Do you meal plan??

We usually do a vague weekly plan after DH does the grocery shop on Saturday. He buys for Sat - Tues normally, then I shop Wednesday to get us to the end of the week.
This week we have: grilled steak and baked potatoes, pork chops with sweet potato slices and salad, chicken fajitas, pesto tortellini - that gets us to Tuesday night. Wednesday is undecided, Thursday will be something vegetarian, but I haven't decided yet, and Friday will be seafood curry laksa (a spicy Malay style noodle soup). At the moment, Friday is fish/seafood, as we are Catholic and it's Lent.
We have a few regulars, but we also have a bit of a seasonal rotation. Summer is more grills with salads, winter more stews, soups and other hearty dishes.

I only plan dinner the morning of. I don't know what I will feel like eating days in advance. If I do plan earlier than that I usually end up changing my mind. My husband is the same way. We like choosing the meal depending on what we are hungry for.

Every morning we talk about what sounds good for dinner and I take meat out to thaw. I sometimes use the microwave to thaw meat that lends itself to nuking it. If it is a big roast or something like that, I will plan a day ahead and thaw it.

eta: A lot of times between morning and dinner time we will change our mind. I am known to put stuff back in the fridge when we change our mind. Then we eat it the next day.

No snark, but if you don’t meal plan, how do you grocery shop? Like how do you know what to buy to make sure you have all the ingredients for dinners that week?

I HATE grocery shopping (and by grocery shopping I mean staying in my car and doing drive up at Walmart...I can’t even remember the last time I walked through a store with a cart and a list...nothing to do with the pandemic, I was pick up only for years before Covid), so I plan as much as possible to do as few trips as possible.

I plan about a week to 10 days out to reduce grocery trips. I also roughly meal plan lunches because I'm terrible at thinking of something in the moment and will end up eating popcorn. Note that I get 3-4 recipes and food from GoodFood (like Blue Apron) each week, so half the week is always covered.
This week is pil pil shrimp, scallion & cheddar risotto, seared sausages with mustard braised lentils, herbes de Provence chicken, garlic crusted lamb and roasted vegetables, salmon with radicchio and pine nuts, and ordering in one night.

I buy meat from butcher 1-2 times per week along with fresh produce. I have a fully stocked fridge and pantry to cook most things we eat. My menu also revolves around what is in season in stores or farmers market.

Ok.

It sounds like the people who don’t meal plan do all the things I would saw off my pinky toe to avoid - walking around the grocery store or shopping multiple times per week 🤣🤣

Having to shop for produce on the way home every day sounds like the third circle of hell 😬

Oh gosh no, that’s not my idea of fun either 😊

We do a weekly meal plan on Sunday for the coming week, then grocery shop accordingly. We usually make the grocery list at the same time, with things needed for the upcoming week added to the running list we keep going for staples we run out of during the week. I actually bought a meal planner (like this) that hangs on the fridge so we can see at a glance what we're having for the week, the running list of groceries, and recipe ideas & notes for future meals with new things we want to try. We also wrote out a list of our family favorites (our repertoire, so to speak) that we keep with the cookbooks so we can be reminded of something we might not have had in a while.

All of this has made things so much easier! I did not meal-plan before the pandemic & have always hated grocery shopping, so the daily "what should we have for dinner?" anxiety was much more of a PITA. I won't go back to not planning ahead even after things get back to "normal" (whatever that is, LOL). We still sometimes change something around mid-week if needed, but for the most part we stick to it. I still hate grocery shopping, but DH usually does it (he's way faster and more efficient than I am). I've gotten much better about making detailed grocery lists too so he doesn't have to text me while he's in the store to ask about stuff. Another plus is that we don't run out to the store multiple times in a week anymore like we did pre-pandemic. It was easy because we live very close to our preferred grocery store so it was easy to justify...but no longer!! We go no more than once a week (often every other week), and Costco is only once a month or less.

We have not done this week's full meal plan yet, but I can tell you we're having grilled salmon with lime tonight, and the week will include chicken parmesan, and probably a pizza night. 

I don't meal plan. I wake up, drink some coffee, and figure out what flavors I'm in the mood for.  I walk my dog, then go to the store and buy whatever ingredients I need. It's not unusual to do 3-4 grocery visits per week. The advantage is, I'm always in the express lane, and my produce is super fresh.

I just keep a fully stocked kitchen and pantry. I hate grocery shopping too (and pick up doesn't exist much where I live) so I tend to go on big shopping trips a couple times a month and that's it. If I find I really crave something that I don't have the ingredients for I'll just pick up the missing ingredients in a couple weeks the next time I'm at the store.

Maybe this is easier because I'm just cooking for one person and not a family. I'll buy say, a 6 pack of buns, keep a couple out and toss the rest in the freezer so they don't get stale and I won't have them later. Almost all of my fresh produce will easily keep in the fridge a couple of weeks (I buy heads of lettuce not bagged salad as that goes bad almost immediately whereas a head of lettuce will last a good while). And for about six months out of the year I have a garden I can get fresh veggies out of.

I only plan for a couple of days at a time. My fridge, freezer, and pantry are really well stocked, so I’m able to put together most of the meals we like from what I have on hand. Otherwise, if there’s something missing that we need or want, I pick it up the next time I get groceries.

I’m not a big fan of grocery shopping, but I do like to wander the aisles of Costco and find things I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.