Menu in a Box 100 Day Meal Planning Kit - The Menu In A Box 100 Day Meal Planning Kit Is A Pdf Downloadable E-book Product That Includes 20 Weeks - Of Shopping Lists, Recipes, Great Time Saving, Budget & Organizational Tips. Everything You Need To Organize, Shop And Cook Smart!Step 1: Make Your ListBefore you BeginThis list making and recipe card making and shopping list making is a lot of initial work. I don't provide my list and cards for direct copying because my list was made for me and my family - your family may not like the food on my list, or you may find my list not healthy enough, or too expensive, or too many leftovers, or whatever. This method is not meant to save money, it is meant to save time (although I still save money by never wasting any food). You may want to make a small list for a month (skip the recipe cards and the shopping list) to see if you like cooking this way and if you like the way the food turns out and how the leftovers turn out. If it works for you and saves you time - great! Make a longer list and make your recipe cards and your shopping lists. If you don't like it after a month then you can quit without losing too much time and energy.
Include every meal you can think of that your family enjoys, even if it seems not healthy enough or you feel it takes too long to make - you can always remove it later. Group the list by main dish For example, put all the meals featuring chicken next to each other and all the meals featuring ground beef next to each other and all the steaks or roasts next to each other. Check the list for main dishes that can be cooked together Important timesaver For example, on my list I have a Chicken Wraps meal and a Chicken Packets meal that are made on successive evenings. I cook the chicken for both meals in the crockpot together. I even double the recipes so I can freeze half of the cooked chicken and make both meals later in the month with no cooking required! Ground beef meals can also be cooked together and frozen this way. I cook ground beef for tater tot casserole, quesadillas, and homemade pizza all together, and I double this recipe too. Check the list for doubles Doubles are meals your family likes enough to eat two days in a row. For example, you could make a large pot roast and eat it the first day with bread and baked onion, then eat roast leftovers the second day with rice and beans. My two double meals are roast beef and swedish meatballs. Doubles really save you time, because there is almost no cooking time required the second day. Check the list for timesavers Mentally go over every meal and see if there is any way to make preparation of it easier and faster. For example, I like to make swedish meatballs using the packet mix from the store, but the meatballs themselves take too long, so I make swedish mushballs. I just mix the seasoning mix in the ground beef and cook it without forming meatballs, then I pour the meat into the sauce. Easy! Another example is my chicken packets - this is a meal I adapted from Once a Month Cooking. That book calls for the packets to be individually stuffed but I don't have time for that. I roll all of the dough (prepared crescent rolls) out on the pan, put the chicken mixture evenly on top, roll all of the rest of the dough on top of that, and seal the big rectangle. When it is done cooking I cut it with a knife to make individual servings. I also don't dip the packets in butter or sprinkle crushed croutons on them - who has got the time?!?! Instead, I skip the butter (or spray with Pam if I am feeling gourmet) and layer the bottom of the pan with granola so the dough doesn't stick. Trim the List I trimmed anything from my list that took more than 20 minutes of actual 'me standing at the stove or counter' time, unless I could double or triple it and freeze it for another meal. I make linguini that takes 40 minutes, but it freezes wonderfully and I can get 4 nights worth of meals out of that one night's cooking, so I like to think the linguini only takes me 10 minutes. Before you trim something your family really enjoys, check again to see if there is any way to make the preparation and cooking faster and easier. Even if there isn't, you could always save one or two family favorites that take longer and just schedule them for days when you know you will have the time. At this point you'll want to take a look at your list and see where you stand. My list has 21 different meals on it that I stretch into 45 days worth of dinners. The reason I use a 45 day cycle (scheduling 3 shopping trips) is so that I can use all my leftovers during the cycle. I have 9 meals that I double or triple the size of, so I need enough time to eat all those meals I froze. You don't have to use a 45 day cycle but you'll want to design one long enough to use up all your leftovers. Ensure you have enough easy meals Easy meals are meals that take less than 10 minutes from start time to on the table time. You'll want one on your schedule every 4 or 5 days. My easy meals are dried split pea soup with sourdough bread, frozen raviolis, and most of my leftover meals that I freeze. Ensure you have some no-prep meals No prep meals are meals that may take a while to cook, but preparation time by you is minimal - say 5 minutes. They probably aren't very healthy, but everybody should like them. My no prep meals are boca burgers (the chik'n ones can be cooked in the oven) or actual chicken burgers with french fries, fish sticks with tater tots, and frozen pizza. All these meals go in the oven for 20 or so minutes and voila! a hot meal with almost no work. Identify any meals on your list that you can double or triple and freeze the leftovers Important timesaver This is really the biggest timesaving concept of the busy meals plan (well, this and frozen vegetables). Anything that's mostly meat usually freezes well - like sloppy joes or cut-up chicken. Believe it or not, cooked linguini freezes well. I make a meal called creamy linguini that I adapted from Once a Month Cooking that freezes great, and when thawed and warmed tastes just like it's non-frozen counterpart. I also make a chili with tomato paste instead of tomatoes that freezes perfectly - if you have to have the tomatoes you could make it without and add the tomatoes in after you have thawed it. You may think to yourself "it sounds like a lot of repeating of the same meal over and over." It is! But, from what I have read, most families only have a list of 10 meals that they rotate through indefinitely. On my list I have 24 different meals that I rotate through, and you can have as many or as few as you want. You also can try new meals or add new meals any time you want - the purpose of making an actual list is only to facilitate mealtime - not to lock you into anything. Group the MealsNow set up the list so that you have cycles of hard and easy and leftover meals. Look for opportunities to combine cooking - like if I were to make chicken packets on one day I would schedule chicken wraps for the next day, and cook all the chicken on the first day - then the next day I would only have to assemble the meal, not cook chicken again and then assemble the meal. Actually what I do is cook several pounds of chicken and then freeze half it for later in my cooking cycle and save half of what's left for dinner the next day. Set up your list |
Busy Meals quick-and-easy-dinners meal-planning strategy:
Introduction
Thinking about buying a ...
crockpot? Timesavers Best razors (Intuition) Roomba Vacuum General Reviews Ford F150 Sunscreen Review |
|
|
|