Welcome to Sunday Sobremesa, a bimonthly thread to discuss food and culture while sipping on an iced oat milk latte (or tinto de verano,1 if that’s more your style!).
In Wednesday’s post I talked a bit about how meals work in our combined Spanish-American household. One thing I didn’t mention (or at least not directly) is that all of those meals get decided through the process of meal planning.
I know meal planning isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it makes sense for us. Over the years I’ve grown to loathe food waste, and planning ahead definitely cuts down on things expiring or getting lost in the back of the fridge. Meal planning also makes me feel like I’m properly “adulting” (no spring mix tossed in the trash for me!). And, maybe most importantly, I genuinely enjoy doing it. There’s nothing like sitting down at the dining room table with a pile of cookbooks, approximately 79 open Safari tabs with recipes I want to try, and our shared calendar to plan out the week’s meals (or at least the meals for the next few days).
Of course, last minute things always come up and plans change. We try to leave room for flexibility, and we also usually pencil in one night a week to order in just to give ourselves a bit of a break.
How about you? Do you meal plan or prefer to play things by ear? If you do plan, do you have a certain system that you use (an app, calendar, notebook, etc)?
Just a reminder to feel free to respond to each other and even get a little tangential. The last Sunday Sobremesa started with counting cookbooks and ended up with a conversation about Cancale oysters, so by all means branch out from the topic question!
So I loosely meal plan now, but I used to do it properly. When I did plan every meal I actually found we wasted a bit because of the rigidity (because I had to do recipes for work of course there was little flexibility in areas) and I also felt after a year or two it stifled my creativity a bit.
So now instead I plan recipes I'm going to make from every time I do a big food order (about every 2-3 weeks we get our groceries delivered, the rest of the time I pick things up out and about - though it needs to be noted the amount of food in the house already, I have two fridge freezers and bulk buy overflow into the garage) and that both I and my parents who live close enough for glut deliveries grow a lot of fruit and veg in the summer!
I make a list of recipes I need to test of shoot for work, plus at least one recipe I've bookmarked in a food magazine (I've promised to cook from a load of them so they can be thrown away to J as they're somewhat taking over the dining room!), in a cookbook and from a food blog, and I get everything for those and then just cross off the list with what I need to do that day either for deadlines or if food will go bad, or just cook what I fancy each day. For example the only dinner left today is a recipe for Greek-style pork fillet with thyme and fenugreek, but I've got to clean the house before guests today and bake a bread recipe for work so I won't fancy making the flatbreads to go with it, so I'll just consult the freezer list and look in the veg drawer / garden for dinner inspiration for something easy instead!
We have but do better when your here! I just do it on a whim most of the time . Probably could save a lot more money and deciding what to fix then realize I don’t have one ingredient!
Meal prep never worked for me as a full-time student, but now that I'm starting my first job post-grad I've been leaning into my meal-prepping tendencies!! So I love this topic. And would appreciate if anyone has tips for prepping meals for one!!
So I loosely meal plan now, but I used to do it properly. When I did plan every meal I actually found we wasted a bit because of the rigidity (because I had to do recipes for work of course there was little flexibility in areas) and I also felt after a year or two it stifled my creativity a bit.
So now instead I plan recipes I'm going to make from every time I do a big food order (about every 2-3 weeks we get our groceries delivered, the rest of the time I pick things up out and about - though it needs to be noted the amount of food in the house already, I have two fridge freezers and bulk buy overflow into the garage) and that both I and my parents who live close enough for glut deliveries grow a lot of fruit and veg in the summer!
I make a list of recipes I need to test of shoot for work, plus at least one recipe I've bookmarked in a food magazine (I've promised to cook from a load of them so they can be thrown away to J as they're somewhat taking over the dining room!), in a cookbook and from a food blog, and I get everything for those and then just cross off the list with what I need to do that day either for deadlines or if food will go bad, or just cook what I fancy each day. For example the only dinner left today is a recipe for Greek-style pork fillet with thyme and fenugreek, but I've got to clean the house before guests today and bake a bread recipe for work so I won't fancy making the flatbreads to go with it, so I'll just consult the freezer list and look in the veg drawer / garden for dinner inspiration for something easy instead!
We have but do better when your here! I just do it on a whim most of the time . Probably could save a lot more money and deciding what to fix then realize I don’t have one ingredient!
Meal prep never worked for me as a full-time student, but now that I'm starting my first job post-grad I've been leaning into my meal-prepping tendencies!! So I love this topic. And would appreciate if anyone has tips for prepping meals for one!!
I always wanted to give meal planning a try but... well, failed miserably. Would love to know more about how you do it!
Do I meal plan?? Sometimes I feel like that's all I do!😂