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[QUESTION] What are your favorite spices to use in soups?
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I don't think what I do is really meal planning, but here are my usual steps:
Build a list of what recipes you know, and any new ones that you'd like to try. You can further categorize them based on your own preferences (easy/hard, have most spices/need to buy lots)
From this list, decide if you've got a craving for anything specific, haven't eaten one in a long time and want to try it again, or want to try one of the new recipes. This narrows down to what you will likely plan to eat this week. Sometimes my cravings include fast food so that goes on my plan.
Look at your schedule for the coming week, do you have any after-work activities coming up (like gym or appointments)? These days you will likely be home late, so dinner will either be eaten out (fast food) or a quick recipe (maybe pasta or other types of Asian noodles). On the remaining days that you have time to cook, stick in recipes from your list in whichever order you like.
Now it's time to take stock of what you have at home (fridge, cans, dried food, spices), and what else you need to get to meet your 'plan' this week. Anything that's missing will become your grocery list. If any recipe lacks too many ingredients or seems not worth the effort at this point, swap it out for when you've got more motivation.
Shopping time is my favourite. You can buy exactly what you need, or meats can be bought in larger quantities and frozen for subsequent weeks. Sometimes you see something really fresh or nice that you just have to get, try to avoid this until you are comfortable enough in your routine to throw in changes.
That's about it, after that it's just taking one day at a time. Plans may change and you may have an extra appointment, then just decide if you skip that day's recipe or push everything back by one. I don't really write it down, it's mostly in my head or just a quick record in notepad.
This is basically my routine too. Except I also have the complications of not having driven for over the last 6+ years and thus have learned to keep a well stocked pantry.
I also keep track of what I actually do cook for dinner so it's easy to look back and see 'oh, we just had tacos/spaghetti/chicken teriyaki/whatever three days ago, but we haven't had stir fry in a month... '