Current Thought


"The great thing in this world is not where we stand, it is in what direction we are moving."
Oliver Wendell Holmes


Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Lifestyle - Menus


Cooking is one of my favorite activities, and I will spend hours in the kitchen putting dishes and meal together.  Some of the more mundane tasks that lead up to cooking, however, simply beg to be simplified and streamlined.  Here is how I tackle one of them:

The Menu

I start with a menu.  Not just for a meal, but for the week.  I focus on the main meal for each day, as the others are fairly routine at our house.  Creating a menu offers several advantages:

1)      I don’t have to spend time every day pondering what I am going to make.
 
2)      Since I shop weekly, I can make sure I have everything I need for the dishes I am going to prepare, which virtually eliminates extra trips to the market.

3)      I can prepare meals – or parts of meals – ahead, which saves time on the day they’re being served.

4)      I can ensure that our menu is fairly balanced and that we are eating a good variety of foods throughout the week.

Some people may feel this would thwart their creative instincts.  I have found this not to be the case.  It simply means the creative part is taking place at a different time than the cooking part.  When I am making up the menu, I have my recipe binder, cookbooks, and file of un-tried recipes at my fingertips.

This month I am testing the idea of creating a menu for the whole month.  I got the idea from one of the women’s magazines you see at the supermarket checkout.  Stay tuned for an evaluation of how it worked out!

 

 

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