The best resources for planning menus for the week. Menu planning for the week Create a menu for the week online for the family

And today I want to talk about menu planning software.

Needless to say, the choice is limited. If only a kind person could be found and write an ideal program - so that she would keep recipes, count the cost of dinner and warn about calories. And by itself, it gave out a list of dishes for the whole week, and at the same time printed out a list of products. Cooking, okay, I agree myself.

But until a good person is found, we will choose from what we have. So here are the results of my searches.

Programs for compiling menus.

Cooking recipes - well, a very serious program. It contains 12,000 ready-made recipes, can calculate the cost of dishes and take into account the products in your refrigerator. Sorts by different criteria, produces fields calculated by formulas (just like Excel) And all this can be automated. Unless she cooks herself. Well, I don’t know… To be honest, I opened it, got scared and closed it. I don’t need so many functions, I would cook a family dinner. However, if you dig, you can customize only the most necessary, probably.
Cooking notepad - this program is not so much for compiling menus as for recording and storing recipes. With this simple function copes with five. Everything is convenient and clear - sections, subsections, composition, preparation, notes. There is a database search. You can insert pictures.
Menu planning is a fun program for weight watchers. It contains three windows - products, dish editor and menu. The first one already has a ready-made food base with an indication of the energy value (you can also add your own), from which it is supposed to make a menu. In the second, dishes are made from these products. In the third - the menu is assembled. A little manipulation - and you have not just a menu, but with an indication of the number of calories! The only pity is that the program is paid (3500 rubles). Although, there is a free version, a little limited in functionality.
Simple Cookbook is the simplest program for storing recipes, literally for writing on the run. You can only create categories, scatter recipes on them, edit and print. And no troubles for you.
Culinary Notes is a cute program with a cozy blue interface. There is a database of recipes, you can add / change / delete. Good search. Dishes can be rated or marked as favorites. You can decorate the recipe with a picture and provide a link.
Manager recipes— cataloging recipes, searching and selecting recipes by ingredients, cooking time, complexity, etc. Paid program costs 300 rubles.

In addition to all of the above, you can use the Evernote service to store culinary recipes - all you need to do is re-photograph all your magazine clippings and note sheets. I wrote more about this unique service in the article.

In general, this is all that I could find. If you can add to this list, write in the comments. I will talk about how to organize paper next time.

P.S. You won’t believe it, but a kind person was found 🙂 Our reader Anastasia (she is a programmer) herself wrote a program that solves almost all the tasks listed at the beginning of the post - Menu planning. I have already tested her service a bit - and I really liked it! Pleasant design and convenient management, everything is able, but nothing more. Free. Of the possibilities:

collection and storage of own recipes
collection of recipes collected by other users
convenient search by ingredients, types of dishes, cooking time
menu planning - and in the next column a list of products is immediately displayed. You can even choose how many servings you need to cook, and based on this, the amount of products will be indicated. And under the list of products, the “Print” button is very prudently made.

There is absolutely nothing to complain about 🙂 True, he doesn’t count calories and cost yet, but the author continues to work on it, and it is quite possible that such a function will appear. I have only one wish - oh, but if the menu block consisted of 7 days, in order to plan for the week at once, and see before our eyes that on Monday we have this and that, but on Tuesday this and that is impossible to build something similar?

Are you planning a menu?

This is my dream: to make a list of recipes and shopping twice a week, buy exactly what you need, do not throw anything away, and cook in such a way that one goes after another - while I make breakfast, broth is simmering on the stove for lunch soup, and in the refrigerator marinated meat for dinner.

It doesn’t work for me, but, while studying the issue, I found a lot of tools and services that can be useful one way or another for you - others do it! And the rules, as without rules.

Set an interesting goal. For example, Natasha Rostovtseva, formerly the head of the TakZdorovo.ru editorial board, is conducting the Search and Destroy campaign on her blog. Coming up with recipes and menus with the available twelve ingredients is quite fun - you will definitely have enough for a couple of weeks.

Create your first menu from the recipes already mastered. In the weekly training community 1day1step, it was with this advice that the week of menu planning began - I give a link to the first post, there were five in total, judging by the comments, many succeeded. When you cook a recipe for the first time, add 5-10 minutes to the minimum cooking time.

Try to find inspiration. For everyone who cooks at home, it turns on in their own way. For example, there are a million very, very high quality recipe sites on the Internet; I cook one to three times a day - and at the same time, I take a recipe from the network a maximum of once every couple of weeks in order to “point-finish” one of the products remaining in the refrigerator. Cookbooks are the only paper books left in my house; only flipping through one of them at breakfast gives me new energy to cook something. If you are not one of those, then you are in luck - there are cool sites for you (I will list those that I liked recently):

One of the most popular iPhone apps in this category is Menu Planner for $1.99; The free Belonika Recipes, a constantly updated food blogger's app from Provence, also has a shopping list feature.

In general, the main problem in planning a menu from Russian Internet recipes is the difference in formats. The largest recipe sites in the US store and distribute recipes in a single format, and once you find an app, program or service you like, you can easily save recipes from multiple sources to your e-cookbook. In each of them, the quantity, the name of the ingredient will be clearly stated, a picture of a certain format will be attached, and the program will receive the recipe in at its best, will be able to index it, sort it by tags, categories, cooking time... So far there is no single format in Runet: the only way to store all recipes from different sites in one place is a program Evernote(my reviews and), but she will itself no shopping list . I run it on the Kupibaton website, there is an application for it, but they are fundamentally no different from other programs and list services - take any.

Don't try to optimize and make everything perfect. The "life hackers" themselves often joke that during the time we spend searching for better way to do a deed, it can be done dozens of times. Even if you simply plan breakfasts on a piece of paper for five working days, this will already make life much easier for you and for the one whose milk for coffee you take without asking when preparing porridge.

Use ready-made templates. If you're used to paperwork, don't waste your time drawing new ones: here's a nice PDF with colored graphs, a plan for the whole month, and a ready-made leaflet from the FlyLady community. If you've never heard of this community, you're in for an amazing day :) Start with the " " tag, but keep in mind that not every (or even every third) member of the community knows what a "healthy menu" means. It is better not to plan anything and snack on fruits and fermented baked milk than methodically and on time bake fatty cheap meat under mayonnaise. If anything, the only authorized proper flylady the service is still this one.

Why plan a menu at all? A fairly detailed answer to this question is given in this short article, I will translate it here:

you buy only what you need - and throw away less food;
you spend your day more calmly and plan your personal time better, not jumping up from your computer in horror an hour before the arrival of your husband and children;
you like to cook more - and you have more time to experiment;
you have more freedom: if the products have already been purchased, the dishes on the menu can be safely swapped according to your mood;
you eat better by not buying last-minute “what’s left,” cooking in haste, and snacking at fast food;
you save on restaurants and spend less by introducing dishes from seasonal and cheap products to the menu.

Do you want to receive menu options for every day, learn how to make a menu yourself? By subscribing to the newsletter, you will not only receive ready-made menus and recipes, but you will be able to cook faster, easier and more economically! Gifts, recipes, electronic magazines - in the very first letters! Subscribe:

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How to make your own weekly menu

To obtain is free a training book on menu preparation, an electronic magazine "Menu of the Week", forms for compiling menus, templates for magnetic cards, a table for freezing ready meals, as well as recipes, tips for rational organization of home nutrition, menu options, etc. just subscribe to our newsletter.

From personal experience with the menu:

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

I’ll immediately show a few examples of how my menu for the week looks like (the cards are on the refrigerator door):

Example #2

I did not make it in this form right away. It took almost a year to develop a menu scheme that was convenient for me. But now the process has been brought almost to automatism 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 know how to cook in categories: soups, main dishes, salads and desserts. To my surprise, the list actually turned out to be much shorter than I imagined (which was a big incentive to learn new recipes later on).

Stage two - the scheme of the week. With the help of a simple table of seven columns corresponding to the days of the week, I began to draw up a menu for the week in paper and then electronic versions. Without fail, I cook breakfast every day, and on the other days I alternate: on even days I cook soup and dessert for two days, and on odd days - the second (also for two days) and salad. Such a simple alternation saves a lot of time and effort. And in the refrigerator there is always (!) Ready-made food, which helps a lot in situations where "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 that particular day. "In the refrigerator" - these are ready-made dishes that were prepared in advance for several servings.

Monday

Breakfast - Scrambled eggs with tomatoes (new)

Lunch - Burrito (in the fridge)

Snack - Grapes

Dinner - Gazpacho (new) + Blueberry Berry Pie (new)

Tuesday

Breakfast - Rice porridge (new)

Lunch - Gazpacho (in the fridge)

Afternoon – Blueberry Berry Pie (Refrigerated)

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

Wednesday

Breakfast - Semolina(new)

Lunch - Zucchini and Potato Fritters (Refrigerated)

Snack - Jam Pie (new)

Dinner - Eggplant Creamy Soup with Roasted Tomatoes (new)

Thursday

Breakfast - Oatmeal (new)

Lunch - Eggplant Soup with Roasted Tomatoes (Refrigerated)

Snack - Jam Pie (in the refrigerator)

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

Friday

Breakfast - Corn porridge on the 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 (Refrigerated)

Afternoon snack - Apple strudel (in the refrigerator)

Dinner - Orange Glazed Pork (new) + Chinese Salad with Chinese Cabbage and Chicken (new)

Harvesting for the future - Frozen eggplants

Sunday

Breakfast - Egg in bread (new)

Lunch - Mushroom soup (new)

Afternoon snack - Lemon cake (new)

Dinner – Orange Glazed Pork (Refrigerated) + Chinese Salad with Chinese Cabbage and Chicken (Refrigerated)

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

All the recipes that I know how to cook, I wrote down in electronic form and provided them with a photograph (in finished form). Then, in the Word program, I drew an A4 sheet into 5x9 rectangles (corresponding to the size of a regular business card). In each rectangle, I entered the name of the dish, the ingredients of which it consists, 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

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

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

Example #4

The advantages of such a system:

Firstly, it takes a minimum of time to draw up a menu for a week, you don’t need to write or draw anything.

Secondly, each card has a list of ingredients. Therefore, I do not make a separate list of products for the week. When I go to the store, I just take the cards with me, put them in my wallet and, checking them, I buy everything I need.

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

And finally, it's fast and convenient. Very satisfied.

To get free templates for magnetic cards, a training book on menu preparation, an electronic magazine "Menu of the Week", forms for compiling menus, a table for freezing ready meals, as well as recipes, tips for rational organization of home nutrition, menu options, etc. just subscribe to our newsletter.

How relevant is modern world economy question? How much does a typical family spend on daily food? The question of an economical menu for a week in many families is becoming a global issue, which not everyone can solve. After all, it's not just about buying inexpensive products.

It is important at the same time to provide the family with all the necessary nutrients. We must not forget about the variety of food, because if you eat the same thing for many days in a row, then sooner or later the savings will become unbearable. That is why it is quite difficult to make an economical menu for a week.

But it is important to tune in correctly and understand that an economical menu is not a rejection of all goodies, but an opportunity to save money for other family goals. Just think: a trip to the store can often be the equivalent of a trip!

An abundance of food, a large number of catering places are a big threat to the family budget. But this can be dealt with if you make an economical menu for every day.

Saving Rules

It is relevant to talk about what an economical menu for a week can be for a family of 3 people. The average family spends a lot on food, often it becomes a large part of the family budget. At the same time, you need to plan the menu, while it is important to take into account all the taste preferences of each family member. If the hostess does not know how to make a menu, while saving money, then you should follow some rules:

Take enough time to draw up the menu, this will allow you to clearly balance the diet, determine the dishes, and make a list of necessary products.
Going shopping in the store, you need to buy only those products that are written on the list. In addition, there is a little advice for those who do not want to succumb to temptation in the store: go shopping full. In this case, the temptation to buy something extra and past the list will disappear by itself, and you will buy only the goods you need.
You need to shop for the entire week. In this way, the subconscious will say that the refrigerator has all the necessary products for the family, and there will be no temptation to run into the store for something else.
When compiling a menu, you need to take into account the fact that it should not contain harmful products or semi-finished products. But if you decide to create a menu for a month, then be sure to freeze the products, you can’t do without it.
The menu can be made in any form. It can be printed, written by hand. It is important to do this in such a way that you can swap dishes if necessary.
The menu should be with recipes in order to correctly determine the list of products that need to be purchased at the store. If there is no prescription, then you can forget to buy something.
When compiling the menu, remember that hot dishes are prepared for several days. Soup or borsch can stand in the refrigerator for two or three days. The same applies to fish and meat dishes, they can also be consumed for two or three days, while they will not change their taste.
The same cannot be said about salads and side dishes. They need to be cooked just before serving. It doesn't take much time.
You can't completely give up baking. Once a week, pampering your loved ones with delicious pastries is a sacred thing. It is much tastier than store-bought confectionery.
Remember not only taste preferences, you need to take into account the age of all family members, chronic diseases(if any), physical activity.
The children's menu may differ significantly from the adult.

In a word, in each family the economical menu is individual, it takes into account the tastes of family members and other factors.

Features of the menu

Of course, when compiling the menu by day, you need to remember about savings, but nevertheless, you should not forget about high-quality, varied and tasty food. You need to eat only high-quality products, with a normal shelf life, they must be non-GMO and all kinds of additives. This should not even be discussed, because health cannot be bought.

Particular attention should be paid to the temperature outside the window. For example, few people want to eat cold salads in winter, it is better to give preference to cereals, mashed potatoes and hot soups in winter. But still, the deficiency of vitamins, even in winter, cannot be replenished. Therefore, it is ideal for the whole family to purchase vitamins.

Ask all family members what they would like to eat, because it is unlikely that an economical menu will please someone, being unwanted.

On the Internet you can peep various recipes. And they are, in fact, a large number. The Internet, magazines are great helpers in this matter.

Products must be used wisely. After all, it is about saving. For example, when buying meat, think not only about preparing a meat dish, but also about how you can cook a delicious soup from the bones.

Given all these nuances, it is possible to rationally and correctly compose a menu for three, four family members and more.

Shopping

Particular attention should be paid to going to the grocery store, because it is from here that all the troubles associated with the waste of money come from. To the tips that have already been listed earlier, you can add:

The need for a slow selection of goods, comparing prices and the range presented.
There is no need to "be led" to various promotions and "enticements", in particular, "buy two for the price of three." We strictly follow the list.
Make purchases once a week, this does not apply to bread, bakery products and dairy products.
Buy semi-finished products only in extreme cases.

Prepare in advance, if possible, freeze the blanks yourself and divide them into portions. Thus, the savings process will be easier.

How much to spend on food?

On the Internet, queries are relevant: a menu for 200 rubles, a menu for 150 rubles, etc. Each individual family can accurately determine the amount of money that will be spent on food.

The amount, of course, depends on the number of family members, on the well-being of the family and on how much you need to save.

All this is discussed separately and it is decided how much money a family can afford per week for food so that the food is healthy, rational and varied.

Menu for the week

Drawing up the menu "from and to" falls on the shoulders of the hostess. After all, each family has its own favorite dishes and features of recipes. Therefore, it is impossible to take any menu as a basis. The menu for a week for a family of 4 is prepared in advance and carefully thought out.

But still, there are tips to help you take the right direction. There are dishes, recipes that do not require large financial investments, but nevertheless very nutritious and tasty, and, most importantly, inexpensive.

Breakfast. It is supposed to be the most nutritious meal of the day and should not be skipped. It is optimal and inexpensive to eat porridge cooked in milk or water for breakfast (it depends entirely on the choice of the hostess and the financial capabilities of the family).

Dinner. There are definitely first and second courses. Savings are savings, but liquid dishes normalize the work of the digestive tract, while the latter saturate and provide the body with useful substances.

afternoon tea. Skip it or enter it on the menu - it's everyone's choice. For an afternoon snack, they usually eat fruits or salads. For children and their growing bodies, this meal is undesirable to skip.

Dinner. Here you can treat yourself to meat dishes and salads.

Below is an example of a balanced, but at the same time inexpensive menu for a week.

Monday

Breakfast. Oatmeal with milk or water. You can supplement breakfast with boiled eggs.

Dinner. Chicken soup with vermicelli. Mashed potatoes, baked fish.

afternoon tea. Salad of carrots and dried apricots. You can use vegetable oil as a dressing.

Dinner. Chicken meat stewed in sour cream, garnish, for example, vermicelli and any vegetable salad.

Tuesday

Breakfast. Omelette with salami or sausages.

Dinner. Soup puree made from zucchini. Wheat porridge, vegetable salad.

afternoon tea. Fruit salad dressed with yogurt.

Dinner. Vegetable salad, chicken liver.

Wednesday

Breakfast. Buckwheat porridge with milk or water.

Dinner. Chicken soup, meat and egg roll.

afternoon tea. Rice with vegetables cooked in the oven.

Dinner. Pork cutlets and mashed potatoes or zrazy stuffed with potatoes, for example.

Thursday

Breakfast. A casserole made from cottage cheese. Another delicious and healthy recipe is muffins with a liquid filling.

Dinner. Vegetable soup, cabbage pie with garnish.

afternoon tea. Fruit salad. You can eat the same muffins (they will definitely appeal to all family members).

Dinner. Mackerel baked in the oven. For garnish - potatoes, vegetables will be a great addition to dinner.

Friday

Breakfast. Dumplings, which, of course, need to be prepared in advance and frozen. They can be with different fillings, be it potatoes, cottage cheese or fruits.

Dinner. Borsch with sour cream, porridge and vegetable salad.

afternoon tea. Any salad to choose from depending on the preferences of the family.

Dinner. Pork or beef chops. You can choose a side dish, for example, beans.

Saturday

Breakfast. Fried eggs with boiled sausage.

Dinner. Soup with peas. Caesar salad with chicken and croutons. For taste, you can add tomatoes.

afternoon tea. Pancakes with various fillings. They can also be prepared ahead of time and frozen. If you have time, you can bake fresh pancakes, they are much healthier.

Dinner. Ragout with minced meat and cabbage.

Sunday

Breakfast. Egg croutons, oatmeal.

Dinner. Solyanka, borscht or soup. Porridge and salad of meat and vegetables.

afternoon tea. Pie with any filling, it can be meat, potato, vegetable or fruit.

Dinner. Potato casserole with minced meat.

Of course, the list of products and dishes may change. At the same time, it is convenient to make a menu for a week in order to better navigate prices and save money.

There are many benefits to this menu. First, it is cost savings, which will improve the well-being of the whole family. Secondly, it is an improvement in well-being. What a person stops eating harmful products, a large amount of sweets, as well as eating in public places, has a positive effect on the digestive tract, cleansing it.

The third advantage concerns the figure and changing its proportions. Such nutrition will help to lose a couple of kilograms, if they are superfluous.

In any case, such an economical menu will certainly not cause harm, but on the contrary, it will bring a lot of new and useful things to the family's lifestyle. It is worth forgetting about all the purchased dishes, in particular, pizzas, burgers, etc. This is bad for savings.

Every family should think about saving money and how much money is spent on food. The reason for this is not only high prices, but also the desire to live better. But remember that an economical menu is not for life. Let the goal be a long-desired trip or buying a car or apartment.

Such goals will provide more motivation and allow you to approach the issue of saving more optimistically. Moreover, this is not a monotonous and tasteless diet, but healthy food, rational and diverse.

As we know, you can’t even catch a fish from a pond without difficulty. The same rule applies when compiling the menu. We'll have to work for an hour on this simple, in general, task.

There is also good news:

The time spent on compiling the menu will return to you with interest within a week.
This will save you a lot of nerves. After all, you won’t need to rush to the store on your way home, you won’t have to strain your already tired brain with the question “What would you like to cook today?”.
At the end of the month, you will probably be surprised to find that you have begun to spend less money on food.
Your homemade food will become more varied and, most likely, tastier.
It will be easier to eat really balanced, and not torment the body with endless food from cans or eat borscht cooked on Monday all week.

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

I’ll make a reservation right away: the article will focus on compiling a dinner menu when (I hope) your whole family gathers at the table. are usually different for everyone. Someone does not have time to have breakfast at all at home, and the vast majority dine outside.

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

Do not throw away the compiled menus, 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:

Sheet of A4 paper.
A pen or better yet a pencil.
Your favorite cookbooks (I, for example, love) or cookbooks, a selection of recipe clippings, 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 will only lose time.

Firstly, even very interesting articles are difficult to read online without being distracted by reminders, pop-ups, and so on. And about the search for recipes, I generally keep quiet ...

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

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

If you like a recipe from a cooking magazine, then carefully cut it out and hem it in a folder, and throw the magazine away or give it away. This way you will avoid paper piles around the house and you 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 one free day (why free - more on that below). Even better, increase the number of vegetarian and fish days by reducing chicken and meat.

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

If your children go to clubs on Tuesdays and Thursdays, then I recommend that you consider this as well. On such days, it is better to leave time for 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 the days when you arrive late (for example, you have a course 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 schedule).

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

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 of my invention) according to these criteria - tasty, simple and fast. That is why give preference to dishes that are cooked in the oven.

Leave one day of the week...blank. Even if you do not have to go to a restaurant or visit, and you will definitely be at home. My experience confirms: no matter how you plan, there will always be food. Therefore, in my family, we introduced a “leftover 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 strain my imagination or look through cookbooks, replacing the missing ingredients with similar ones. Sometimes it turns out just masterpieces, the recipes of which I post on my blog along with the menu for the week 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 and needs to be eaten urgently? It is these products that should form the basis of your menu.

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

If the mouse hangs itself in the refrigerator, then congratulations! It will be much easier for you to create a menu, and you can write everything that your heart desires (from food).

Let's go to the menu

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

Monday: .
Tuesday: Vegetarian (for two days).
Wednesday: Leftovers.
Thursday: cabbage soup with meat.
Friday: restaurant.
Saturday: chicken.
Sunday: "fantasy from leftovers."

Scroll through your collection of recipes. If you need chicken dishes, then use the index at the end of the cookbook. Very often, great options come across when you realize that in 1-2 recipes you can use all the products left from this week, just by buying, for example, rice and parsley with garlic. Such recipes are ideal for economical housewives and hosts.

Immediately start writing down your favorite dishes in your list opposite the days of the week. Include the name of the dish, the title of the book, and the page number of the recipe. If in the process a better option comes across, then correct what was written. Here I advise you not to get involved. As soon as you have a plan for all days on a piece of paper, wrap up. Bookmark your favorite recipes and apply them for next week when the time is right.

Usually just getting started. Over time, you will get everything much faster.

Dishes from the menu of the week can be varied at your discretion and adjusted to your changed plans. So, if you don't feel like fish on Monday, then freeze it and cook chicken. And on Saturday then eat fish.

It is better to take the food out of the freezer the evening of the previous day and put it in the refrigerator, packing it well. So they can not lose their useful properties. At the same time, keep in mind 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 stores. Therefore, my planning also begins on Tuesday - with fresh products.

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

Good health to you!