Save time and money with capsule meal planning.
Rising food costs is as common a topic as the weather these days with reports of food prices being up 11% in Dec 2022 compared to 2021 in NZ. I was reflecting on our own grocery costs and realized that our spending had stayed relatively the same.
This lead to a few discussions with friends and colleagues around the different way I approach meal planning and purchasing groceries . I am sharing with you a concept of ‘capsule meal planning’ which is how I personally meal plan and shop.
Fun fact - I am a qualified chef and worked at Mantells in Auckland for a short time after I was qualified (it didn’t take much time for me to realize that the long hours in hospo were not for me!).
If you have been following me for awhile you may know that I am a big fan of the capsule wardrobe (you can find out more here and here). A capsule wardrobe is a curated wardrobe with limited items of clothing that can be mixed and matched to create a variety of outfits that saves you time and money and allows you to spend on quality over quantity. Along the same lines, capsule meal planning is an approach where you buy a limited number of core food items (protein/starch/vege) and mix and match them to create different meals.
Usual menu planning will have you pick out all the recipes that you make in advance, then list out the ingredients and head to the shops. I personally found that this didn’t work out for me in the long run because:
I would be in the shop and find that some ingredients either were not in stock or the quality was not to my liking
The ingredients were available but the prices were really high that week (even though it should have been in season!)
The cost starts adding up because a lot of recipes require you to buy a large number of ingredients (and you are left with strange amounts of random ingredients that you might not use again or that goes off)
Here is how you can take the concept of a capsule wardrobe and apply it to meal planning and shopping to save time and money.
My shopping list below
2-3 proteins
3-6 veges
1-3 starches (depending on what I already have in stock at home)
3 fruits
1 dessert or ingredients for 1 dessert if I am in the mood to bake
1 type of savory snack
Ingredients for 1 x comfort meal if I am craving something in particular
Ingredients for breakfast
Ingredients for lunch (optional)
Staples that we always replace when we run out (eggs, sauces, etc)
You will notice I don’t put specific items which allows me to buy the best in terms of seasonality, quality and price at the time. Also I don’t need to spend time going through a cook book to choose each meal or end up having to go to another store because the item on my list wasn’t good enough quality or out of stock at the first store to follow a specific recipe.
I go to the shop whenever we run out of food which on average is around every 3-5 days and we are a family of 2. This works for us because since I am not buying for a whole week, if we don’t end up cooking dinner one night (which to be honest is rare), I don’t have to worry about food going off like I would if we bought 7 days worth of fresh produce at once. I also like to eat fish on the same day that I buy it so it allows us to have fish more often.
If you have a larger family or shop once a week, you will obviously just need to increase the number of items and or quantities to suit. I also won’t go for a shop until all the perishables are eaten in our fridge and will try and improvise and eat what we can in the freezer as well before going for our next shop. This stops things from going off and going to waste and I also love the feeling of not having an overstuffed fridge and pantry.
I also stock up on staples as needed. For us this usually includes: oat milk, lemons (when they don’t cost $10/kg!), fresh artisan bread, butter, garlic butter, cream, eggs, parmesan, pesto, toum, bacon, cheese, dark chocolate, kimchi, panko, vinegar, soy sauce, mustard, herbs and spices an array of hot sauces and kewpie mayo (I always have back ups of kewpie mayo and hot sauce because they are must haves in my life).
While I am at the store I will also get any extras that I know I will need to finish off a meal (e.g. if I have tomatoes and cucumber in my cart I know I will want red onion, feta and olives for a greek salad).
When it comes time to cook each meal I simply improvise and mix and match a protein with veges/salad plus a starch (we sometimes leave out the starch if the meal is already heavy or if we are not too hungry because we ate lunch late or snacks close to dinner time).
For lunch we will usually have left overs or just conjure something up from ingredients that are laying around (e.g. scrambled eggs on toast with avo) and this helps keep the cost down and stops food from going off. If I feel like something in particular for lunch that week I will buy ingredients for it (e.g. smoked salmon on bagel) but I will usually just buy one type of lunch ingredient. This keeps costs down and also avoids things going off or to waste.
I don’t like to eat breakfast weekdays but will buy ingredients for weekend brunch. If you eat breakfast, try keeping it simple and have the same thing for the whole week if you don’t already. This will save you time not having to think about what to eat and money as well.
If I come across a recipe that I do want to try or want to bake something then I will list out ingredients the ‘usual way’, which will be a few times a month (more in winter for baking).
That’s it! If you give capsule meal planning a try, make sure to let me know how it goes! xx
Photo by Ginny Rose Stewart