Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Good Housekeeping: Write a Menu


What Shall We Eat? Write a Menu!

My mother never made a menu but I learned this from my younger sister, Marylene, who managed our house after my mother passed away when I was away on flights as a stewardess in my younger days. She budgeted our food money and, as organized as she's been, made weekly menus to guide our helpers in their marketing and cooking.

Today, menus help me a lot especially with a husband who loves to eat, is adventurous with food, and who doesn't like to eat the same food all the time. And so, I constantly research the internet and magazines for new recipes and note them in a recipe notebook. Since I do my groceries every Friday and I go to the wet market Saturday mornings, I write a weekly menu that starts on a Saturday (see picture above).

I list below the benefits I get from writing a weekly menu:

1) It's a stress-buster. Aren't you tired of hearing or asking during the week, "What shall we eat?" Especially for working women, you don't have to stop and think of a meal for dinner, then go and buy ingredients to cook when you get home. It also helps our helpers with their workload as they know what to get from the freezer to thaw and then to cook.

2) It saves money and keeps you from throwing away food. Sometimes, we buy different meat and fish and put them in the freezer, then forget about them that we tend to throw away most of them. I buy only the ingredients of the meals I've written for the week and just enough ingredients proportionate to the size of my family.

3) It helps us avoid eating the same food all the time. I can schedule meals 3 or 4 weeks apart especially if the new recipe becomes a 'hit' to the family. If my husband has to eat lunch out on business, he calls and asks what's for dinner so he won't have to eat the same meal.

4) It saves a lot of time. Believe me, the time you spend writing the menu is nothing compared to the ease and the time you save having one during the week or two weeks.

Hmmm...maybe you can make a monthly menu!


0 comments:

Post a Comment

send load to philippines
 
The Living Grace. Design by Wpthemedesigner. Converted To Blogger Template By Anshul Tested by Blogger Templates.