I first try to make a meal out of whatever I have in the fridge that may soon go bad. Since I almost always have chicken or fish in the freezer, this is most often a veggie-heavy chicken soup or baked fish with sautéed veggies.

Unless there's a recipe I have a specific taste for, I just try to buy vegetables that can be used in a variety of ways and lean proteins. Even without a recipe, it's so easy to make something healthy and tasty with minimal effort by tossing something into the oven or into a pan.

Definitely plan ahead. I make one "big" thing that morphs itself into a variety of quick dishes (but unrecognizable from the original meal) throughout the week.

I plan out our meals for the week and only grocery shop once a week. This helps a lot to keep our grocery budget in check. I do change around what to make on a certain night and plan for at least 2 nights of leftovers in the week.

I also always plan ahead, and only shop once a week. I pretty much HAVE to cook what I've scheduled, since my cupboards are kind of bare otherwise : )

I usually plan our meals based on what we get from the CSA every week. We also started a meat share, so looks like we won't be buying much more than condiments and canned goods...

Mostly we race to eat the things from the CSA basket, or other leftovers (ack! Thanksgiving!) before they go bad. Usually this means stir-fries, or other piles-of-cooked-things. Sometimes it ends up odd and disjointed, but we always get fed...

I get up in the morning before work (I work at home) and do my marketing first thing in the morning. I buy whatever produce looks good at the market and drop by the butcher for chicken or beef or lamb. Usually I have some inkling of what I'm going to do with it, but if not I just look up a recipe when I get home that meets most of the criteria of what I've just purchased. If I need anything else, I go out again at lunchtime.

If for some reason I don't do any of this, I either make ready-made pasta and sauce or order in Turkish food! That always works!

When we have no dinner planned, I spend a little time on my coffee or lunch break searching my go-to food/recipe websites for recipes w/ a specific ingredient that I have or want to eat. Like yesterday it was spaghetti squash. Then I'll send the suggestions to my boyfriend and we'll agree on something so that one of us can stop off at the store on our way home. He gets home a few hours after I do so this also lets me get things started, or at least put on a pot of water to boil since he's the main "chef" in our house.

We shop once a week, plan five dinners, and wing it (or eat out) the other two nights. Works well for us. I used to hate the daily "what should we have for dinner?" conversation. This way we're either deciding between a small number of things or not deciding at all (e.g., fish gets prepared the first day after the grocery trip).

www.relishrelish.com! I have no affiliation with this site other than being a loyal user. It is the absolute best thing I've ever found for meal planning, and their recipes are good. You can also add your own recipes, keep favorites, etc. And they have excellent customer service.

We usually play rock-paper-scissors for nachos or cheese pizza. Yes, we're horrible.

I usually pick out a list of recipes, including a few new recipes I want to try and the others are our good old favorites plus flexible recipes like stir fry. We go shopping once a fortnight, and cook the recipes that require the ingredients with the shortest shelf life. I don't fret if it doesn't work out exactly as planned. ;)

I completely disagree with akay. I don't find it so easy "to make something healthy and tasty with minimal effort". I'm a good cook, but with certain exceptions (baked sweet potatoes, I'm looking at you!) I no longer find satisfying the food I cooked when I had that attitude.
Now there's a multivariate analysis that goes on in my head, the major factor being 1) what needs to be eaten/cooked sooner 2) what I'm reserving for another use 3) trying to ensure some variety in my diet 4) $$/what's on sale this week. NEver a more than the merest of plans, because they always abandoned for good reasons.

I usually plan ahead, a big meal or 2 on the weekend and morphed into other things during the week. Friday night is whatever I'm in the mood for. I usually have some meals in the freezer so if my week gets crazy I can just pull something out to feed the family.

Our Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday dinners are planned, and we typically make plenty for the lunches that follow as well. We're always out on Tuesdays, for a long-standing friend night, so that doesn't enter the equation. This leaves Thursdays and Fridays, which end up being my favorite part of the week because I get to be creative with the ingredients that are left over in the fridge/pantry; many lovely, nameless dishes get created this way.

I shop once a week, and buy what I need for one or two big things - like a casserole and a pot of soup, plus maybe a salad - that I can make on the weekends, pack for lunch and reheat when I'm tired. If I get home and those don't look tempting I scramble eggs or make a salad if I'm still feeling virtuous.

If I'm not being virtuous...well microwave popcorn is so tasty, and even more tasty is the philly steak sub from the place around the corner.

We buy the bulk of our food at the farmers market and then I spend a little time throughout the week figuring out what I might like to do with the stuff. The only time we really plan something out is on the weekends when we invite friends over.

I have to keep a few staples on hand to make this work; olive oil, butter, cream, chicken stock, eggs, parmesean, flour, polenta, and a stocked spice drawer.

Even though I don't "plan" meals, I spend a great deal of time during the day dreaming about food, so that's probably why this works for us.

With a todller at home wanting my attention, I most definitely plan ahead. I shop with an eye towards what my meals I plan to make that week and on Sunday I will do as much prep work as possible. At the bare minimum I'll write down on a notepad what we are having each night (mains and sides) but often this will include chopping any veggies that will be used in the various dishes, placing them in ziploc bags with a label written on it for what its for. It helps keep things in control that way when I get home from work after picking my daughter up at daycare; I can get dinner on the table with a minimum of effort and still spend quality time with her. My husband gets home a good hour after I do so weekday meal planning usually and happily falls in my lap. But I've been known to encourage the use of takeout on more than one occassion after a particularly trying day. We're all human.

I really appreciate this conversation, as this issue is something that I've been thinking about, lately. I really like cooking a tasty dinner for myself every night, but I have been getting a little tired of the planning and shopping steps... The boyfriend and I have trying to figure out ways to plan dinners that we both like and to split the work up. I got some great advice here.

i have now taken to making an entire box of pasta (this week was macaroni) and making different things throughout the week. i made mac and cheese on monday, pasta with spinach ground beef and cannellini beans on tuesday. The food has lasted me until today - though it could have lasted longer if i hadn't over eaten. I have been doing fridge clearing (cheese for the mac, frozen ground beef and spinach). Today, im goint o make grilled cheese and use up the cheese and pick up a little veggie to balance it. A little bit of planning goes into what i made most of the time, because if i don't plan, i end up going to get fast food and wasting what fresh food i've bought.

We almost always plan ahead. My husband and I both work full time and we have a nearly two-year old child, so time is a luxury when we get any. When I walk in the door from work, if we don't know what we're going to make for dinner we're screwed.

I forgot to say that we eat leftovers at least two nights a week - that helps a lot.

I do a combination of planning ahead and making what sounds good to me. One of my main goals is using all of our weekly CSA produce and trying not to bite off more than I can chew. :-) Definitely sometimes things just don't work out and you have to be ok with eating at the taco truck! I do try to make lots of food on Sunday to get us through a couple of weeknight dinners.

chusmabilly: Making extra pasta ahead is totally a worthwhile timesaver, I only discovered that recently.

Thanks for all the comments - I've been looking for a good system. We tend towards the "have lots of random (CSA box), unassigned ingredients on hand, throw something together (usually guided by expiration date)" system but I'm getting tired of having to think about dinner every evening after work.

For a while my husband had an assigned cooking night once a week but he's very recipe dependent and we wouldn't eat until 10 pm so that has fallen away.

I thought of trying that once-a-month-cooking (OAMC) thing and last week made and froze 6 chicken pot pies and 2 apple pies, but our freezer is tiny plus I don't want to eat casseroles and pies all the time or wait for the oven to heat when I get home hungry.

Enough griping. One thing we do regularly is make a batch of beans weekly, which turns into baked/chili/nachos/bean soup/salad toppings.

I've also learned that soup is a lifesaver when you don't feel like thinking or working very hard or for very long. Leftover beans or meat or rice, dried mushrooms, a block of tofu, wayward salad greens, and a scoop of miso if it isn't savory enough and you're off to bed.

My husband likes to eat like a 5 year old, so he gets his way one or two nights a week with tacos, spaghetti or pizza. The other weeknights I use up leftovers or frozen meat. Fridays is usually Pizza Friday at a friends. Saturday we go out. Sunday is the BIG meal at home with whatever fancy thing I like.

I read thekitchn at work, hoping tobe inspired by a recipe you recommend.
Then I stop by the grocery store on my way home.

If I am not lucky enough to have my stomach telling me what to make, I ask my SO if he's craving anything, and cross my fingers that I can make it with what I have on hand. Days like this I tend to end up eating leftovers, spaghetti, or grilled cheese.

I cook the same way I get dressed - I pick one thing I really want to use (whether I'm in the mood for it or just know it's nearing the expiration date!) and try to concoct a meal around it. Well, in reality, my boyfriend and I often come up with ideas together and then he actually does the cooking while I play Wii ;-)

If all else fails, I just pull out whatever meat is in the freezer and a handful of every kind of vegetable I have, and make soup!

I tend to lean towards breakfast for my dinners. I get off of work late and so exhausted that when it comes down to cooking, it's out of the question. Enter breakfast foods :) Pancakes, eggs, bowl of cereal, grits, fruit, yogurt. All very simple, some what healty and will sustain you till you get to eat a "real" meal.

i was just thinking to myself- what to make for dinner tonight??--so clearly i don't think ahead! i'm trying to be better about planning out the week. i even bought some notebook from anthropolgie that let's you track each meal each day of the week...i've used it probably three times.

I might be the biggest weirdo in the world, but I LOVE planning my meals for the week. I love to get up Saturday morning, make some Jasmine tea, and then go through all my cookbooks and plan each meal for the week. Then I make a hyper-organized grocery list where all items are categorized by department (that way I don't miss anything). I post a weekly menu on the fridge with breakfast and lunch options, mostly for my husband because he's a bit helpless in the kitchen.
That's what I do :)

I recently got into menu planning for the week and I'm surprised at how much time and money it's saved us already. So much of our grocery shopping before was what looked good but then ended up going bad before we used it. Now I select 5 meals, plan 2 free days for leftovers or something simple like eggs and only shop for those meals. I can't remember the last time I had to throw out something that went bad - and I have cut my food budget by sticking to our grocery list. It's a nice way to come home and already know what we're eating. Plus in the winter, I do a lot of crock-pot cooking so that's even better!
http://www.seejencook.blogspot.com

Do people really use menus? I thought that was just a funny suggestion. Normally we start with what's in the fridge and cabinets... well, what's in the freezer... hmm. Once the meat is chosen we go through the options that go with that meat; grill, bake, fry, poach, etc. Side dishes come from what goes with the meat or main dish or how healthy we feel at the time. Very seldom do we go by a recipe or menu, because I've cooked in a few restaurants and know how to create some neat combinations and dishes.
When we do have an actual plan to cook something specific, it's for a special occasion.
She's never complained about my cooking after 5 years of it.

When we're organized, we pick recipes in advance and shop for everything at one time. When we're not organized, we ferret around in the fridge or cupboard, or we pick up the phone and order takeout.

Burritos- that's our old stand by. or Pasta.

we have different "hunger" schedules as well as separate plans a few nights a week so when we do eat together its a long indecisive discussion about what sounds delish. Mostly our decisions are made by standing in the kitchen looking to see what we have available. Something usually jumps out.

hahaha...I would like to be a planner...but that's just good intentions, and we know where those lead us. Last night it lead to eating four bagels with butter, garlic salt and mozzarella cheese toasted for supper. Yes, they tasted wonderful! But maybe not the healthiest meal I could have eaten. Oh well, perhaps tonight will be better, if I can plan ahead.

We don't keep a lot of random food around the house, so there's not a lot of "hmm, what can I make with this?" that goes on. I have a bookmark folder full of recipes and a bunch of cookbooks, and I look through those, find a recipe, buy the ingredients for that, and then cook it. Because there's only two of us and usually recipes feed 4-6, we get 2-3 nights out of one dish (and we don't see anything wrong with eating the same thing twice in a row). We end up going shopping every 2-3 three days, but we rarely buy anything not on the list, so we don't have any budget problems. Almost everything in the kitchen has a meal it's designated to go in, so there's never anything to "use up before it goes bad." I like cooking complex meals, so throwing stuff together rarely happens with me; even meals that I don't use a recipe for have a lot of research that goes into them.

I use the same basic menu each week.

Our week goes something like this....
Soup
Veggie burgers
Eggs
Pasta
Stir-fry
Grilled Veggies
Pizza (Frozen from Fresh direct)

This makes an easy and very versatile menu. I just need to decide what type of each dish we are going to have.

So far this week we've had...
Spicy Vegetable Soup
Home made black bean burgers with roasted potatoes
Shrimp Fajita (this is in my stir-fry Categorie)
Oven roasted veggies over polenta with feta cheese

I shop on the weekends and write out a menu to go on the fridge. Each night's meal is just a matter of deciding what we're hungry for.

I also make double, so dinner is the next days lunch.

We usually start with picking the starch, whether it's pasta, couscous, potatoes, or rice (brown, short-grain, basmati, jasmine, etc) and design a main dish to accompany based on what's in the fridge and add steamed or fresh veggies and a green or fruit salad. There's always chicken or ground turkey in the fridge and a year's supply of canned goods in the garage so coming up with something isn't too difficult.

My boyfriend and I tend to be hungry at different times, so I usually cook big batches of things (curry, stir fry, pasta salads, casseroles, etc.) and we eat them whenever we get hungry. I'd rather approach cooking as a hobby and cook when I feel like it than rush to get something on the table when I'm starving. I keep a very well-stocked pantry and freezer, so I'm usually ready to cook most anything I have in mind when I'm in the mood to do it.

When I'm in a planning phase, I usually have an idea for a couple of main things that I want to eat that week, trying to make at least one a new recipe. I usually shop at least a couple of times a week, because I walk to the grocery store and don't buy more than I can carry.

Saturday's I usually cook up a batch of cereal to heat up during the week, a good-sized batch of whatever beans I will eat that week, and bake a loaf of bread. Usually I also make a pot of soup or something else that will be good for at least a couple of meals.

Beyond that I make sure that I have some staples - carrots, potatoes, onions, red peppers, parsley or cilantro, a can of tomatoes, a package of tofu, yogurt, whatever fruit looks good, lettuce or spinach, a nice piece of cheese, and maybe a bit of chicken or ground turkey. There is a LOT you can make with that on hand. It is kind of a game with me to figure out something interesting to eat with what is in the fridge.

But serious planning? I have a bit of a troubled relationship with order. Though when I do plan, I generally eat better. Of course, it often happens that when I come to actually cook, I say to hell with the plan and make something else!

I work from 9 to 8 and on most weekends. Without Peapod online grocery orders and planning out 15-minute meals, there is no way I am going to have the energy to cook.

When I had lots of spare time, I loved trolling the market every day and coming up with meals based on whatever inspired me.

We got sick of the 'what's for dinner' conversation, and throwing too much stuff out so we started planning but found if we were too specific it didn't work either - plans change, you don't fancy what's on the menu etc.

So now, much like @allisen we plan the number of meals that we know we need, taking into account Thursday being 'Curry Night' (either take-away or from the freezer) and however many meals we're out for. Then we go shopping. Veg is planned by number but we buy what looks good at the market to go with the rest of the meal we have planned. This was my biggest victory as my SO has a tendancy to massively overbuy on veg when she sees something nice. Now we make a list - '3 leafy-green veg, 2 broccoli-type, something to go with pasta' and let her choose within those ideas. This works great!

We also always have stuff in the freezer - spag bol, curry, stews etc, as well as ingredients like chicken, fish, chorizo. We plan the freezer ingredients into our meals so they don't get left there for too long. If we're feeling skint, we eat more from the freezer as it's 'free'...kind of.

I am an omnivore. Since there are generally far less meat choices in the American grocery stores than starch and vegetable choices, I start out with thinking about which protein (read: meat) I haven't had recently. I try to alternate protein sources and to include other types of protein like eggs or beans/legumes once or twice during the week.

Then I build a meal around that protein source and round it out with vegetables, sauces and starches and a dessert or snack for later.

I was raised on the basic 4 food groups plan and mostly still think in those terms.

I plan ahead, even though it's just my husband and me. It helps me spend our budgeted grocery money more wisely.

I buy meat/fish/cheese from the farmer's market every two weeks and get a veg/fruit box every week, so although it feels quite spontaneous to me it's actually quite planned when I'm at the market/ordering the veg. I tend to decide what to have the night before (when I'm watching telly usually!) so I have time to buy anything I need in the day.

I usually do a week-long meal plan, and it seems to work most of the time. Sometimes I have to wing it, though, if my boyfriend comes home ridiculously hungry and eats 3 servings, leaving us without leftovers for the following evening.

Most days, I'm unconsciously considering what to make; it's a thought percolating in the back of my brain behind everything else I'm grappling with during the day. It's a now-instinctive calculus of ingredients, appetite, and time.

Still, I have those occasional days when I glance with horror at my mental scratchpad and realize that I still don't have clue what to make. Those days, I either:
- whack up an onion, start softening it in olive oil, and wait for it to tell me what to cook. The smell of onions can be very inspiring.
or
- make one of my old reliables: frittata a la [whatever's in the fridge], or pasta with broccoli and white beans, or eggs in black beans. That last one is a three-ingredient standby dish that can be dolled up in a number of ways, but is juuuuuust fiiiiiiine without any tinkering. Around our house, it's affectionately known as huevos con whatnot.

My partner approaches this exactly the other way: he decides what he wants to make, then goes shopping for the ingredients.

Both approaches have their charms. It's such a treat to have him make dinner, because it's always a surprise --- I never know what he might have brought home! And when I walk into a seemingly-bare kitchen and concoct a lovely meal, he thinks it looks like magic.

For me it's about quick, healthy and easy! I eat salads and quesadillas almost everyday. But i spice them up with different ingredients.

Spinach salads, either with varied veggies or mixed with sauteed sausage, mushrooms and onions.

Quesadillas are made with either whole wheat tortillias or whole grain wraps and spiced up with onions and mushrooms over a bed of spinach and a homeade salsa to dress it all up.

Yummy!

I must be weird, because I used to plan ahead, but found that to be wasteful. I'd end up with little scraps of things left over, and that don't go together, that would eventually get tossed.

We get a box of fruits/veggies delivered once a week and try to go to the farmer's market on Saturday, so using those items usually drives the meals. And I'll make a big grocery run (or Fresh Direct order) when I start running out of staples. On those trips I'll also usually pick up a protein or something more unusual that happens to be on sale.

Then I usually try to think about what needs to be eaten before I leave work, and search online for inspiration. If we need an extra ingredient, I'll pick it up on the way home. If I don't have time to think about it, there are the usual standbys of polenta with garlicky greens and a fried egg, risotto style barley, etc. that we almost always have ingredients for.

All sounds great! Check out my blog for daiy creative updates. This week features New Years Eve at home!

Thanks for reading!!

http://billsbites.blogspot.com/2009/12/new-years-eve-light-appetizers.html