Читать книгу The Batch Lady - Suzanne Mulholland - Страница 22
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Planning what you are going to eat during the week ahead may seem laborious, but it saves time, money and waste, and often means that you eat a greater variety of food and that that food is more healthy. In fact, planning and writing down the meals that you want to make means you are much more likely to actually make those meals. Writing a meal plan can be daunting and many people struggle for inspiration the first few times, so below are some tips to help you get started.
HOW TO MEAL PLAN
There are many different ways to write your meal plan, from physical boards that hang in your kitchen to apps that you can carry with you on your phone. I like to use an old-fashioned board, however, as it helps me to have my list of meals for the week ahead hanging in my kitchen. This also means that the family knows what they will be eating ahead of time, which helps avoid mutterings of dissent if they’re surprised with a meal that’s not their favourite!
When starting to write my meal plan, I look at my diary for the week and work the plan around that. If I know that I’ll be ferrying the kids around to various afterschool activities on Tuesday, then I’ll make sure to plan something quick and easy for then. If I’m in the house all day on Thursday, but tied up with work, I’ll plan something that I can pop in the oven and forget about for a few hours. I like to start by thinking about which proteins we will be eating throughout the week to ensure they are varied. An example week might look like this:
Monday: Meat-free
Tuesday: Beef
Wednesday: Fish
Thursday: Chicken
Friday: Fakeaway
Once I know my schedule and have the basic outline of which proteins we will be eating on each day, I start to think about the specific meals that I will cook. So, following the breakdown that I have outlined above, the weekly menu might look like:
Monday: Spanish Omelette
Tuesday: Shepherd’s Pie
Wednesday: Thai Sweet Potato Fishcakes
Thursday: Spinach & Ricotta Stuffed Chicken
Friday: Calzone
If you are vegetarian, I would suggest taking a similar approach to ensure that you are eating a variety of foods throughout the week. Plan your menu so that you are focusing on one main ingredient, such as potatoes, beans or pulses, on each night, then add in the usual Friday-night curry or fakeaway. A well-balanced weekly vegetarian meal plan might look like this:
Monday: Baked Spinach Ziti
Tuesday: Chilli Bean Burgers
Wednesday: Spanish Omelette
Thursday: Oven-baked Mushroom Risotto
Friday: Thai Red Sweet Potato Curry
PLANNING FIVE DAYS OUT OF SEVEN
You will notice that I only ever plan my meals Monday-Friday. This is because, no matter how well you plan, there are always hiccups along the way and plans inevitably change throughout the week, meaning that food could potentially be wasted. By building in a two-day buffer, you can swap one or two of the meals to the weekend without wasting any food. If everything goes to plan, then then weekends are generally the time when you have a bit more time in the kitchen to cook something from scratch, or might eat out, so this gives you the freedom to still do that.
