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I'm a little surprised by the responses to your comment. I'm a classic tech bubble millennial, but I grew up with home cooked meals every night, and I thought t

I'm a little surprised by the responses to your comment. I'm a classic tech bubble millennial, but I grew up with home cooked meals every night, and I thought the formula (for dinners in particular) was obvious: One protein, one starch, and one vegetable. Variations on this could be things like "taco night" or "pasta" (throw in some meatballs, canned sauce, and maybe veggies if you're fancy) or other deviations from the formula, but most dinners are protein/starch/veggie. When you go to the grocery store, you buy as if you're planning on being lazy all week, and envision yourself opening the fridge thinking "Hmmmm, how am I going to do the protein/veggie/starch combo tonight?" Things "belonging to one meal" lead to food waste. You just need general patterns for whipping dinners together based on what you have, and what's going bad soon. Vegetables: Frozen/canned veggies that you like, bag salads, a bundle of asparagus (just remember to actually cook it in the next few days!) Starches: Potatoes, rice, (or potato flakes, and pre-boiled rice if you need something fast), mac and cheese in a box, a box of pre-mixed couscous, some frozen side dish you microwave -- whatever. Protein: Meat, obviously. Chicken's easy to freeze and easy to roast. Steak when it's on sale, pork chops. Sausages if you're in a German mood. If you want to be a little more heart healthy, you can mix this up with some Eggplant parmesan, or... I don't know. I was raised by a Texan, so my powers are useless here. Just buy everything in relatively equal numbers, buy groceries so they're half and half "eat right away -- will go bad" and "can stay in the freezer/pantry forever" so that your stock of food is never too badly out of balance. I rarely ever shop with a "complete grocery list," just like my parents didn't (we need paper towels, eggs, bread, and... uh, food, I guess). I use recipes only on special occasions (You need an instruction guide to tell you how to roast a chicken?), and you just manage somehow. You don't need an app, you don't need someone to decide what your groceries are for you, you don't need to break out the recipe book every night -- you just freaking make dinner. Just like you take out the trash, you do the dishes, you vacuum, you make dinner. It's not hard, it just takes practice.

ksenzee 10y ago
> I grew up with home cooked meals every night, and I thought the formula was obvious Meal planning is just like a lot of things: When you learn to do it growing up, it _is_ obvious. When you don't, it isn't.
rconti 10y ago
And some folks are very detail-oriented and others are chaos muppets. I grew up with a home-cooked meal every dinner, but all I knew was we had "a thing": burritos, fish, pasta, pizza night, pork loin, whatever. And then usually some kind of veggie my mom made me eat. But it was never remotely obvious that one of the items was a protein (if I would have even known what that meant as a kid), let alone starch. I'd say the only ingredient in a meal I ever thought about was the veggies, only because I didn't like them. Our meals were basically fixed and my mom always bought the ingredients for exactly what she was making; a meal she had made hundreds of times before. The idea of mixing-and-matching and making ad hoc meals never occurred to me, and I'm STILL not good at it. It's usually my wife who is able to throw things together off-script, and it typically works. My mind is much more recipe- or routine- oriented -- which I suspect I share with much of the HN crowd.

ksenzee 10y ago

> I grew up with home cooked meals every night, and I thought the formula was obvious Meal planning is just like a lot of things: When you learn to do it growing up, it _is_ obvious. When you don't, it isn't.

rconti 10y ago

And some folks are very detail-oriented and others are chaos muppets. I grew up with a home-cooked meal every dinner, but all I knew was we had "a thing": burritos, fish, pasta, pizza night, pork loin, whatever. And then usually some kind of veggie my mom made me eat. But it was never remotely obvious that one of the items was a protein (if I would have even known what that meant as a kid), let alone starch. I'd say the only ingredient in a meal I ever thought about was the veggies, only because I didn't like them. Our meals were basically fixed and my mom always bought the ingredients for exactly what she was making; a meal she had made hundreds of times before. The idea of mixing-and-matching and making ad hoc meals never occurred to me, and I'm STILL not good at it. It's usually my wife who is able to throw things together off-script, and it typically works. My mind is much more recipe- or routine- oriented -- which I suspect I share with much of the HN crowd.