Recently, I wanted a white board to have a physical list of homemade healthy food available at home. We didn’t have the money for one so we bought some dry-erase markers and taped old paper bags onto the back of the glass of our rarely used china cabinet. I like having a big visible list in the kitchen so my husband and I could refrain from opening the fridge several times a day. I also like planning a day before or on the day of so I can gouge what we’re craving for and which ingredients we have available that day.
Forgive the handwriting but I listed down several foods and recipes that we enjoy and have been repeats in our diet. We also wanted it to be relatively cheap so we process and prep meals at home to save food. All of the meals and food items listed are vegan. So far, we’ve been saving up great and feeling better with relatively healthier eating :D
How do you plan your meals?
image description: A china cabinet with its glass doors used like a white board. Brown paper bags are taped behind the glass to make the text visible.
I'm a single university student with a small budget (maybe $60 per week). When I do meal plan I try to make a dinner that will last me a few days but it's not always easy. For one, it gets boring, and two, some days I'm just hungrier than others so there are weeks where I go past my budget.
I'd be curious to hear how other university students do it.
For me, I feel like when I am meal prepping on the weekends I always have the best of intentions. In my head I'm thinking these meals all sound healthy and great. Then it gets into the middle of the week and stress happens and you don't care what you made, you want carbs. When you are meal planning it really helps to think about what you've got going on that week and what you like to eat in different moods. I will try to explain what I mean by that.
Consider what types of cuisine you like (italian, indian, chinese, mexican, etc) and when you typically want that cuisine (could eat it every day, only when I'm having a bad day, once a week, as a celebration, etc). Write that down on a piece of paper.
Next, what does your week ahead look like? Is it just an average week? Do you have exams and are going to be stressed? Once you know that you can add up the number of meals you will need based on the categories you wrote down for "when you typically want that cuisine." To give yourself some grace, always try to plan for at least 1 "had a bad day" meal.
That will in turn give you an idea of what types of things to cook, and you can google recipes based on that. It helps if you pick recipes that use similar ingredients, as you only have to prep that thing once.
From a prep perspective, look at the recipes that you selected and see what commonalities they have. You can prepare those common ingredients ahead of time. For example, lots of recipes I make use rice so I can make a bunch of rice at the beginning of the week and then have it for multiple meals. I've also found it helps to prepare sauces for recipes and put them in mason jars in the fridge. Trying to follow a list of ingredients for a sauce when you only have 5 minutes always just leaves me frustrated.
The end result is that you won't have a full meal prepared ahead of time but you'll have as much done as possible beforehand. Definitely saves time if you can start on say step 5 of a recipe instead of step 1.