Sometimes the meal goes wrong - and that's okay

The boxer Mike Tyson famously once said:

"Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth."

If I can steal that: everyone has a meal plan 'till their Spanish omelette falls apart.

Mistakes and unexpected errors in the kitchen happen (hopefully not as bad as getting punched in the mouth). But what do you do when it all falls apart?

Ideally, you can deal with it. We still ate that deconstructed Spanish omelette. The goal of meal planning is not perfection, but preparation for a low-waste and low-mental effort cooking routine. And when things go wrong, it's simple:

• If you can't deal with it, try to save it.
• If you can't save it, can you reuse the ingredients and make another dish?
• If it's totally gone, do you have a backup?

If you can't deal with it, try to save it

Too salty? Too sweet? Too acidic? There's always a balance to be found. The important thing is to keep tasting the dish until it feels right - or right enough.

Sometimes, you can save your dish by going around the issue. For example, a homemade vinaigrette where the oil and mustard is split. Simply make another smaller vinaigrette in a separate bowl until the emulsion comes together. Then slowly mix in your split vinaigrette and this will combine everything nicely.

If you can't save it, can you reuse the ingredients and make another dish?

Once, I was cooking with tuna when I mixed it with beef stock (it's all we had). I do not recommend. It does not, as I thought, taste like 'surf and turf'. It was so terrible that we washed the ingredients and did something else instead.

It doesn't have to be that bad, but whatever you can reuse is something not wasted.

If it's totally gone, do you have a backup?

We save money because our meal plans make dinner and tomorrow's lunch with the same dish. But if that dish goes totally wrong, there's suddenly a big gap to fill.

So, always have backups ready to go. The freezer is your friend! If a dish lends itself to big portions (see our tips on the best bulky dishes), make extras and freeze them. Every month on a Sunday, we make a giant lasagna and freeze portions. It's great for when you're out the night before, you don't feel like cooking, and also when your Spanish omelette falls apart.

Some mistakes you just can't fix. So it's good to have a (meal) plan B!