I often look at the fridge and decide what to prepare.... or I let the supermarket specials or farmer markets offering determine my menu.....

Often! I have "empty the freezer" weeks which are great to get the imagination going!

I plan meals based on the list below. It's more meal-by-genre than actual meal planning. I like it because I can switch one day for another, or leave the day completely out, and not wreck the whole plan. Food storage rotation, what's in the freezer, and what's coming out of the garden provide the "what". I follow the old "Basic-Four" as a guideline for number of servings from all the food groups we eat daily. Dessert is generally fruit. Lunch is based on leftovers and freezer "favorites", and breakfast is also planned and generally already in the freezer. BTW, I only have the refrigerator freezer.


Monday - BIG Meal
A large cut, or portion, of meat with all the trimmings. It will serve as a meat portion for several meals throughout the week, lunches, sandwich meat, possibly enough for the freezer, and if there is a poultry carcass left, there will be soup or broth made from it.
Tuesday - Leftovers
May be leftovers from the day before or something from another meal found in the refrigerator or freezer. It can take on a whole new look than what the original meal was.

Wednesday - Stir-fry
Prepare more vegetables than what is needed on M & Tu and use them in the stir-fry. Also used are rehydrated freeze-dried and frozen vegetables. I make sprouts all the time and they find their way into the mix. Quinoa or rice (pre-cooked and found in packets in the freezer). Any type of meat, both raw or pre-cooked are used.

Thursday - International
This generally means something with a tortilla or pasta, and is also a place I like to use a new recipe (I try to make 3 new recipes every week). Meat and meat sauces are usually already prepared and in the freezer, just pick from beef/pork/poultry versions.

Friday - Vegetarian
A good way to save on the meat side of the food budget. Have breakfast for dinner. Bake a potato and top it with a vegetarian chili. Always keep a stack of homemade bean burgers and other meatless patties in the freezer.

Saturday - Soup and/or Sandwich
A "sandwich" means a lot of things at our home - including homemade gluten-free bread wraps, lettuce wraps, quesadillas... Soup/stew/chili is frozen in individual portions.

Sunday - Homemade Pizza or Dinner Salad
A good way to use up leftovers, small portions of meat, and make sure veggies in the crisper drawer don't die of loneliness. If it's too hot to bake a pizza we'll have a Dinner Salad. We also make Q&E individual pizzas using a corn tortilla.

Is there any other way?

I'm as much motivated by what's on hand as by what the day is like - warm, sunny, cold, dreary, rainy.

Just about every meal is winged. But winged to me doesn't mean pulled from the fridge or freezer. It just means not following a recipe. I've always preferred to shop on an almost daily basis. I like to have a few things in the freezer, like chicken breasts or a few steaks, homemade pasta sauce, chicken/beef broth, etc. but for the most part I prefer to buy my meats fresh and the same for most vegetables. We are not fans of leftovers, with a few exceptions.

I pull three or four proteins out of the freezer and plan meals around those and what is in the pantry. That's 7 to 10 dinners for us.
Husband shops once a week or so for vegetables, dairy, bread, etc.

I'll say "often' too - tho I have a number of tried & true dishes, the recipes are in my head & can vary based on what's on hand. I'm an opportunistic shopper always looking for good deals, so the menu is based on that. I can't seem to follow any recipe to the letter!

I like to base meals based on what is in season and what I find at the farmers' markets, and so I often choose what I make dependent on that. I adjust recipes to what I find, and while I used to write down the recipes of what I made, I haven't been doing that lately because there is too much variation. I use recipes for certain dishes, especially condiments that things that will go into other recipes, but the final dishes always seem to vary.
Lars

Like everything else about me and my life, it depends. (grin)

Like Lars, I like to base my meals on items in season, what's ready in the garden, what I have an abundance of. Tomato season? It's going to be BLTs or a plate of tomatoes and mozzarella. Just picked up pork from the processor? Pork chops or pulled pork. An overflow of eggs? Omelets or quiche.

I do have the luxury of producing most of my own food, so even in the winter I can open the freezer and find homegrown beef, pork, chicken, sometimes duck or wild caught fish. The fun part of that is deciding what to do with "parts" like the oxtail or a package of smoked pork hocks, pigs aren't all chops and bacon and a steer only has so many steaks. A trip to the pantry for homecanned vegetables and a stop at the root cellar for potatoes, onions, carrots, parsnips, butternut squash, whatever, and I'm good to go.

I do tend to change or make up recipes as I go along. I need to make better notes because sometimes I change recipes and the results are good enough to replicate, if only I could remember...

Annie

We have a new thing in our home. I pull out three or four days worth of frozen proteins and put them all in a bowl. One night I pick, one night he picks. Whoever picks, figures out what's for dinner. So we are totally winging it right now. At least until school is over.

All the time! Yesterday, I bought some good looking pork chops on sale so tonight I'm winging this sherried chops recipe that I made recently (kind of a gastrique), so I hope I remember.

Yup all the time here too. The majority of the time I don't decide on dinner until a few hours before, which is a terrible habbit. We have a stocked freezer and the meat really does taste better when defrosted first, but the majority of the time it's not. It's just harder to cook when it's still frozen. If I am good I'll at least figure it out earlier in the day and do a crock pot meal. I've done meal plans and I don't know why I don't stick to them.
We do almost always eat well though.

carolb's response so perfectly reflects me that I'll simply copy it, change a word or two and call it my own, just like I often do with recipes :-)

I'll say "often" too, although I have a number of tried & true dishes,
the recipes are in my head & can vary based on what's on hand. I'm
an opportunistic shopper always looking for good deals, so the menu is
based on that. I can't seem to follow any recipe to the letter, even when it's my own recipe.

Wing it? Yeah, too often. The HG has a schedule that is written in pencil and a big eraser. e.g. Rain out games, makeup games, scouting, prospect campus visits, etc. I often play my own game of how much money I would have if I could get a refund on food that had gone bad waiting to be used.