How to create a menu for your family for the week. A healthy diet for the week

The Motherhood portal offers one of the possible options for an economical menu for 10 days. This topic is not for those who eat lobster, but for those who want to save a lot while using in their diet foods that contain the vitamins and minerals necessary for the body.

The menu is designed for a family of two adults and two children. It assumes that children and parents eat milk porridge in the morning and are not big “meat eaters.”

Day 1. Monday

Day 2. Tuesday

Day 3. Wednesday

Day 4. Thursday

Day 5. Friday

Day 6. Saturday

Day 7. Sunday

Day 8. Monday

Day 9. Tuesday

Day 10. Wednesday

Costs for 10 days according to the proposed menu are about 4,000 rubles, that is, about 12 thousand rubles per month.

note that complex and time-consuming dishes to prepare prepared on our menu on weekends or the night before: soups, broth, long-cooking porridges, homemade cookies and other baked goods. Mid-week and weekend mornings - quick-to-prepare meals. By the end of the work week, we be sure to include fruits, proteins, and higher-calorie foods in our diet, since the body is already starting to get tired and needs “recharge.”

List of products for 10 days on our menu:

Saving effort

Weekends are built on the principle of preparing homemade baked goods and partly food for the beginning of the working week. Each housewife can adjust this idea to suit her busy schedule; perhaps someone prefers to bake in the evening, and leaves the weekend for relaxation or other family concerns.

Saving on meat products

About cooking economical cutlets and receiving “free” soup sets.

An economical “meat” dish would be meat sauce or gravy. It can be cooked thick with flour, sweet, spicy, etc., but the main point of saving is that we put a piece of minced meat the size of a cutlet or fried sausage/sausage in a decent amount of sauce. Serve it with cereals and pasta.

Mushrooms, dried, canned or frozen in season, are an excellent alternative to meat dishes. We make soups from them, season them with vegetable oil and garlic - they are very tasty with mashed potatoes, we use them as a filling for pizza, pies and pancakes, various rolls, soups and sauces.

Save on fish dishes You can buy inexpensive varieties and enhance the taste with various gravies and sauces. The simplest one is with onions, carrots, hot seasoning and milk or sour cream. Salt frozen fish (herring, mackerel, red fish) yourself. The fish cutlet turns out to be more than just portioned pieces (we also add a loaf of bread and other ingredients). In addition, the cutlets can be frozen for later use.

Mixing principle- the basis for saving on food. So, to prepare pilaf, you can use a small piece of meat or chicken breast, cutting it finely. You need to put 2 large carrots and 2 onions in it, then the pilaf will be richer, with less meat used. If you boil 4 sausages for four people, you will get a small portion, but if you take even 2 pieces, cut them, fry them with onions and mix them with rice, buckwheat, pasta, pearl barley, cabbage, you will get a completely rich dish. Remember the nature of stirring: you can always save on expensive ingredients by using more garnish.

Eating out

By the way, a thermos can be a gift for any holiday - it is a useful acquisition. It is wise to purchase a thermos with a wide universal neck, with a volume of 1-1.5 liters. Here you can pour not only liquid food, but also a side dish with a cutlet, milk porridge, or vegetable stew. The cost of such universal thermoses starts from 750 rubles.

Adults who have the opportunity to heat food in a microwave oven at work can limit themselves to purchasing a special food container.

Embargo on products

However, in order to save money, it is worth reviewing your grocery basket and making a list of “prohibited” purchases for you.

Other economical dishes

A piece of black bread sprinkled with vegetable oil and salt is very cheap. Or a piece of white bread sprinkled with sugar. Did you eat these “sandwiches” as a child?

Let's remember other cheap dishes that can be included in the family diet.

Soups:
oxalic,
pumpkin,
fish soup (from leftover fish when cutting into cutlets),
you can cook soup using water from dumplings,
soup with fried sausage or sausages plus vegetables/cereals.

When preparing soup, you can freeze some of the resulting broth or leave it in the refrigerator for a couple of days. From the first part, cook the main soup for several days, from the frozen part - a quick soup with vegetables or noodles for one day. This way you can save your time in the middle of the week.

Economy salads:
Olivier “simple” (2 sausages or wieners, 3 small potatoes, pickled cucumber, boiled carrots, green or onions, 3-4 eggs, salt, pepper, sour cream or mayonnaise dressing, green peas if desired),
vinaigrette with vegetable oil,
canned fish salad (when there is boiled rice left, add a can of saury in oil, onions, pickled cucumber, eggs, seasoning and dressing-mayonnaise or sour cream),
vegetables, carrots, beets.

Snacks:
For light snacks we use budget fruits and vegetables: apples, bananas, a piece of pumpkin or turnip, carrots.

As various “spreads” on bread you can use: lard rolled with garlic and seasonings; a snack of two processed cheeses, eggs and garlic; forshmak, homemade liver pate, etc.

Seasonal preparations
Even if you live in the city, don’t have your own garden, and have never been involved in “harvesting” - now is the time to think about an action plan for the upcoming summer season.

We actively use autumn freezing when preparing economical dishes. During the season, you can buy village vegetables at very reasonable prices.

Freeze in portions:

• 10-12 bell peppers (wash, remove the core, cut into small strips or cubes) - they will be used for preparing fresh salads, vegetable soups and stews, as a seasoning for gravy and meat sauces;
• greens: onions, dill, parsley, sorrel, garlic arrows, etc.
• mushrooms,
• berries.

Country apples, carrots, zucchini, pumpkins in urban conditions can be stored on the balcony, covered with old warm things - a blanket, outerwear. During winter frosts, we bring them home (as a rule, this is only a couple of days), then we take them out onto the balcony again.

Homemade preserves are a great way to save housewives money and time: jam, canned cucumbers and tomatoes, sauerkraut, bell peppers, mushrooms, preparations for soups, squash caviar, eggplants, cherry and apple compotes, jams, various salads as appetizers or a full dinner option , adjika, homemade horseradish and various lecho, ketchups, tomato pastes and juices.

Bread, milk
You can save on buying baked goods. To do this, you need to know the approximate consumption of bread. We put unused bread in an omelet with croutons, make croutons, and use it for cutlets and casseroles. We buy biscuits or cookies, alternating them with morning sandwiches - it’s more varied, and sometimes you just don’t have to buy bread. On weekends we make homemade baked goods, they are much cheaper than store-bought ones.

When preparing milk porridge, it can be slightly diluted with water: na? or 1/3. This also leads to saving resources.

Second life of products
Consider “zero waste” cooking. There are also significant savings in this. For example, you can prepare an omelet for the morning or evening with the remaining portion of pasta or vegetable stew, buckwheat. Leftover pasta, cottage cheese, and porridge can be used for casseroles. From the leftover kefir and sour cream you can make “thick” pancakes and other baked goods - loaves, buns, pizza dough, muffins, etc.

Saving means looking for previously unused reserves and opportunities!

Photo - photobank Lori

Hello, my darlings! Many of us view cooking as a labor-intensive process that steals precious time. How can you turn cooking into a quick and easy job that ultimately yields delicious results?

Previously, I hadn’t even thought about how to create a weekly menu for my family. And I didn’t like planning anything at all. As it seemed later, it was in vain! After all, almost every day I had to rack my brains about what to cook. It’s funny, but the most common question I heard on the playground from mothers and part-time moms was “What did you cook today?”

In this way, we adopted each other’s ideas, but the whole process took longer because we had to go to the store to buy more ingredients for the dish, and so on several times a week.

I decided to correct this situation, and now we have meals planned!

The main advantages of menu planning

To create a meal plan for the week, of course, you will have to spend some time, but the reward for the work is worth it:

An economical menu for the week will save you money. The time spent on shopping trips is reduced, and travel expenses, unnecessary goods, such as “bargain” purchases on sales, sweets that children beg for along the way, etc., are correspondingly reduced.

Food costs are significantly reduced, since you will try to use the products that are in stock for cooking. Even if there are very few of them there, you can always come up with something and prepare a dish from the leftovers.

A competent menu improves health. When you have a prepared list of recipes for each day and a sufficient amount of ingredients, you will no longer cook a quick meal from convenience foods for your beloved family. Having fruits, vegetables, eggs, cereals, meat, poultry, and fish at home will make it easy and quick to prepare something, lunch and dinner. Find out the perfect time for breakfast along the way.

You are the ideal housewife. No one will ever accuse you of being a bad housewife if you feed your family tasty, healthy and varied food without wasting extra time and money. Children love their mother first of all for the food, no one will deny this; after tasting mother’s milk for the first time, the child notes to himself: “Mom is food.”

A man, if he comes home after a hard day at work and smells the delicious smell of food, will never stay somewhere else for a long time. The smell of freshly prepared food at home and children is something that draws him like a magnet, provided that the children are already getting ready for bed at this time, and are not rushing headlong around the rooms :)

Preparing to create a menu

Step 1. If you have children, then first of all click and find out what a healthy menu means for a child.

Step 2. Collect recipes for dishes that your whole family loves; cooking for everyone separately is not a good solution. Only exceptional cases make it necessary to prepare separate food, for example.

Although from my own experience I can say that if a child has allergies, it is more convenient for the whole family to switch to the diet that suits the baby, so as not to create temptations for him. In the end, most often it is temporary.

Make a list of common dishes that you already know well. If you want, then of course add something new, but first prepare the dish several times, and then add it to the list.

Step 3. Now decide what to cook and on what day. If you are preparing food for two meals, be sure to mark it accordingly, because you will need double the amount of ingredients. Enter all meals in a table, which you can create yourself or using computer programs.

Step 4. If your menu for the week does not have significant changes, then the list of products always remains approximately the same, so you only need to compile it once. Sometimes you will make some additions to the list or cross out what is unnecessary, depending on the season of the year and the wishes of the household.

Purchase twice a week:

• Perishable
• Dairy products
• Some fruits and vegetables
• Berries
• Greenery

Do not spoil throughout the week:

• Cream
• Paprika
• Zucchini
• Eggplant
• Lettuce leaves
• Tomatoes
• cucumbers
• Lemons

Once every two weeks I buy:

• Meat, fish, poultry (I freeze)
• Cabbage
• pumpkin
• Beetroot
• Carrot
• Potato
• Garlic
• Apples

Purchases for 1-2 months:

• Creamy and coconut
• Cereals ()
• Seeds/nuts/dried fruits
• Flour (with and without gluten)
• Baking starch
• Tomato
• , xylitol,
• Natural salt
• Spaghetti/pasta (with and without gluten)
• Legumes (lentils, beans, chickpeas, peas)
• Natural cocoa/coffee/teas
• Spices/dried herbs
• Unrefined oils: olive, sunflower (for salads and mayonnaise)

Step 5. Before you cook anything, the food must be prepared. Take care of this in advance. In the evening, transfer the desired piece of meat or a bag of minced meat or fish to the refrigerator. In the morning, let the product completely thaw at room temperature.

Legumes must be soaked for a long time. Therefore, if you want to cook them, then soak them in the evening, and you can cook them by lunch the next day. The exception is lentils, they are small and do not require long soaking; sometimes it is enough to simply rinse them.

I also soak the grains in advance, this way they become more beneficial for our tummies, and they also cook very quickly.

Store-bought greens should also be soaked before cutting into salad. You'll see, in just an hour she will become as if alive. I do the same with lettuce leaves, revived and juicy, they are eaten by the household in no time!

Step 6. Prepare so that perishable foods are prepared within the first days after purchasing them. For example, if I buy broccoli or cauliflower, then naturally I have recipes on the menu these days that require these ingredients.

Don’t rush to run out and buy things, if you run out of many products in the middle of the week, take a closer look at your old supplies, maybe you can cook something from them.

Step 7 Mark for yourself the most convenient days to buy groceries. It’s good if your husband is at home at the same time, so that you don’t have to drag heavy bags and generally move from one store to another by car, and not by bus or taxi.

And let you be pleased by the fact that you won’t have to buy food in large quantities every week. Buy shelf-stable foods in large quantities. Store them in the right conditions, tightly closed, and eat them for your health!

In winter, people shop less and less often, since many people have supplies from the summer and stocks from the fall.

Start small...

There is no need to try to implement all seven steps at once. Just plan seven main meals for the next week that you will eat for lunch, maybe dinner. Promise yourself to shop a maximum of two times a week, or better yet once. Buy all the ingredients needed to prepare the planned dishes at once.

In the first half of the week, as I wrote above, prepare something that can quickly go bad, in the middle of the week you can come up with something on the go, and a couple of days before the next grocery purchase you will probably still have cereals, potatoes, carrots, and onions left over , also meat or chicken, from which you can make a delicious soup.

And a very important point, always, before going to the store to buy products according to the list, take a walk in your pantry, study the contents of the shelves in the closet and. In these places, it is generally useful to periodically make an inspection so that the products do not sit there in vain, and the storage is kept clean.

Creating an economical menu for the week is not as easy as it seems. To do this, you need to take into account the nuances, including the tastes of each family member, and compare the budget and food prices. However, such a list eliminates monotony from the diet, allows significant savings and deprives housewives of headaches about what to cook.

Planning your menu for the week saves time. If you have thought about your diet, then some products can be purchased in advance. Or you can cook it for future use. And you won’t rush to the shops on the day of cooking in search of suitable ingredients. The more likely it is to buy them more expensive, since there is no time to look for cheap analogues.

Saving time also lies in the fact that you don’t need to look in a cookbook or on the Internet for the answer to the question: what to cook?

Minimum losses for the budget

Planning a menu will help minimize the loss on your pocket. After all, you buy only those products that you will need to prepare dishes. This means there will be fewer spoiled ingredients that never got their time.

A thoughtful diet eliminates thoughtless purchases that are made on the principle of “maybe it will come in handy.” But they often sit on the refrigerator shelves until they go bad. And when recipes using them are found, it turns out that there are not enough additional ingredients, which are often not cheap.

This is why you need an economical menu, so that you can spend money on something other than food.

Leftovers are sweet

Try not to throw away what is left from the cooked dish. In this case, you can make appropriate adjustments in the menu.

For example, if you haven’t finished your mashed potatoes, make zrazy from it the next day or use it as a filling for pies. You can bake pancakes, pancakes or other pastries from sour milk and curdled milk.

Planning rules

The first thing you need to learn is the art of menu planning. Then, with this list, you can go grocery shopping a couple of times a week and start working on dishes that take a long time to prepare.

What should you know when creating a menu? Consider not only the family’s taste preferences, but also the overall budget.

Check out your kitchen cabinets. There you can easily find products on the basis of which you can create a diet.

Try not to offend any of your household members. If your husband can't imagine life without meat, then make chops on Monday. And if your son is a fan of fish, then please him with his favorite dish on Tuesday.

If you have guests over, add additional dishes to the menu. There must be a backup plan for unexpected guests.

Many supermarkets and chain stores constantly hold promotions. This will help save money on purchasing necessary goods.

Making a list

As already mentioned, when creating a menu, you need to take into account the tastes of absolutely everyone in the family, the budget and the seasonality of the products.

Taking into account the principles of proper nutrition, your list should include:

• meat. Choose lean meat, such as beef, rabbit, veal or pork;
• eggs;
• bird;
• Fish and seafood;
• berries and fruits;
• dairy and fermented milk products;
• vegetables and herbs;
• proteins. There are a lot of them in legumes;
• cereals Choose the ones you love;
• vegetable and butter;
• bread (preferably whole grain or yeast-free rye);
• spices;
• For dessert, dried fruits, not too sweet marshmallows or natural apple marmalade.

Menu form

Choose a menu form that will be practical for you. It can be in electronic form, printed on a printer, or even written by hand.

Over time, you will understand in what form the list will suit you in all respects. There are special programs designed to save effort and time.

You can simply create a template and supplement it with the necessary products.

For convenience, next to each dish, write the recipe and ingredients that will be needed to prepare it.

The menu allows you to make your diet varied. Nutrition becomes consistent and there is no need to chaotically come up with something to fill your stomach with. Say no to monotonous eating.

Sample menu

We will give you a sample weekly menu. Of course, it may not take into account all your taste preferences. But, having this template in front of you, you can make changes to it at your discretion.

Monday

1. For breakfast you can serve buckwheat porridge.
2. For lunch, cook soup with chicken and noodles or rice. It is very simple to prepare, but at the same time it is nutritious and tasty. For complete happiness, you can bake potatoes.
3. An afternoon snack can consist of a salad of dried apricots and carrots, seasoned with honey.
4. For dinner, stew the liver in sour cream and serve noodles as a side dish. The addition will be a vegetable salad or a salad left over from the afternoon snack.

Tuesday

1. Start your morning with scrambled eggs and sausages. Or make pancakes from yogurt or sour milk.
2. In the afternoon, serve the noodle soup and beet salad prepared the day before.
3. In the afternoon you can have a fruit salad or just fruit. You can bake a lemon roll.
4. Dinner can consist of pilaf and vegetable salad (vinaigrette, vitamin mix or classic with tomatoes and cucumbers).

Wednesday

1. For breakfast, serve semolina with raisins. Oatmeal will also be just right. It has a positive effect on digestion and gives you energy for the whole day.
2. A hearty lunch can consist of goulash.
3. Afternoon snack – ratatouille with rice.
4. Dinner may include potato zrazy with meat or mushroom filling and a salad, such as radishes and herbs.

Thursday

1. Remember breakfast in kindergarten and prepare a cottage cheese casserole.
2. For lunch, you can please your household with pea soup. Serve it with garlic croutons made from black bread.
3. Vary your afternoon snack with potato cakes.
4. Paying tribute to the Soviet past, on Thursday, stew fish and vegetables in sour cream or make meatballs.

Friday

1. Cheer up your whole day by making berry dumplings topped with sour cream for breakfast.
2. Serve mashed potatoes and chicken and mushroom salad for lunch.
3. An afternoon snack should not be hard on the stomach. Yogurt will handle this task. Or you can make a banana smoothie with ginger and cinnamon. It is not only tasty, but also good for the immune system.
4. In the evening, treat yourself to shrimp with a side dish of rice and green salad.

Saturday

1. The diet must include eggs. Therefore, serve an omelette for breakfast.
2. Fish solyanka is a dish for lunch.
3. Serve apple pancakes or cheesecakes for an afternoon snack.
4. For dinner, stew cabbage with rice and minced meat. The salad can be made from carrots and garlic.

As we know, you can’t catch a fish from a pond without difficulty. The same rule applies when creating a menu. You'll have to pore over this simple task for an hour.

There is some good news:

• The time spent on creating a menu will be returned to you with interest within a week.
• This will save you a lot of nerves. After all, you won’t have to rush to the store on the way home, you won’t have to strain your already tired brain with the question “What should I cook today?”
• At the end of the month, you'll probably be surprised to find that you've spent less money on food.
• Your homemade food will become more varied and, most likely, tastier.
• It will be easier to eat a truly balanced diet, rather than torturing your body with endless food from cans or eating borscht cooked on Monday all week.

I admit that there will be even more advantages. It all depends on the current state of things.

I’ll make a reservation right away: This article will talk about creating a dinner menu when (I hope) your whole family gathers around the table. , as a rule, everyone is different. Some people don’t even have time to have breakfast at home, and the vast majority have lunch outside.

To create a complete menu for the week, choose 1 hour of free time. For example, on Sunday, or even better on Saturday (to have time to buy all the groceries on Sunday). In the future, you will spend much less time on this activity.

Do not throw away the menus you have compiled, but carefully put them in a folder. Then they can be alternated again.

After a couple of months, you can safely return to the previous menu options.

To create a menu you will need:

• A4 sheet of paper.
• A pen or, better yet, a pencil.
• Your favorite cookbooks (I, for example, love) or culinary magazines, a selection of clippings with recipes and the like.
• Your family's plan for the coming week (if you don't remember it).

Use a tablet or computer to search for recipes. You'll only waste time.

Firstly, even very interesting articles are difficult to read online without being distracted by reminders, pop-ups, etc. And I’m generally silent about searching for recipes...

Secondly, recipes from the Internet are difficult to find later in your already impressive list of bookmarks.

Thirdly, you will get confused by the variety of recipes and in the end, as we often do, when the choice is too large, you will not choose anything at all.

If you have a favorite blogger whose recipes you like, and you have long wanted to try them, then I advise you to save them the old-fashioned way - print them on paper. You will not be distracted by the Internet once again, and also, if the recipes turned out to be successful, you will be able to put them in the folder of your favorite dishes. For example, I also have one. There I collect copies of recipes that I tried at a party, and there, on the spot, I received a photocopy.

If you liked a recipe from a culinary magazine, carefully cut it out and file it in a folder, and throw away the magazine or give it away. This way you will avoid piles of unnecessary paper around the house and will be able to easily find the recipe when you need it.

How to take into account the circumstances of your life in your menu

I recommend doing at least one day a week, two chicken, two fish, one meat and leaving one day free (more on that below for why free). It’s even better to increase the number of vegetarian and fish days by reducing chicken and meat days.

If you know in advance that you have a restaurant on Fridays, then remember this and create a menu for only six days.

If your children go to clubs on Tuesdays and Thursdays, then I recommend taking this into account. On such days, it is better to leave time for the children, saving it on cooking. So feel free to plan your Monday and Wednesday meals in large portions that will last you two days.

On days when you arrive late (for example, you have courses or training), plan the lightest meals: salads, vegetarian hot dishes, fish.

One of the important conditions for success: do not choose complex dishes for weekdays and Sundays that take a lot of time and effort. If you wish, include something more complex on the menu for Friday or Saturday (or when you have free days on your schedule).

Even if you love to cook, like me, you will still get tired of hanging around in the kitchen endlessly, especially after a long day at work. And why? There are a huge number of very tasty and healthy recipes in the world that are easy to follow.

Personally, I have a rule: a maximum of 30-45 minutes to prepare a full dinner. Exceptions are dishes that are cooked in the oven. There you cleaned everything, cut it, put it in the oven and went about your business. I select recipes (if they are not my invention) precisely according to these criteria - tasty, simple and fast. That is why give preference to dishes that are cooked in the oven.

Leave one day a week... empty. Even if you don’t have to go to a restaurant or visit, you will definitely be at home. My experience confirms: no matter how you plan, there will always be food left over. Therefore, in my family we have introduced a “leftovers day”, which we spend on Sunday (or the last day before the next purchase of products for the new menu). On such a day, I use my imagination or look through cookbooks, replacing missing ingredients with similar ones. Sometimes the results are simply masterpieces, the recipes of which I post on my blog along with the weekly menu for the whole family.

Before you sit down at the table and start making a list, I advise you to look in the refrigerator. What do you have lying around that needs urgent consumption? These products should form the basis of your menu.

For example, if you have a head of cabbage lying there, then include Cole Slaw salad or cabbage soup in the menu (or both, if there is a lot of cabbage). If there is chicken there, then come up with dishes with it.

If a mouse hangs itself in the refrigerator, then congratulations! It will be much easier for you to create a menu, and you will be able to fit whatever your heart desires (from food) into it.

Let's go to the menu itself

Write a plan on a piece of paper. For example:

• Monday: .
• Tuesday: vegetarian (for two days).
• Wednesday: leftovers.
• Thursday: cabbage soup with meat.
• Friday: restaurant.
• Saturday: chicken.
• Sunday: “fantasy from leftovers.”

Browse through your selection of recipes. If you are looking for chicken dishes, use the index at the back of the cookbook. Very often you come across excellent options when you realize that in 1-2 recipes you can use all the products left over from this week, simply by buying, for example, rice and parsley with garlic. Such recipes are ideal for thrifty housewives and owners.

Immediately start writing down the dishes you like next to the days of the week on your sheet. Indicate the name of the dish, the title of the book and the page number with the recipe. If in the process you come across a better option, then correct what you wrote. I advise you not to get carried away here. Once you have a plan for all the days on a piece of paper, call it a day. Bookmark your favorite recipes and use them for next week when the time comes.

Usually you just have to start. Over time, you will get everything done much faster.

Dishes from the weekly menu can be varied at your discretion and adjusted to suit your changing plans. So, if you don’t want fish on Monday, freeze it and cook chicken. And on Saturday then eat fish.

It is better to remove the food from the freezer the evening of the previous day and put it in the refrigerator, well packed. This way they can not lose their beneficial properties. Please note that they defrost much faster than meat and chicken. You can get them in the morning before going to work.

And one more thing: it is not at all necessary to make a list on a weekend and start planning on Monday.

For example, I shop on Tuesday, when there are not so many people in the stores. That's why my planning also starts on Tuesday - with fresh food.

As you can see, there are many options for creating a menu for the week. This activity gives you freedom of action, and the menu can and should be adjusted to suit your needs and the needs of your family.

Good health to you!

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How to create a menu for the week yourself

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From personal experience in creating menus:

One of the most important and necessary habits that has greatly simplified and made my life easier is creating a menu for the week. I wrote more about why you need to create a menu and what it gives. And today I want to tell and show exactly how I do it.

I’ll immediately show you a few examples of what my weekly menu looks like (the cards are on the refrigerator door):

Example No. 1

Example No. 2

I didn’t make it in this form right away. Developing a menu plan that was convenient for me took almost a year. But now the process has been brought to almost automaticity and does not cause any difficulties.

Stage one, preparatory.

To begin with, I took a piece of paper and a pen and wrote down all the dishes that I can cook in categories: soups, main dishes, salads and desserts. To my surprise, in reality this list turned out to be much shorter than I had imagined (which later became a great incentive for learning new recipes).

Stage two - the scheme of the week. Using a simple table of seven columns corresponding to the days of the week, I began to compile a menu for the week in paper and then electronic versions. Without fail, I prepare breakfast every day, and on the other days I alternate: on even days I prepare soup and dessert for two days, and on odd days I prepare a second course (also for two days) and a salad. This simple alternation saves a lot of time and effort. And in the refrigerator there is always (!) ready-made food, which is very helpful in situations when “guests are on the doorstep” or “I’m too lazy to cook something today.”

Roughly my menu for the week looked like this:

Note: “New” is what is being prepared on this particular day. “In the refrigerator” are ready-made dishes that were prepared in advance for several servings.

Monday

Breakfast – Scrambled eggs with tomatoes (new)

Lunch – Burrito (in the refrigerator)

Afternoon snack – Grapes

Dinner – Gazpacho (new) + Blueberry pie (new)

Tuesday

Breakfast – Rice porridge (new)

Lunch – Gazpacho (in the refrigerator)

Afternoon snack – Berry pie with blueberries (in the refrigerator)

Dinner – Zucchini and potato pancakes (new) + Fresh cabbage salad with garlic dressing (new)

Wednesday

Breakfast – Semolina porridge (new)

Lunch – Zucchini and potato pancakes (in the refrigerator)

Afternoon snack – Jam pie (new)

Dinner – Eggplant cream soup with baked tomatoes (new)

Thursday

Breakfast – Oatmeal (new)

Lunch – Eggplant cream soup with baked tomatoes (in the refrigerator)

Afternoon snack – Jam pie (in the refrigerator)

Dinner – Crab sticks (new) + Pepper rings stuffed with cottage cheese and herbs (new)

Friday

Breakfast – Corn porridge with water (new)

Lunch – Crab sticks (in the refrigerator) + Pepper rings stuffed with cottage cheese and herbs (in the refrigerator)

Afternoon snack – Apple strudel (new)

Dinner – Cauliflower soup (new)

Saturday

Breakfast – Buckwheat porridge (new)

Lunch – Cauliflower soup (in the refrigerator)

Afternoon snack – Apple strudel (in the refrigerator)

Dinner – Pork with orange glaze (new) + Chinese salad with Chinese cabbage and chicken (new)

Preparing for future use – Frozen eggplants

Sunday

Breakfast – Egg in bread (new)

Lunch – Champignon puree soup (new)

Afternoon snack – Lemon cake (new)

Dinner – Pork with orange glaze (in the refrigerator) + Chinese salad with Chinese cabbage and chicken (in the refrigerator)

However, there were several disadvantages to this scheme. For example, separately from the menu, it was necessary to make a list of products for the week - look for each recipe from those that were planned for the week, and write down the necessary ingredients. In addition, I am a visual person, so for me remembering dishes only by their names is not very easy. So after a few months I moved on to the next stage:

I wrote down all the recipes that I know how to cook in electronic form and provided them with a photograph (in finished form). Then, in the Word program, I drew the A4 sheet into 5x9 rectangles (corresponding to the size of a regular business card). In each rectangle I wrote the name of the dish, the ingredients it consists of, and added a photo. In total, I got 12 cards on one sheet. Separately, I made small rectangles with the names of the days of the week.

A4 sheet with cards

Next, I checked the telephone directory and found out where in our city there is a service for printing on magnetic sheets. It turned out that in the nearest computer center. There they printed all these cards for me on an inkjet printer. For each sheet I paid an amount equal to approximately $2. I cut the sheet into cards with regular scissors.

Since the cards correspond to the size of a business card, I store them in a regular business card holder, sorted into categories: soups, main courses, salads and desserts.

Example No. 3

Example No. 4

The advantages of such a system:

Firstly, compiling a menu for a week takes minimal time; you don’t need to write or draw anything.

Secondly, each card has a list of ingredients. Therefore, I don’t make a separate grocery list for the week. When going to the store, I simply take the cards with me, put them in my wallet and, checking them, buy everything I need.

Thirdly, the cards hang on the refrigerator while cooking. I can see at any time exactly what ingredients and in what quantities I need.

And finally, it's fast and convenient. I'm very pleased.

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