What’s for tea?
July 11th, 2009 | 
Author: Do you dread that question? I do. The answer is often “I have no idea, what do you want?” The problem with this is that often what they want involves a trip to the supermarket. No longer. I have decided to revolutionise mealtimes. (Slight exaggeration but it makes me feel good!) I have worked out a 3 step strategy.
Step 1 – Plan a menu in advance. This advice has been thrown at me over the years and I have chosen to ignore it but now I’ve tried it and, guess what? It works! I tried planning for a month at a time but this was too much. A week is ideal but even a few days ahead makes life simpler.
Step 2 – Write a shopping list. I have returned to online grocery shopping after a long break and it really does save time. It saves arguments too. ”Sorry we can’t have that, I’ll order the ingredients for next week” puts paid to long discussions and extra shopping trips. This strategy saves money too as you can’t pick up extras as you walk around the supermarket.
Step 3 – Be flexible. Sometimes I don’t have time to make what was planned or I put the shopping order off for a couple of days and improvise from the cupboard, sometimes the family bring extras for feeding and you use up ingredients planned for another day. I have discovered that this doesn’t matter. So long as everyone is fed and happy it is easy to get back on track.
Ok. Lasagne and dough balls on the menu for tonight so I’d better get to work.
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It’s the same here. I swear they’ll ask me what’s for dinner while they are eating their breakfast. It wouls be easier to ask them what they want, but they’ll all ask for something different and like you said, it usually involves going to the supermarket. We’re having shepherd’s pie tonight.
Youngest wants to make tea but he can only do scrambled egg on toast, still at least it won’t endanger the whole kitchen!
Have you got some well tried, simple, quick, but healthy meal ideas – now I have ‘retired’ I am doing a lot more cooking and my meals are becoming monotonous, but I don’t wont to spend all day in the kitchen!
I will have a think and post some recipes soon. I am currently cooking for seven, to become nine tomorrow so variety is less important than economy.
We’ve been meal planning for a few months now, it really takes the pressure off, and makes shopping much easier & cheaper as you only buy what you need for the planned meals.
How is the menu planning going now Catherine? Have you managed to stick with it? I plan a week’s menu on a Sunday eve, which produces my shopping list for Monday morning. That way we get a good mix of white meat, fish, red meat and veggie meals over the week, plus I can just get on with dinner when it’s time rather than having to waste time and energy working out what to have! It can be really enjoyable sitting down with some of my lovely cookbooks on a Sun eve (I favour the quick and easy ones!), although I can find myself spending too long drooling over the photos
I am still planning and find it saves money. Only five to cook for now which makes it easier.
What are dough balls…they sound interesting?
Dough balls are simply balls of bread dough baked and then drenched in garlic butter. Delicious!