Meal Planning

I have started meal planning.  

It is a process that takes half an hour to an hour to complete, usually something I do on a weekend but I have found the amount of time and effort it has saved me has been worth the effort. 

I thought I might write a blog entry sharing how I go about doing this and why.

Why meal plan? 

1) It saves time by:

• limiting the amount of time I have to sit pouring over cookbooks, frustratedly asking myself questions like "what am I going to cook tonight?" or "what the heck am I going to do with chicken, two carrots and half a cabbage?"
• limiting the amount of time I spend at the supermarket.  I know exactly what I need to buy so I'm in and out.
• limiting time wasted in the evening defrosting food.  I know what I'm cooking in the evening so it was taken out of the freezer to defrost during the day. 

2) It makes me eat a better diet by:

• forcing me to consider my diet spread across an entire week.  I can see at a glance if I'm not getting enough protein and add/swap in a meat or egg dish somewhere in the week.
• forces me to consider lunches so they're not just an afterthought or skipped.
• enables me to consider alternative breakfasts instead of the same thing every day. 
• I get excited about mixing it up and making new things when I meal plan.  Prior to meal planning I found I'd get home and the frustration with working out what to cook had me making the same thing or nothing. 
• I now eat breakfast every day and cook dinner (or reheat leftovers/frozen cooked meals) every night.  No excuses. No takeaway.

3) It saves me from wasting food:

• I can consider how to use leftovers.  If I make tuna sushi for lunch one day I will plan to use the remaining tuna in a meal either that night or the next night. 
• I plan the meals based around the vegetables from my food connect box collected the Thursday before I plan.  
• It allows me to consider what veges are leftover from the previous week and how to use them first.

4) It saves me money by:

• I create my grocery shopping list from my meal plan (as well as items I know need restocking).  I don't waste money in the supermarket picking up things that I don't need.
• I have lunches planned each day so don't spend any extra money buying lunch. 
• by minimising food wastage I am also saving money. 
• I have a plan and the will to stick to it so I don't cave from exhaustion at the end of the day and buy take-out food anymore. 

 Yay!  Wins all around!

So how do I food plan?

I have a lovely meal planning pad from KiKi-K.  This might be familiar to Metanoia, who I sent another copy of the same pad, and to Grosby who received a portion of my pad for her use.   When my pad runs out I will probably have to get creative and make a set of papers with some ink stamps... or print some out.

But for now I use my KiKi-K pad which shows a kind of meal-planning matrix with the days of the weeks as columns and the meals of the day (breakfast, lunch, dinner & snacks) as rows.  There's a space at the bottom of the rows that I also utelise... but more about that in a bit.

I consider what plans I might have for the week ahead and write in any commitments or plans I know in advance on the meal plan sheet.  (e.g. I'll put a cross through dinner to indicate I won't be cooking it and write the reason  "Bob's birthday party" beside it.)



Am I away from home for any of these meals?  Do I have dinner out with Dajana one night?  Will I be at Mum & Dad's place for dinner sometime?  Will I be late home on a night and therefore need a very quick and easy dinner or perhaps a frozen meal?   Will I be leaving for work very early on another morning?  If so, no scrambled eggs for breakky that day!  It's not a perfect world and plans change but it's a good start!


I sit down with a handful of my cookbooks.   Though there are some books that tend to always find their way into the mix (Donna Hay's 'no time to cook' and Australian Women's Weekly 'Creative Cooking on a Budget') I try to keep it fresh by switching the books around.  Recently I've also included my ipad - abc ifood app, River Cottage app and Australian Womens Weekly cookbook app.  

I have my shopping list beside me and a list of the veges I know are in my fridge/kitchen. 


Then I start to plan - usually I mark in breakfasts first, because they aren't connected to any other meal.  I try to ensure I don't eat the same thing two days in a row.  I know breakfasts on weekdays are rushed so I don't plan for anything fancy - I leave that for weekends.

Next I plan dinners - keeping in mind what vegetables need to be used up first.   I flick through cookbooks and i-pad apps to find recipes that use those kinds of ingredients.   I also keep in mind that I need to keep a range of protein in my diet.  Often, I'll find a recipe to cook the meat/chicken/fish I have or want and then find a separate recipe for a vegetable side - or just make something up!
 
Once dinners are planned I can fill in lunches.  If dinner the night before will leave me with leftovers I put that down for lunch the next day.   If dinner the night before won't allow leftovers I plan for something else easy to put together in the morning, like salad, sushi, a basic bento box or an easy instant cous-cous. 


And the extra line at the very bottom I mentioned?  If a dinner will require something to be defrosted in the morning, something to be made the night before or something to be soaked or marinated throughout the day I will write it in the extra space.   It's usually just one word like 'FISH' or 'CHICKPEAS' and it serves as a simple reminder for me in the morning.



Oh yeah... and one last point... where I have based a meal on a recipe (or more than one) I will record in shorthand the book and the page the recipe is on.  I then leave those cookbooks used in the kitchen for quick and easy access! 

This week's meal plan on my fridge - because of changed plans on Thursday lunch I now have extra gnocchi leftovers and will need to do a reshuffle of dinners, probably ditch the pizza planned for tomorrow night and eat the leftovers then.

Important Points to Meal Planning

• Be flexible.  Recognise that plans change or you may forget to put the chickpeas out to soak in the morning.   Recognise that you may come home very late from work totally wrecked and not want to make fiddly scotch eggs...
• Build flexibility into your plan where appropriate - I almost never plan lunches for weekends.  My Sunday is very sketchy in the above plan.
• Have back-up meals in the freezer - for those nights that you come home wrecked! 
• Mix it up but don't plan meals that are too fancy for the time or effort you can afford.  Keep really fancy-pants meals for weekends when you'll have the time to prepare. 
• Do keep in mind which vegetables need to be used first.  Don't leave the banana smoothie for breakfast until a full week after your shopping... your nanas will be grossed-up by then.
• Consider the ways of getting the best and most from your ingredients.  I tend to never cook a steak because that steak will feed me one meal only.  If I cut it up and use it in a stir-fry or a casserole it will make two meals or more.
• Don't be afraid to chop and change recipes and get familiar with ways to substitute ingredients.  If you have a bunch of kale when a recipe calls for silverbeet or spinach, use the kale!  No white wine but you do have a can of Guiness in the fridge throw in the stout!  
• Know your usual suspect ingredients and keep your fridge/cupboard stocked.   I've discovered that I usually need cream at least once a week and can't live without olive oil.  I go through thyme like you wouldn't believe...  

Do you meal plan?  Is your process similar to mine, more/less meticulous?  What things do you consider when meal planning?

The Great Slump and How It Ended.

I was doing well folks.  I was frugal.  I was tending a happy (if not overly productive) garden.  I was enjoying productive crafts as my spare-time entertainment.  I was on the road to a better, more natural and environmentally friendly life.

Then came what I am now referring to as 'The Great Slump'.  The last few months (half a year really) has seen my efforts and my general diet do a bomb-dive while frivilous spending has spiralled upwards. 

I was eating real trash (read - corn chips with BBQ sauce and cheese in the microwave for dinner,  take-out more often than not, carb-only meals based usually on pasta for other times etc.) and knowing it was bad for me but not having enough care or drive to fix myself back onto the straight and narrow. 

I often didn't have anything to cook or eat in the kitchen because I refused to buy veges and fruit at Coles/Woolworths but then didn't take the time to go to the markets.  Or I'd waste my food budget on other things and then say that I could eat "poor" for the rest of the week until payday.  I bought meat but it languished in my freezer because I didn't have any veges to cook with it.  I'd get home from work and look at my disgustingly messy kitchen and decide it was all too much effort to cook tonight.  Breakfast every day was a cup of tea and nothing more.

And thus it dragged on, getting worse and worse.

But I have come to the stage in my life where the consequences of a lacks-a-daysie view on diet and excercise make themselves known much more than was ever the case in my youth.   So it was that I found myself in a doctor's office with a month-long chest pain and lung tightness.....   I've since undergone some xrays and blood tests and am waiting on the next appointment to find out more about the state of my health.

But one thing is sure - it was the kick in the pants that made me realise that I cannot continue on as I've been.

Doctor's orders were to take in leafy vegetables, lots of other veges, fruit and nuts.  Keep up the dairy and yogurt (she was exceedingly pleased by my home-made bread and yogurt).  Much more protein - fish, chicken and meat.  Much less salt, sugar and fat.  

You know... sensible, no-brainer stuff.

What ensued was a giant shop for vegetables and other health-it-up ingredients at Coles that night.  I got home and cleaned enough of my kitchen to cook an omlette with fried tomato, onion and silverbeet.   Every day since has seen a packed lunch filled with vegetables and a piece of fruit and dinner has been cooked each night.   I've been choosing water over tea at work and  had only one piece of chocolate in the week. 

Yesterday I signed up for a Food Connect subscription which runs through to November.   Fresh vegetables and fruit without the markets or supermarkets - all pre-paid.   But more about that tommorrow.   I've got two chickens in my backyard who will one day in the future produce a steady supply of eggs.

I'm also promising myself to make sure that I have one weekend-day in a fortnight is booked in as 'at home time' - no matter what invitations or events come my way.   I need that time to get my house and my life in order and to rest and recoup.

And I also have promised myself to take the time to reflect on life, my journey through it and how I intend to improve the way I waste  spend it. 

So hopefully that means you'll be seeing a fair few more blog entries from me.

Diet and Sustainability

This evening on the way home from the train station I listened to a seminar broadcast on ABC National Radio. It was hosted by the University of Technology Sydney and the topic was 'Diet, Food and Sustainability'.

It never fails to amaze me how points of matter that arise in discussion of sustainability, frugal living, simple living etc. hit home in one of those light-bulb 'of COURSE' moments.... but are, at the same time, embarrassingly simple.

Some of the points that I found interesting or light-bulb moments were:

1. Bottled water is bad mmmkay. Why? Because millions upon millions of those bottles end up in landfill.
2. People in today's society have become so 'precious' (the presenter's choice of phrase) that we import navel oranges from California in our Summer when we have no shortage of valencia oranges grown locally. In taste testing sessions people have almost exclusively preferred the taste of the valencia oranges but they don't sell as well as the imported navel oranges... Why? Because navel oranges don't have pips. Because of pips! *facepalm*
3. Meat in our daily diet causes a strain on the sustainability of our food supply. Why? Because it takes some very large amount of grain to produce one kilo of meat - which is then often exported from Australia anyway adding a big fat, heavy carbon footprint.
   

It was interesting to think about how our daily choices of food make a difference. It made me consider the things I do (or have started doing recently) to lessen the impact of my household on the environment and to be more sustainable.

I buy my green groceries from our local farmers' market. The market boasts that it is the only one in our local area that restricts sellers to local producers or produced food only. I am not sure how true this is but I'm going with it. It is less distance for me to drive to than other local markets I previously tried out - a lower carbon footprint for me and the sellers.

I have a vegetable garden started (that is... a hole in our turf waiting for soil, mulch and seeds!) and plan to own chickens, both with the aim to be more self sufficient and sustainable.

I drink tap water both at home and at work. Bottled water is a no-no.

I have bought a worm farm - as yet empty of it's squiggly occupants, not yet bought, and plan to pick up a cheap compost bin from the council this week (yay Compost Awareness week!). I plan to use both of these, as ways to reduce the amount of household waste going to the tip and therefore landfill.