The thing about planning is that I find it very tedious. Planning a holiday, hard work. Planning a stag-do, like herding cats. Planning what I’m going to eat each night, pointless. I prefer to operate on a very much night by night basis and if I’m honest rule #1 of planning food was leave it up to my girlfriend. Not that my household ethics are stuck in the 1900’s, just that she is a creative cook who hates doing the washing up. 

However, the problem with ‘plan-less’ living is that we’d inevitably end up making the 9.30pm dash to Co-Op and grabbing whatever packs contained an inviting yellow barcode. Whilst this lucky dip approach holds its own charm it is an inefficient way to operate especially considering my current challenge - reducing my non-recyclable household waste to zero. It’s hard to be environmentally selective when you are desperately hungry.

A solution was required and it came last Saturday morning in the form of a blue post-it note. I sat at the kitchen table with two of our simplest cook-books (one pitched at about my level entitled ‘Meals with Four Ingredients or Less’) and began to plan. Hell, if it had worked for General Eisenhower it could work for me (planning that is, not cook books). What resulted was a fridge-mounted day-by-day schedule of meals, and a shopping list that I could follow to the letter. Gone were the minutes spent dithering in the chilled food isle replaced by a well organised Saturday morning visit to East Dulwich’s independent food shops. Gone from my shopping bag was the supermarket cling-wrap, replaced by recyclable paper bags or better still no wrapping at all.

This experience also helped to remove my fear that locally bought goods would be a heavier hit to the pocket. A rugby ball sized slab of ham from William Rose butchers was priced the same on the Tesco website and it fed us from Sunday night roast dinner through to Friday’s lunchtime sandwiches. If only my new wormery worms were as keen to eat, they seem to be on some sort of hunger strike and show little interest in the layer of delicious vegetable waste sat on top of their muddy home. I will have to draw them up a meal plan of their own.