Is anything on sale right now? I don't spend very much time looking at grocery circulars or clipping coupons, but I do keep mental tabs on what fresh fruits and vegetables are likely to be available, and certain times of the year do lend themselves to other ingredients, like Lent and seafood. If you can get fresh strawberries, make fresh strawberry dishes!
- Have I already selected a recipe that has a special ingredient in it, and if so do I want to make other things with that ingredient to use it up? This happens a lot with fresh fruits and vegetables.
Having taken all these questions into account, I write out the recipes I want to make on a pad of paper. This includes the name of the recipe and the cookbook or magazine issue it is in and the page it is on. This process is facilitated by my having gone through every new issue of Eating Well and marking interesting looking recipes with post-it notes, so when putting together a shopping list I can just turn to those notes. Back on the recipe list, I also tend to put an asterisk next to recipes I've never made before so I can double-check them the night before to make sure I didn't miss instructions like "marinate for four hours" or something else that would be unfortunate to be reminded of 30 minutes before I want to eat.
I then use a piece of notebook paper to write out my shopping list. During this stage I double-check my pantry against the recipes to make sure I'm not missing anything. I usually group my list together by recipe so if I can't find something I can make substitutions a bit more easily, but if I have a really long list (typically if I'm hosting a large event) I usually rewrite it to be grouped by aisle of the supermarket to make things a bit faster in the store. I also leave this note paper on my counter during the week so if I use up a staple I can just add it to the list right there.
Pre-pandemic I would always go to the West Side Market and to Giant Eagle, and occasionally to other stores like the Mexican grocery store. I'd put an asterisk or a little star next to ingredients at specific stores to make it easier to do the shopping. Now that we're buying almost everything via Giant Eagle curbside pickup, I mark the ingredients that I need for a specific recipe are marked with an * so when M plus it into the app she knows to ask me if it's not available.
Fun fact: I have actually been slowly working my through all the random paper I had left from college. I think I'm almost done with them.
Having done all this, buying groceries is pretty simple. Nowadays M handles it all through the Giant Eagle app. Pre-pandemic I would go to the West Side Market first and then hit other stores in order from "farthest to my house to closest to my house."
Once all the groceries are home, I usually assign certain meals to certain days. This process uses some of the questions I asked when building the recipe list, and adds a few more:
An incomplete unprioritized list of questions I ask myself when assigning a meal to a given day
- Are there ingredients that I have to use before they go bad, and if so when will they go bad?
- Is this going to put something that smells bad in my trash can (ex: fish wrappers), and if so can I make that on trash night? Not that I can't take the trash out any time I want, but I'd rather not take out half empty bags if I can avoid it, and even if the trash is outside in the dumpster I still have to walk past it in the summer. Might as well minimize that if I can easily do so.
- Are there recipes I picked to make on certain days for scheduling purposes?
- Do I want to have some ingredient two or more nights in a row? If it's tomato season and I've got lots of fresh tomatoes, quite possibly. If it's canned black beans, maybe not.
I then take my recipe list and write the correct day of the week next to the recipe. In the pre-pandemic world I would do this for almost every recipe. In the pandemic world we've got a lot less activities going on, so very often I don't need to assign a day.
From here, it's time to cook. Well, almost. Every night after dinner, I look at what is planned for the next day, or if nothing is specifically assigned for the next day I pick one. This lets me take meat out of the freezer or otherwise do any preparatory activities that may be needed, like getting up early the next morning for crock pot prep. I also review recipes I've never made before at this time. Occasionally I realize at this point that I've screwed up and have to audible to a different recipe, but better to learn that the night before than at dinner time the next day, or worse halfway through making something.
I'm not going to claim that I never screw this up. There are certainly days (pre-pandemic) when I have to swing by the store to grab something I've forgotten, but thankfully that is a rare occurrence. On the whole though, you can see why I usually don't stand in the kitchen wondering what I'm going to make for dinner that night. One other benefit is that if I have something planned for dinner, I virtually never go out to eat instead of cooking.