Update on the meal planning

Saturday, January 23, 2010

So, a quick update on the meal planning I started earlier this year. It started out great - I planned out my recipes and shopped for the week's ingredients. I carefully and dutifully prepared the first two meals. Then something unexpected happened: we went out to eat. The ingredients I'd planned to use for the meal that night needed to be used: my first recipe shuffle. I visited the calendar and moved recipes and dates around, and resolved using the (perishable) ingredients in the coming days.

The next night, something else unexpected happened. We had leftovers from the meal out (Vegetarian Fajitas, a bunch of cooked veggies), so instead of following the meal plan, John made them into an awesome frittata. Great stuff! Not on the plan. Menu shuffling: part deux.

Thursday was great! Back on track. Then John went out of town. My recipe from Thursday, made to feed six, was now feeding me six times over.

Travel and parties (with food) and restaurants, oh my! The next couple of weeks were a blur, and we're back to our original system, which is absolutely no system at all. I've made a couple of the planned recipes each week, but seem to go off course quite a bit in between.

The lesson? If you're making meals just for two people who spontaneously make and change plans, then plan only a few meals each week (2-3) and make it simpler to adjust as needed.