Printable shopping lists & menu plan blanks

Who wants a visit from the organisation fairy?!

The golden rule of organisation: organisation should be less work than sorting out the chaos would be. If it takes you more time / money / effort than living with the muddle, that's not organisation, that's bureaucracy! So these are to make life easier and simpler, so you don't run out of things like tinfoil or toilet paper, or stand staring despairingly into the fridge, asking that age-old question, what the hell to make for supper. I made these shopping-list and menu-plan templates for myself, and then for my cousin, and there's different versions depending on how much planning you want / like to do. Also each set comes in two fonts.

Click on the image to preview, click on the link underneath to download it. How to use them is further down.

Option 1: Combined shopping-list + flexible menu plan

Choose one, in the font you like, and print out a batch.

Download Matchbook shopping-list / menu-plan

 

Download Lobster shopping-list / menu-plan 

Option 2: Shopping list + detailed menu plans

1. Choose one shopping list, in whichever font you prefer, print out a batch, and chop in half.

 2. Choose your meal-plan style (lunch + dinner only or breakfast, lunch, and dinner) in whichever font you prefer, and print out a batch. All versions have a "do in advance" column.

Matchbook font menu plans

or

Download 2-meal menu plan or Download 3-meal menu plan

Lobster font menu plans

or  

Download 2-meal menu plan or Download 3-meal menu plan

 How to use...

 

 The shopping lists

Print a batch of shopping lists and put them up somewhere in the kitchen. (Mine are the combined version, so they're folded in half.) If you don't have a pinboard, some combination of crocodile clip / paperclip / string / blutack should do the trick. Maybe on the inside of a cupboard, but I like to keep mine visible, so I remember to add stuff.

Any time something's running low - tinfoil, loo paper, salt, the random things that are easy to forget - add it to the list. (When I had a utility room, I always had a backup of stuff like that, and replaced the back up, but this kitchen has less space.)

I have pens cached everywhere, all over the house, so that's not a problem, but you could attach a pen, except in a pen-short house, someone would steal it. So instead you could empty a cheap pack of ballpoints into the cutlery drawer. (One of my many pen caches.)

The combined shopping list / meal plan

Before we go shopping, or while we're wandering around the shops, we jot on the meal-list side what we're planning to make, in no particular order, and add the ingredients to the things already on the list. There's only the two of us, so no need for military menu planning and it all stays quite flexible, but I do allocate specific easy & quick dishes for teaching nights when I finish at about 10. That meal list then stays pinned up on the pinboard while we cook our way throught it; meanwhile, a new shopping list is gathering up anything we're now running out of.

The detailed menu plan

I made this at my cousin's request, as she needs to do more planning - she has two kids, and does complicated things involving pre-soaking all the ingredients, hence the "do in advance" column which is also handy for remembering to defrost stuff. I only menu-plan with that kind of detail when I'm cooking or planning for someone else.

The meals list

Old menu plans don't get chucked away - they go in the magic meals list envelope. I've had that envelope since about 2008, at least, so some lists must've strayed, but it's still bulging. It's been pinned on the pinboard, blu-tacked on a cupboard inside, magnetted to the fridge and the side of the boiler... Whenever we can't think of anything to cook for the coming weeks, we rifle through the assorted scraps.

The meals list is especially useful when the season changes, and our heads are still full of stews & soups and we can't even remember what we eat in summertime. (That's why I added "season" to the detailed menu plan.) Occasionally I think about writing or typing up a masterlist, but I like seeing the constellations of dishes, and find that useful, and also like the fragments of memory and other houses.

Enjoy! (Also, if you want other versions and want me to make them with those lovely fonts and with the organisation fairy, let me know.)

Sag paneer

Sag aloo (aloo = potato, remember) is one of my always-orders for Indian food (and if you're in Oxford, you should be going to the Standard Tandoori, which is a marvellous story that shall be told another time, but trust me, ignore the name, and just go) and another one I figured was unreplicable at home... nope, not at all. Quite easy to make. But as I usually have the aloo served up in aloo gajjar, and paneer is basically cheese (cheese... CHEESE... CHEESE...!) , sag paneer is now one of my always-makes for curries. Or just sag, if we don't have paneer. (Paneer, I should add, is cheese, quite mild-tasting, white, often comes already cubed, and I buy it from the Indian grocers aka the spice shop. You can also make it but I haven't learnt how yet.)

Sag actually just means "greens", which could be spinach or not; palak means spinach specifically. So most of the year round I'm making palak paneer, but occasionally, when the season and the stars are right, it's most definitely sag paneer, because I'm using this:

Aloo gajjar

Aloo gajjar (which actually just means potato-carrots, but sounds more glamorous) is a staple side dish for almost every curry I make - humble ingredients, quick, yummy and spicy, and been in my repertoire for long enough to feel like comfort food. It even predates the Balti Bible curries, as a quick bit of cookbook archaeology shows:

Kimchi

A quick break from the avalanche of curries, because the cold / flu is still going strong, and a bowlful of kimchi is suddenly the most magical salty-chilli-gingery-garlicky elixir imaginable, and a brilliant fuschia-purple to boot. You know the way a spoonful of Branston pickle can make your mouth spasm in sudden pickle-lust? That's what kimchi does.

Luxurious dhal

This is a gloriously luxurious dhal, so a bit more effort than most, so I go into a bit of a disquisition on dhal and lentils first, and then a random tangent of family folklore, and then get back onto the subject of how to make it, but you shouldn't think all dhals are this as involved as this one, but it is, of course, thoroughly worth it.

Fragrant stock

All the curry dishes keep saying "fragrant stock or water" - most of the time I'm really not fussed about it and just use water if I don't have fragrant stock; occasionally, when I can be bothered, I'll make up a batch of fragrant stock for a curry I'm cooking and freeze the extra in 200ml batches, for future curries. When it comes to a luxurious dahl, though, I really will bother, because those lentils want all the soak-in glorious flavour they can stand! And actually it's ridiculously easy, and quick. It only takes 20 minutes, so for most curries, you could pop it on once you've got the onions frying, and it'll be ready in time. It also smells glorious.

Balti madras

So far on the many marvellous curries list, we've got how to make some major spice mixes (balti and garam masla and green masala paste) and perfect rice, but the only main dish so far is the bright fresh-tasting jalfrezi. And for a true curry cascade, you need many many curries: you need "main" dishes and dahls and vegetable side dishes, all tucked away nicely in the freezer, so whenever you want curry, you only need to make one dish and still serve a curry feast. Or do what I've just done: crawl from a fluey sofa to pull a selection of curry dishes out to defrost, then curl back up with lemsip and a laptop. To muse on Madras.