Meal planning … have we lost the art?

I have blogged before about a report I was involved in last year called ‘Last Night’s Dinner’. One of the findings from the report was that most meal preparers only start to plan what they will have for dinner on any given night in the middle of the same day. Only Monday and Sunday main meals receive more time and attention, with Sunday dinner traditionally being an occasion for the family to gather together for a special meal like a roast. As the week goes on we tend to plan less and cook less, in part to do with our paid work commitments.

If you look at the chart from the report at the end of this post, depending on the dish, only 20% of less of us plan for a dish several days before we cook it.

I am a huge advocate of meal planning. I will get to the reasons in the minute but I thought I’d explain (or brag perhaps) about my meal planning process.

Every day Wednesday or Thursday night (depending on other commitments), I collect pen, shopping list and whatever cook book or torn-out-of-magazine recipes I have around. I check my schedule. What’s the next week going to be like? How many dinners do I need to prepare? How much time will I have? Lots of late nights or social commitments or not? I then work out how many dinners I will need to prepare and what types (quickies or those that are a bit more elaborate). I then start browsing through the cook books. I want a balance of red meat, chicken and seafood meals with at least one meat-less option. Once I have the weekly menu set, I write my shopping list. I check the pantry as well to see if I have any of the staples required.

I do this without fail every week. It sounds terribly anal, the height of food nerdyness but there are good reasons.

Number 1: I hate food waste. (Paraphrasing Nigella Lawson, I am always extravagant but never wasteful). If you know what you are cooking, you are much better positioned to only buy what you need. Furthermore, the more recipes you have in your repertoire, the easier it is to work out what to do with 4 eggplants that need to be cooked today or else.

Number 2: Life is too short to spend it in the supermarket. Even though I love browsing supermarket shelves for research purposes, most weeks I am doing the shopping at night after a long day or with a toddler who may well lose it once the babyccino has been polished off. So I like to know what I am doing and don’t have time to waste in the isles food planning on the run.

Number 3: I like to mix up what I make. Before the days of meal planning, I found that dinner often defaulted to pasta and sauce and my diet wasn’t as varied as it could have been. Planning allows me to think ahead about making different kinds of dishes and also helps me make sure I have the right mix of red meat, white meat, seafood and veggie dishes.

Number 4: I like to know what I am doing. Meal planning means the end of wondering mid-afternoon ‘what should we have for dinner?’ No more trying to remember whether there is risotto rice at home or not, spending way too much on risotto rice at the local deli and then returning home to discover you actually have 3 packets of the stuff. Planning saves you time, money and angst.

So why don’t we plan more? Maybe it’s because we feel our weeks are so hectic and stressful, that even if we did plan our meals, we may not feel like making them when the time comes. Or that our schedules are such moveable feasts that planning is a futile exercise. This is understandable. I often have to rethink the weekly meal plan in light of changing arrangements, but then again I always plan a few meals around ingredients that will last beyond the week (frittatas for example) or meals that can be frozen to be enjoyed another time.

Weekly meal preparation is, like restaurant cooking, a skill and a discipline. For many of us it seems, it is also a joy (only 18% of respondents in the research for ‘Last Night’s Dinner’ reported that cooking was a chore). So even thought planning to make something next week might seem to be premature, if you do like to cook, just trust once you get there, if you know what you are doing, it will probably happen.

If you plan for it, you will cook.