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!