Planning is one of "whales" of economy. If you plan the menu for the week ahead, it will help you to avoid excess expenditure, accidental having a snack, purchase of the products finishing the way in a garbage can. You will be able to take a serious step towards healthy food for all family and to release more time for yourself, having optimized both purchases, and preparation of dishes.
Advantage of planning
Planning me for a week on all family:
- saves money. Armed with the list of products, you will avoid pulse purchases, don't buy what you already have, you won't get products which you don't know how to prepare and which, after all, will finish the way in a garbage can. Besides you can always plan how to use the remains from dishes and products and half-banks of sauce or pieces of smoked products will be put to use, but will quietly not dry up in a fridge corner;
- saves time. Having made the menu in advance, you won't spend long minutes in painful thoughts at the fridge, estimating that you can prepare from the available set of ingredients, don't "hang" in network at long o'clock, looking for inspiration. You shouldn't run urgently in shop because you have no main products;
- saves nerves. You can always coordinate with the members of household in advance that they will eat, to learn from them about their plans and to arrange the menu under them and to save yourself from the most part of whims and surprises. You shouldn't hurry urgently after work in shop that then it is urgent to run home, considering what to prepare;
- does food of your family healthier. Very few people plan to feed family with the frozen pizza three times a week, but even if you always prepare only whether your menu is balanced or is based on what is in the fridge?
What to begin with?
Planning of food for a week for all family begins with selection of recipes. You for certain have several checked daily dishes which are successful to you every time and are pleasant to all members of household. They will form the basis of your menu. If you don't want to go beyond a habitual framework, your right, but if you seek to experiment, then allow themselves to spend a certain amount of time for food-surfing. Find several blogs, Instagram accounts, magazines which inspire you and give them 10-15 minutes a day. Find one-two interesting recipes and include them in the plan for the next week.
If you don't have it yet, create the catalog of recipes. Also the notebook in Evernote, and special applications will be suitable for planning, and if you like to write by hand, cardboard cards in a convenient box. In each recipe there has to be not only a list of products necessary for you, but also quantity of portions. If it is important for you, the caloric content of dishes, their power structure can be specified in the same place. As you prepare from these recipes, don't forget to do in them marks, you can be necessary more or you want to replace less products, some products, preparation time can differ from specified.
Before beginning to live "according to the plan", carry out inventory. Spend time precisely to find out what is in your "granaries". At the same time get rid of expired products and if you decided to begin to plan not only the economical, but also healthy menu for all family, from the "forbidden" products.
Choose time
You shouldn't begin planning of the menu on all family for the week ahead during week-end, you should buy still products, to sort them and to process what can't be put just like that on a regiment. It is unlikely you are ready to devote it all free time.
Devote to planning a little time in a day - another about your "purchasing" day, at the same time you will manage to consider relevant discount offers by drawing up the menu and to choose dishes which can be prepared from "promotional" products. It is offensive when you unexpectedly found the fresh fish loved by your members of household in shop at the "good" price, and all the menu for a week at you is under construction on what you buy chicken and shrimps.
Create a basis
The menu for a week for each family depends not only on food preferences of children and members of household, but also on their schedule. Someone can have dinner or supper outdoors, to be necessary for someone additional having a snack which can be taken. All this also should be considered. After all family shares with you plans, it will become clear to you how many breakfasts, lunches and dinners expect you during a week.
Choose at first the main courses
In order that your menu was economical, it is important to choose the "main" dishes around which you also will build all your plan. If you aren't family of vegetarians, then during a week you need several meat dishes and not less than one of fish are desirable.
Choosing one main ingredient, at once look for what else dishes you can prepare on its basis or/and from its remains. So, for example, the whole chicken can become a basis for broth, the baked legs for dinner for the husband and gentle befstrogana for lunch for children. Decided to make roast beef? It leave a part for sandwiches for breakfast or for salad in Asian style for dinner. Do you want to prepare paste with sauce in a Bologna way? Make sauce with a stock and plan a lasagna next week. Also with a stock it is possible to make home-made forcemeat, cheaper than store, and to turn a part into dishes on the future – stuffed peppers, hedgehogs, quenelles, not to mention cutlets, perfectly maintain freezing. Look for such opportunities in your menu, saving on them time and money.
Having thought up "additional" dishes to main, note them in the recipes. Further it will be even simpler to you to plan the menu.
If you want your menu to be balanced, resort to small "color" tricks. Note, for example, meat dishes – red, fishes – pink, fresh salads – green, vegetables – yellow. So, having taken a view of all table from the menu for a week, you will see what dishes to you isn't enough, without reading their names.
Not only dishes
Making the menu on all family for a week, you remember that you can plan not only from what and what to prepare. You can include in the plan one evening when you order "takeaway" food, to look in what day you can prepare to exempt dishes about "stock" and what day honor from cooking.
If you in family have little assistants, you can choose to plan everything so that in your menu there was a dish which you will prepare together, having allocated for it slightly more than time. Further you can gradually shift a part of cooking to children, including in the menu already their "crown" dishes.
You shouldn't forget about that, as men are able to prepare. What prevents you to plan "men's" day when your partner undertakes care of a breakfast or a dinner or of all meals at once?
Shopping list
After you make the menu, be engaged in the shopping list. Look what ingredients at you already is that should be bought. As at you the list of "stocks" will be already ready whether you shouldn't spend time for clarification of that you have a sugar and buckwheat or not.
Divide the main list into wholesale, having written down in it those products which it is possible and it is necessary to buy in advance, and one-two small in which there will be bread, milk, greens and similar products which buy in convenience stores of times in two-three days.
Update your list of purchases during a week, at once including in it those products which stock is necessary in the house on a constant basis.