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Comment by mustafa_pasi | Hacker News Reader

For me cooking and eating is very spontaneous. I also believe this is what separates people who can cook from those who cannot. I can cook because I can mix and match my current appetite, with what I have available in the fridge and figure out something out of that. I know the general idea behind many recipes and cooking techniques but I do not aim to reproduce them to the letter. Nor do I have some kind of meal plan for the whole week written down somewhere, because that would conflict with my daily appetite changes and whatever I have lying around in my fridge or what I stumble upon in the supermarket.

So to answer your question: I don't. I keep myself open and let myself be guided by my current appetite and my instinct.

I tried having a meal plan in the past and that just proved to be more of a hassle and incredibly boring.

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You sound like you live alone, or at the very least cook your meals just for you. Because this doesn't seem like it would work at all if you're making meals for multiple people.

Something similar worked for us, even when the kids were young. Both my wife and I enjoy cooking (side story, when we got kids, I realized that I'd be spending a lot of time cooking and so I decided to make it an interest of mine since I was going to spend a lot of time doing) and rather than planning what to make everyday we make sure to have interesting ingredients at home and then when it's mealtime we do what we have time for and what we like. When the kids were younger they were also part of the decision, it was a fun chat to have before dinner. This means that when shopping, we try to do a weekly shopping run, we pick up stuff that we think we can make something of and then some weeks we just decide to empty the fridge/freezer of whatever we haven't cooket yet.

We're a family of five with children aged 13-14-17 (so not toddlers) and we do exactly that. We buy everything fresh on the day. Planning meals days (or weeks!?) in advance sounds horribly depressing.

I enjoy cooking (not more than programming but it's a close second these days) and when shopping we (wife + me) check local markets or neighbours for fresh local fruit / vegetables (that depends enormously on the season), then we go check the local small supermarkets for things on sale (we don't need to do that, but it's more because it gets tossed otherwise) that we like (which can be anything). I know (experience) how to estimate the amount for about a week but have 0 plans what to do with it at the time of buying. I always make sure we have flower & rice enough (bit of cheating I guess, but it's not like it is an actual contest).

About 4 days of the week, I cook only for my wife and me and 3 days/week I cook for friends that we invite; 4-6 per meal from the people that live here. Sometimes it's lazy cooking (nothing microwave or from a package, but a quick asian stir-fry or something), sometimes elaborate; depends on how much time we have (if we have work in the evening).

I enjoy spontaneous cooking and eating, but meal planning is the only way I've been able to maintain a reasonable weight. The way I do it is that I cook meals (breakfast and lunch) for the work week on Sunday. I cook dinner the day of, mostly by keeping a set of staples around that I use to create different dishes. This last one has a little more spontaneity to it, but is still generally about selecting from meals I've already pre-calculated to work.

It is a lot less fun, but I've lost in excess of 50 pounds with meal planning + exercise. It is definitely more boring, but that's been an acceptable loss in the bigger picture.

I've heard about the boring, and have been eating mostly the same type of schedule. After reading about the stress of decision fatigue (around food), especially when cooking for multiples, meal prep has been excellent.

This has been my experience as well.

What does seem to help is a blank sheet of paper on my fridge with the main things I have in it (meats, fishes, main perishables), and the various days I plan on fixing them. I generally enjoy cooking but sometimes after work my brain is just too fried to think and having a "sane default" helps me go on autopilot. With the sheet being structureles, I can annotate, cross-out, and change on a whim.

This also helps me keep track of freshness when I have things that go bad sooner than others.

I'm similar, so when I go back to the store its to pick up what looks fresh, and use that in conjunction with what I have in the pantry or freezer. But I grew up where it wasn't possible to shop every day like you can in a city, so cooking must be a survival skill learnt under certain conditions?

I used to be similar, but now when we have a child and both me and my wife work, things change. Life is much easier to handle when we have an idea of what to eat for the week and a shared shopping list.

This way, as the chaos of life occurs we can quickly alter who purchases what.

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