Meal planning when you hate meal planning
Are you a planner, an improviser, or somewhere in between?
In life, I’m a planner.
I love plotting out my week on Sundays with the precision of a military strategist.
But the one thing I hate planning for is dinnertime. That’s not entirely true. I enjoy the planning process but can’t seem to follow a meal plan.
Here’s how meal planning usually works for me.
With the best intentions, I’ll choose four recipes to cook that week and purchase all the ingredients.
Then I only make one of them.
Why?
Because it’s raining and I want soup instead of salad.
Or I wrote and edited recipes using smoked fish and now must have some.
Or a meeting ran late, and the tacos I had scheduled now feel like too much work.
Don’t worry. I don’t waste the ingredients. Instead, I throw myself into chaos trying to create different meals using the ingredients I have.
The best part about being a skilled cook is that I can satisfy my cravings almost whenever I want.
But that also means my meal plans get bulldozed by my whims.
Once upon a time, I used to improvise my meals every night. When I first moved to New York City, I walked through the Union Square farmers’ market four times each week on my way to work. I allowed the ingredients to beckon me over from their tables and dictate my dinners.
But as I moved around New York City and farther away from that glorious market, I had to plan a little better and buy food for a few days at a time.
Then, I had a child and, for a time, an hour-long commute to work, so I started buying food on the weekends for the week.
After I moved to Pennsylvania, I continued that weekly shopping habit. Now, I visit our farmers’ market on Saturdays when I can and supplement with food from our grocery stores.
I started Mission: Dinner with an anti meal-planning manifesto.
I want people to feel free to make the same dinners over and over again, as needed, and refresh their repertoire with one new easy recipe per week when they’re in a rut.
I stand by this stance, but I also know some people love meal planning.
So whether you’re a meal planner, an improviser, or somewhere in between, here are a few methods and tools that might make dinnertime easier.
But first, a poll!
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