My Meal Planning Strategy
Food is personal. Everything from what we consider a meal, our pantry staples, and the amount of time and money we spend on food is deeply influenced by our upbringing, culture, habits, values, available funds, household relationships, health, and so much more. Even the topic of reducing food waste (one of the best actions an individual can take for combating climate change), can be a sensitive topic depending on the audience. For this reason, leading the conversation around ways to keep food from spoiling before we eat it is a key focus of our outreach on reducing wasted food as Master Recyclers.
In the last several classes, I have casually mentioned how I developed a meal planning strategy that works well for me and has significantly reduced my food waste. Because food is so persona, I’ve been a little shy to share what has worked for me in such detail. However, after sharing a bit of my methodology in the class, several of you have been hungry for more details.
So, as requested: my meal planning strategy for the last five years.
How my own relationship with food has influenced my approach:
I live in a two person household
We’re both very busy
My cooking education growing up was minimal, and as a result, I focus heavily on using recipes. I learned most of my cooking skills from a stint ordering through a meal subscription service. The proportions were for two people and it helped me develop an eye for how much of what ingredients went into smaller meals.
I don’t like leftovers and focus my meals around right-sizing the amount cooked for my household so we have few leftovers.
I have used my understanding of the lifecycle impacts of wasted food to drive my decisions. I will use more, unrecyclable packaging if I know it will keep my food from spoiling before I eat it.
Questions and/or comments I imagine you may have for me:
“How long did this take you to set up?” — I took a slow day during the depths of the pandemic to set this up. Yes, it did take several hours, but it has saved us so much time in the long run!
“Wow, this is super extra.” — Absolutely, but I love organization that saves me time in the long run. It makes me happy. I promise I am still a fun, easy-going person!
My Methodology
Turn your collection of favorite RECIPES into a meal plan
Your recipes can come from anywhere. Mine are mostly old recipe cards from our time using Blue Apron. Over the years, we’ve added recipes from friends and family into the rotation.
My Recipe Collection. You can see my sections numbered one through five, and each of those sections have 5-6 recipes in them. We are currently in Week 4, so I moved those recipes to the front of the binder. As we cook them, the recipe cards move back to Week 4.
Step 1: Collect 30 (or so) recipes.
It is helpful if they share a lot of the same ingredients. For example, we narrowed our pasta down to two types we buy in bulk.
Step 2: Split those 30 recipes into 5 weeks with 6 recipes each. Make sure there is a good balance for each week between type of meals, if you’re also doing lunch meals or just dinner, etc. Label each recipe by what Week Group they belong in.
These are the numbers that worked well for my small family and gives us some flexibility for still going to a restaurant, having dinner at a friend’s house, or night all we want for dinner is popcorn. As you’ll see in the screenshots, we have a few weeks with more or less meals. Make the number of weeks, number of meals within each week, and the types of recipes work for you.
Now you have a meal plan! When you reach the last week, circle back to the first week.
What I specifically like about this method is that the options for dinner go from “anything” to “we are in Week 3, and here are our options for Week 3.” I don’t have to come up with a weekly meal plan because I already did a long time ago. I also like that it gives me flexibility within the week about what I want each night without being too prescriptive.
What about eating seasonally? Or if you get tired of those same 30 recipes?
We have our 30 recipes for Fall/Winter and another 30 recipes for Spring/Summer. We switch to Spring/Summer when fresh corn arrives in the grocery store, and Fall/Winter when fresh Brussel sprouts and winter squash appear.
Get a meal planning App
If you really want to make meal planning simper, it’s worth it to find a meal planning app that you like. There are many out there, each with their own pros and cons. A quick search on the App Store shows appls like Flipp, Mealime Meal Plans, MealBoard, Cozi, and so many more. I used Cozi for a bit, but eventually moved on to an app called AnyList. We do pay for the upgraded features, but a lot of the below options are available on the free version.
What I like about AnyList (not sponsored!):
I can create a shared family list and automatically syncs when I add or remove items.
I can store and organize my recipes
I can add ingredients to my shopping list
I can add notes to my ingredients (for example, my husband does the shopping. In the notes, I can specify a brand preference or a substitute idea if the store is out. He has even added images of certain products to the notes to help him remember).
I can plan my meals on a calendar (though I don’t use this function)
And a bunch of other features I don’t use, but you may like such as shopping online, adding items via Siri or Alexa, and importing recipes from website and blogs.
Here is how we made the most out of our app using our Meal Plan.
Step 3: Add recipes to recipe section of App.
We added our recipes into AnyList. It is key to add the ingredients and their amounts for each recipe. This will save you time later!
I did not add the recipe directions because the husband is the one who meal preps and prefers seeing the ingredient amounts and prep instructions physically written out. I cook. I’ve cooked the recipes enough times now that I don’t really need to read the instructions.
Step 4: Organize your added recipes into a folder for each week.
We titled our folders Summer: Week 1; Summer: Week 2; . . . Winter: Week 4, etc. (more on the Summer/Winter in a bit!)
Make your grocery list
If your meal planning app will automatically generate a grocery list for you, this is where the magic happens! Because my recipes are saved in Week Folders, creating each week’s grocery list is as simple as pressing a few buttons.
Helpful Tip!
AnyList will automatically place ingredients into categories like “Produce,” “Meat and Seafood,” etc. based on the app’s best guess. You can edit an ingredient so it will show up in a different category. Even better, you can create more list categories and organize them so they appear in the order you walk through the grocery store! I created a different category for each aisle.
Step 5: On the app, open the week you are grocery shopping for
Step 6: Select the first recipe in the week
Step 7: Scroll down and click “Add all ingredients to list”
Step 8: Repeat for all recipes in the week
Now in the list section, you have all your ingredients for the week!
If you standardized the names for your ingredients across recipes, the app will add up the total quantity of a particular ingredient for the whole week. For example, if you have three recipes using 2 tablespoons of sour cream each, the list will say 6 tablespoons of sour cream. This also keeps the app from claiming “cucumber” and “Cucumber” are two different things.
Step 9: Check your pantry and fridge for ingredients you already have and ensure you have enough. Mark off items you don’t need to buy.
In AnyList, I also have saved favorite items that do not belong to a recipe which we choose from. (e.g., I need my mint chocolate chip ice cream).
Now, grab your reusable shopping bags and go to the grocery store!
Why I love my meal planning system
Meal planning is no longer an effort or heavy lift, and it takes me seconds to create my shopping list.
Because we chose recipes with similar ingredients, we don’t end up with condiment jars filled with ingredients we only used for one recipe.
We now have a better sense of what ingredients we use a lot of and can stock up during sales.
I’ve been able to perfect these recipes that are right-sized for us.
Because most of our recipes are sized so we don’t have leftovers (what I waste the most of), we have greatly reduced our household food waste!
What’s in my compost bin at the end of this week?
Leftover ramen soup we ordered while I was sick and completely forgot about
Some dead, mushy herbs from the fridge
A lime I just bought that rotted in two days (I don’t know what happened there)
The pressed remains of limes and lemons
The cut ends of asparagus and bok choy
A LOT of used tea leaves.
More Meal Planning Tips that have helped me
Have a few shelf-stable recipes always on hand.
We always have a frozen lasagna, a frozen pizza, “tuna noona” (Kraft mac and cheese, tuna, and a can of peas - no judgement!), and red-shell pepper pasta. These are not part of our 30 meals. Having these simple, no-fuss meals with ingredients that don’t spoil and are always on hand help keep us from ordering out when we don’t feel like putting a lot of effort into cooking.
My favorite food waste prevention tool is my vacuum sealer.
If you are so lucky to be able to get a vacuum sealer, do it. Put it on a birthday wish list. This had been a game changer for our meat for two reasons: 1) we can buy in bulk, reducing the amount of money we spend on meat in the long run, and 2) ensuring our meat does not spoil before we cook it. We can package our meat into meal-size portions, then I use my sous vide to quickly thaw it. (My sous vide was a gift and is meant for cooking to precise temperatures, but 95% of the time I use it on a cold temperature for thawing meat).
You can use your app list to track what’s currently in your pantry and refrigerator!
I’ve tried this and it did not work for me, but I know other people who do with great success. This is very helpful if you have a large pantry or a chest freezer.