As a Chef, people assume that I never experience any problems when it comes to planning, buying and cooking our weekly family meals. After all; a Chef should be creating award winning dishes at his own table every night, should he not! Truthfully, as cooking is my job, and indeed my life, there are times when even I struggle to think of new dishes every day for our family meals.
You see, in our restaurant, we have a set menu for each season. Effectively I can be cooking the same meals for weeks on end before we move onto the next set menu. So, when it comes to making sure our family meals vary each day, I will agree – it is not always an easy task!
How to Get the Most from Your Weekly Shop
I try to pass on as many practical tips to my customers as possible when we talk about feeding the family. With the weekly shop possibly one of the most talked about conversations with many of the customers who adorn our restaurant, it is obvious that when it comes to offering a new meal every night of the week, it seems that, Chef or no Chef – we all need inspiring.
I strongly recommend shopping weekly. There are many reasons for this, but the most important being it is easy to create a weekly family menu than it is a monthly family menu. Even I would fail to plan our family’s meals ahead for the next month, and as a fully qualified Chef that should tell you something!
- Break down your meal planner into seven days.
- Highlight those days when certain people will be out, or late, to accommodate this.
- Think ahead as to what may occur that day – will you need to prepare something quick, or will you have more time to prep that day?
- During the week, aim for one meal choice per evening and no variations. Keep the choices for the weekend when there is more time available.
Allow yourself an informal day when you have something cold, or something that doesn’t require much in the way of preparation
