How to make a weekly menu for a family so that it is both tasty and cheap? And also very, very useful. After all, a person should receive with food all the substances he needs in a certain ratio, and not chaotically. You can find out how others cope with this difficult task by reading the literature on this topic, or you can try to make your own menu for the week for the family.
Why do we need this?
Each woman can be calm only when her family is healthy, happy and ... full. After all, the path to the man’s heart lies, as you know, through the stomach, and the growing body of the child’s quality "fuel" is vital. That's just about how to make a budget menu for a family, not everyone knows. After all, I want it to be both tasty and affordable for the wallet, and useful. Therefore, the easiest option to save time, budget and nerve cells is to create a menu for a week. Why is this convenient? Firstly, you don’t need to rack your brains every day, getting to work, on the question of which products to buy. Making a menu involves buying products for a week. Secondly, you already know what you will cook, and this will save a lot of time, saving you from unnecessary torment during the week. And most importantly, making a menu for the week for the family, you get the opportunity to turn on your imagination, learn new recipes and thereby improve your cooking skills.
Menu Design Principles
When composing the menu, several factors must be taken into account.
1. The compatibility of products and dishes. You should not saturate the day with any one type of product, serving them, for example, for breakfast in several dishes.
2. The menu should be varied and satisfying, but not very difficult for the stomach.
3. The planning option should be determined.
Strict planning involves specifically scheduled dishes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
With free planning, a list of breakfast, lunch, dinner, which you want and can cook. Then for every day a menu is selected from the proposed list. Or the alleged dishes are painted in the following categories: side dishes, hot, first, dessert. Then you create a daily menu for the family.
4. No one knows the features and nuances in the nutrition of the family like a mother. Therefore, existing problems and recommendations, if any, should be taken into account.
5. When composing the menu, do not forget the old truth: “eat breakfast yourself, share lunch with a friend, give dinner to the enemy”
6. Be sure to include cereals, legumes in the diet. Do not abuse sweet, baked goods.
Snacks
The task of these dishes is to prepare the digestive system for the main meal. It is more appropriate to serve them for lunch and dinner. Sandwiches are more suitable for breakfast from snacks. A complete list might look something like this:
1. Open and closed sandwiches, canapes. As the filling, you can use any products. It is very advantageous and convenient to use pre-prepared mass:
- from cheese, cottage cheese, with herbs, garlic;
- from fish and fish products (herring, caviar of inexpensive fish varieties mixed with butter);
- from vegetables (eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini);
- from egg mass with mayonnaise.
2. Sandwiches with meat products and fish, cheese:
- sprats, herring, crab sticks;
- sausage, cream cheese, hard cheese.
3. Salads.
A variety of salads depends on the season, wallet and imagination. Available and tasty menu options for the family may look like: “Hare joy” (cabbage, onions, carrots), “Debut” (cucumber, tomato, pepper, hard cheese), vinaigrette, cottage cheese salad (peppers or tomatoes stuffed with cottage cheese) , "Latvia" (rice, apples, tomatoes, cucumbers, greens, sour cream).
First meal
When compiling a weekly menu for a family, you should consider that you often have lunch at work, and children at school or in the garden. Only there are hardly any children who love school soups. Therefore, let the plate with the first dish wait for the child at home. Consider the preferences of your tomboys. If they prefer the presence of a thick mass in a plate, refueling soups: borsch, hodgepodge, will suit you. If the thick remains to lie on a plate in a sad hill, offer the child transparent soups, broths. The first dish, included in the menu for a family for a week, should be prepared subject to simple rules:
- The correct sequence of bookmarking products;
- Put seasonings at the end of cooking so that they do not lose their flavor;
- the rule of "harmony" - vegetables should be cut in accordance with the size and shape of the remaining products. For children, you can buy pasta of various shapes, vegetables, too, cut unusual. Borsch, hodgepodge, pickle can be cooked for several days. Transparent soup, especially seasoned with pasta, is suitable only for a single use.
Second courses
What really can diversify the menu for a week for a family is a large number of options for preparing second courses.
This includes meat and fish dishes (beef, veal, pork, offal, poultry dishes, fish). Every housewife should understand that, despite the size of your budget, you should try to diversify the menu with meat dishes. Stew is very useful here. This dish has been with us since the era of Peter I. In French, this word means both a special dish and spicy seasoning. It comes from the verb “excite”, which means it includes the meaning “tasty”, “appetizing”. For the family menu, you can abandon the sharpness, the stew will not get worse from this. The dish can be prepared in several stages. Its taste will not disappear, and you will save time. And we must not forget about fish. Fish days must be included in the weekly menu for the family.
Garnishes can be diversified by the unusual preparation by constructing:
- vegetable cutlets;
- casseroles;
- baked vegetables;
- pasta;
- porridge.
Dishes from vegetables (potatoes, cabbage, cabbage rolls, casseroles) can be prepared in several stages.
Dessert
What kind of menu for the week for the family can we talk about if they forget to include sweets in it? Cookies, jelly, mousse, souffle - all this can be prepared quickly and in several stages. True, there is a risk that your children will swallow weekly supplies unauthorized. After all, they are so tasty. Also, do not forget about carefully prepared jars of jam, jam, which are not only tasty, but also healthy, especially if these are natural grated fruits. To prepare a pie or cookie, you do not need to procure expensive products. Flour, kefir or sour cream, a few eggs - and a fragrant dessert is ready. And if you spend a little more time on weekends and bake rich pies, then the dessert question will close for several days. Cakes and pastries will also be appropriate on weekends. It takes a little longer to cook them. If the budget is modest, then you can limit their preparation to holidays. The shops have a great selection of instant jellies. Ready jelly can be sprinkled with chocolate, coconut, grated cookies. This delicacy is prepared quickly and does not require large material costs, but it takes up a lot of space in the refrigerator. It is advisable to pour it into flat vessels and cover with lids. Then it will fit more, and other dishes can be put on top.
Little tricks
To save time, effort and products, you can cheat a little. For example, sweets such as dumplings, dumplings, spring rolls, you can dazzle, twist and freeze. Then these semi-finished products of home production will be able to cook your households completely independently. The option is good when you need to stay somewhere on business or have a cup of coffee with a girlfriend. If you are planning a dish of stewed cabbage, do not be lazy to stew more. The remaining part at any time can be attached to a pie, zrazy and just serve as a separate dish. This tip works with all products. Just show your imagination. Create a menu for your family and review it carefully. Tick ​​off foods that are repeated. These repetitions should not be more than three. Do not buy products if you do not know what you will cook from them. Spontaneous purchase will lead to the fact that you simply throw them away. And do not forget that your menu is not a dogma. You can always make changes in accordance with new desires.
A little bit about breakfast
This meal is the most important. Many forget about it and undeservedly miss it, just having a cup of coffee. Your health, mood and appearance depend on how correctly and balanced you prepare breakfast. Since there is a working day ahead, you can afford more high-calorie and tasty food. This is very true for girls and women who always monitor their weight and deny themselves sweets. When making a menu for the family, they should understand that breakfast is their salvation. Everything that will be eaten will never lie in fatty deposits on the bends of a female figure. The most useful was and remains porridge. Better oatmeal for breakfast can only be buckwheat. It doesn’t matter if you make porridge in water or milk. You can add raisins, nuts, dried apricots, bananas to it. Semolina has discredited itself. Doctors say that due to the presence of phytin and gliadin, semolina is unsafe for the children's gastrointestinal tract. Buckwheat with milk contains all the essential amino acids. For porridge for breakfast, you can make sandwiches, toasts, tea, cocoa.
Approximate two-day menu
Monday
Breakfast:
- Oatmeal with raisins and nuts, cooked in milk. Tea. Toasts, buttered with sausage and cheese.
Snack:
- Yogurt, banana.
Dinner:
- Coleslaw with carrots. Rice soup on chicken broth with herbs. Pasta. Veal meatballs with sauce. Compote.
Snack:
- Juice or kefir.
Dinner:
- Veal meatballs baked with cheese. Buckwheat. Fresh vegetable salad (in summer) or vinaigrette (in winter).
Tuesday
Breakfast:
- Buckwheat porridge with milk. Cocoa. Sandwiches with cheese and egg mass (processed cheese, egg, mayonnaise).
Snack:
- An apple or a pear.
Dinner:
- Pickled cucumbers with onions and vegetable oil. Pea soup. Oven baked chicken cutlets and potatoes. Juice. Pancakes with curd.
Snack:
- A banana. Jelly or souffle.
Dinner:
- Wheat porridge. The meat is french. Vegetable salad (cucumbers, tomatoes, hard cheese). Tea with biscuits.