Plantilla Kitchen

Half five. Coat still on. Fridge open. There are a million things in it — but there is nothing to eat.

Uber Eats to the rescue.

When I sat down to try and work out how to stop spending so much on Uber Eats, I realised the problem was never the cooking. It was the deciding.

Meal prep was obviously what I needed — except classic meal prep didn't work for us. No one wants the same meal by day two.

Most meal plans are indexed by day. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Once you miss Tuesday, it feels like being behind. And once we've fallen behind we bail altogether.

Meal kit delivery also had its issues — committing to a menu a week in advance definitely doesn't take into account real time capacity. And once we've fallen behind by a day, we know it's game over.

Who's writing this

I set out with a plan to stop having to decide every day. Writing down what meals we end up having most often, listing the ingredients needed, and then cross referencing them to try and work out what shops well together. All with the hopes of making a plan for the month.

Then came the lightbulb moment. I realised I was essentially menu planning like when I used to have a restaurant — so surely it would then make sense for me to prep like I would have at the restaurant?

With the Plantilla system of prepping, cooking dinner every night should be a simple assembly job.

Plantilla Kitchen is indexed by capacity. There's no schedule, so there's nothing to fall behind on. Just one question, asked with your coat still on: what have I got in me tonight?

Some weeks I complete all prep on a Sunday and feel like a woman with her life entirely in order, getting plates out like a well oiled service on a quiet Tuesday. Some weeks I don't, and we eat toast. Plantilla Kitchen survives both.

One Pot, One Week

One afternoon's cooking. Seven dinners. Free. It's the whole idea, scaled down.

What's in it

Green seasoning

The whole recipe, nothing held back. A jar of it changes what a Tuesday is capable of.

The potato trick

A restaurant thing. Twenty-five minutes on a Sunday, forty minutes saved every night after.

A dressing you don't make

A ratio instead of a recipe, so it's always possible.

Seven dinners sorted by what you've got in you, not by day.

What's coming

Plantilla Family Kitchen Manual

Four seasonal volumes. Not a cookbook — the thinking, the foundations, and the kitchen they came from.

A Plantilla Year

The whole system, working. Two proteins, a sauce, twenty assemblies, and what to do on the weeks that go sideways.