How To Make A Menu For The Week

In the modern rhythm of life, preliminary menu planning is a guarantee of saving time, effort, and often money.

In the modern rhythm of life, preliminary menu planning is a guarantee of saving time, effort, and often money. In addition, you will be able to balance your diet by giving up processed foods and canned goods bought on the run from work.

 

What do you need for this?

Discuss your weekly plans and wishes with your family. When compiling the menu, find out who, where and how many times a week plans to eat. It is likely that children will dine at school or kindergarten, working family members will also likely eat outside the home, or, on the contrary, they may have to prepare home-cooked meals in advance. Open your favorite culinary sites, where recipes are already divided into sections "breakfast", "lunch", "dinner" and choose the right ones for you. You can, of course, use a tried-and-tested cookbook or blog.

 

On days when dinner will be late, as you, for example, will be at a seminar or training, meals should be light. Suitable salads, boiled or baked fish, boiled poultry meat with rice. Complex and not yet tested recipes are best left for the weekend. Before compiling a menu, check the contents of your refrigerator and for the first days of a new menu, select recipes that include products that will soon expire. For the right balance of nutrition, it is better if 2 days a week are meat, 2 are fish, 2 are vegetarian, and 1 day is left to get acquainted with a new cuisine. But if you have small children, keep in mind a couple of quick and favorite recipes for this day. After all, often children completely refuse the new. Of course, it is impossible for two days in a row to be fish or meat. But the side dish can be one for several days. Salads are better to let them be varied or at least with different dressings.

 

Defrost frozen foods for the next day's menu in advance, for example, in the evening. But it is better not to leave it in the open air, this will provoke the growth of bacteria. For almost a full day, the products will perfectly defrost in the lower sections of the refrigerator. The menu plan doesn't have to start on Monday. After all, then the products will have to be purchased on Sunday, and on this day there are a lot of people in stores. You can set aside a special day for grocery shopping. For example, Wednesday, and then your menu will start from Thursday.

 

Do not rely on your memory, even if you have an excellent one. Write down the menu plan on a landscape sheet, make notes if some ingredients or lunches for work will have to be prepared in advance. Then make a list of missing foods, but include something to snack on: crackers, dried fruits, nuts. The question arises, what to do with the rest of the day? Perishable foods can be added to the next day's menu, and then cook a little less than planned. What can lie in the refrigerator, you can leave and choose one day a week for leftovers. It is most convenient if it is the day of the purchase of products. But often such leftovers “leave” for working lunches.

 

In the case of holidays, it is reasonable to assume that some of the dishes will remain the next day, so a smaller volume of purchases can be planned in advance for it.