Conservation Monday #6: Why I Meal Plan

In the hectic existence that is a master's thesis, I missed my Conservation Monday post last week. Oops! I hope today's post makes up for it!

I want to break from my regular list format today and discuss in depth one of the ways I have practically eliminated food waste. I have accomplished this through the use of a fairly simple tool: the meal plan.

Some people have incredibly elaborate, detailed meal plans. Some plan an entire month's meals at once! This is not for me, because we prefer to eat with the seasons and are members of a fruit/veggie CSA as well as a meat CSA. I absolutely love my CSA memberships, as they encourage us to try new foods, eat all of our fruit and vegetable servings, eat locally and eat organically. The occasional downside is that we don't know the contents of the veggie box until the weekend before it arrives, and we don't know the contents of the meat box until I open it!

This element of surprise has led me to the following method:

When I get a box, I write down in the notes section of my planner ALL of the contents. I have a column for fruit, a column for vegetables, and a column for meat. (Since the meat arrives once a month and vegetables currently come every other week, I end up with more fruit and vegetable lists than meat lists)

The list looked like this in February after I opened our first meat box:

• ground beef
• ground pork
• ground lamb
• leg of lamb
• pork chops
• pork butt
• carrots
• artichokes
• romanesco
• lettuce
• kale
• shallots
• apples
• oranges
• lemons

Then, I work to plan meals within the basic schedule I have in which Mondays are leftovers, Tuesdays are typically pasta, Wednesdays are often soup, Thursdays are leftovers and Friday, Saturday and Sunday can be anything. I'm flexible about moving pasta and soup nights around, but establishing those gave me a decent framework to make sure meals never get too repetitive. (After all, I studied in Italy for a year and I would be happy eating pasta every night, but that wouldn't be OK with Sean!) As I figure out a recipe for each ingredient, I cross it off the list. For instance:

• ground beef
• ground pork - baked eggs & kale
• ground lamb
• leg of lamb - lamb tagine
• pork chops
• pork butt
• carrots
• artichokes
• romanesco
• lettuce
• kale - baked eggs & kale
• shallots
• apples
• oranges
• lemons 

I continue matching ingredients to recipes and recipes to days until I have figured out what to do with all the produce. I try to use delicate produce, like the leafy greens, first since they wilt, whereas the heartier stuff can wait closer to the next box. The meat needs to last all month, and it's in the freezer, so I don't worry as much about figuring out a recipe for each piece right away. I typically get about a week and a half of meal planning done at a time.

I write the week's plan in my planner and on a fridge calendar. I love that with the meal plan right there on the fridge, there's never a question of what to make for dinner!

Of course, then there are weeks like tech, when I'm not even home in the evenings to make dinner, and Sean gets cute with the "meal plan":

Won't have tech again for a while, as I finish this thesis. But at least I know he can handle the "meal planning" without me!

My meal planning system isn't perfect yet, and part of that has to do with spontaneity. Sometimes I plan something, but then we end up having a last minute dinner with friends. The meal plan gets shifted to accommodate, which is why if you read all of my meal plan posts you'll see certain meals carrying over into the next week.

We have also had a few times when I was supposed to make the new soup for "soup night" but I looked into the fridge and there was still leftover soup. I'm not making a whole new pot when there are still jars of leftovers sitting in the fridge, so it becomes an impromptu "leftovers" night.

Despite the couple kinks I'm still working out in our plan, we have cut food waste down to almost nothing. The worms get any kitchen scraps that aren't meat, dairy or citrus. It can take a long time now to ever fill up the kitchen garbage can, and it's a fairly small one to begin with! I'm very happy with the progress we've made, and I plan to keep working to reduce our waste even further as well as take all the stress out of dinner time!

Do you meal plan? What's your system? Share in the comments!

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