It’s Thursday. You’re staring into a bowl of your fourth pesto pasta of the week, and you’ve started to see everything in shades of green. You can’t face another day of the same, but you don’t know how to break out.
You need a battle plan for your meals. You need the Luchadora Litigator. Forget “culinary horizons”, this is about survival.
Pick Your Weapon (Recipe Book / App / Theme) I’ll be honest: I’m a full-on Cookidoo fan girl thanks to my Thermomix. (Any Thermomix reps wanting to slide into my DMs about some sort of promotional mashup, I’m all ears). I use Cookidoo to plan, but you need to pick your weapon. If that’s another one of the myriad of apps that are out there that can plan meals, great. If it’s a website and a Keep note, great. If it’s old-school flicking through a recipe book and writing on a calendar, that’s still a plan. The point is to have a system that isn’t just your own, stressed-out brain at 5pm.
Set Your Meals (and Be Realistic, Dammit) It’s great having a list of recipes. It’s useless when you don’t have the time to make them. At a convenient point in your week (for me, that’s a Sunday), look at the week ahead and match a meal to a day. That complicated salmon en croute is a no-go for the day you’ve got a client event when really you need to do something easy from the freezer or, whisper it, get a ready meal. Save your culinary trials for evenings you know you’ll be home on time.
Do this for every day, and for the love of God, WRITE. IT. DOWN. Do you think you’ll remember the plan when you stumble in from work? No. You’ll be right back in the pesto pasta rut. Write it in your Google Calendar, or on a calendar in the kitchen so you (and everyone else in the house) can see it and knows what the meal plan is.
Stock Up (No Excuses) Nothing stops culinary creation faster than missing ingredients. Looking forward to that homemade Tiffin? Well, keep looking, because guess what, idiot, you didn’t buy the dark chocolate (yes this is me). Again, the Thermomix app used to make this foolproof by adding items to an online basket(it doesn’t anymore and now I’m sad, so Thermomix get back on it!). If you don’t have an app, then use Google Keep or even (dun, dun, dun) pen and paper. The main thing is to plan all the ingredients and then buy said ingredients well before you intend to use them (who wants to be running to Lidl, Morrisons, Waitrose straight from work to throw sad looking leftover spring onions in the basket).
Use Those Leftovers (Cook Smart, Not Hard) I know what you’re thinking: “I’ve barely got time to get dressed, let alone cook healthy meals”. Been there, got the ready meal T-shirt XL size. But meal planning can make life easier. Don’t make a new recipe every night. Make one, but double (or even triple) the output. Boom. You’ve got leftovers for lunch or dinner the next day. You’ve just created your own, better-than-a-shop ready-meal. Also remember that most meals you make you can freeze. This doesn’t mean eating the same chilli for three days straight (unless you’re into that). But it gives you options when you’re tired and you’re facing yet another night of unplanned pesto pasta.
Be Flexible (A Tactical Retreat is Not a Defeat) Yes, I know. I just spent 500 words yelling “STICK TO THE PLAN” , and now I’m saying be flexible. Talk about mixed messages. But life, as Dr. Ian Malcolm would say, “finds a way” and what I mean is life gets in the way of your lovely meal plans. It’s fine to swap meals or save a recipe. One night of McDonalds because you worked late is not a failure: it’s a tactical retreat. The main thing is not to let that one retreat derail the whole war. McDonalds one night, and back to the plan the next.
Takedown Checklist
Pick Your Weapon (Recipes, App, Book, Grandma’s handed down secret recipe).
Write Down the Plan (Somewhere you can’t ignore!).
Get Ingredients in Advance.
Cook Double. Use Leftovers or freeze them for another night.
Be Flexible. Don’t let one bad night or takeaway win.
Luchadora Litigator 
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