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Home Cooking
9 Easy Ways to Make Fixing Meals at Home Doable
By Jill Cooper
4. Make a week's worth of menus. Sit down with grocery ads, your recipe file and your favorite cookbook. This is a good time to throw in one or two of those new recipes from magazines that you have wanted to try. If you get stumped or you need help to get you started, flip through your cookbooks or recipe files. You will be surprised how much this will help motivate you. Here are some tips for planning meals:
- In a notebook, write a week's worth of menus. You only have to do this for three weeks because at the end of that time you will have 21 menus. You now have almost a month's worth of menus. (Since most people will go out at least once a week to eat and have a leftover night once a week, this helps to fill in the days for the rest of the month). You can then just use these same menus over and over.
- Don't restrict yourself by saying that you have to have fried chicken on Monday, roast on Tuesday, etc. Instead, list the menus in categories like elaborate (for the days you have more time) and quick (for those "nothing has gone right today, so what can I fix when I am blurry eyed and have only five minutes" days). I usually make about three to four menus in each category.
- Be flexible. If you get to the grocery store and they have something unbelievable on sale then adapt your menus accordingly.
5. Plan what you are going to have for dinner the night before or first thing in the morning.
6. Make sure you have all the ingredients on hand and take ot anything that needs to be defrosted.
