Family menu planning inspiration from old magazines
Contrary to my expectations I find it really tedious having to plan the family’s meals for the coming weeks. My repetoire of dishes we all like eating seems really small (husband and son not keen on vegetables, I can’t eat much wheat without being in agony afterwards, son doesn’t like anything with a ‘bitty’ texture, husband doesn’t like fish…).
We’ve got quite a few decent recipe books (Delia, Nigel Slater, Jamie Oliver and the like) but for some reason I find that the meals in there are not very inspiring - either they require far too many special ingredients (Jamie Oliver) or they are all too heavy (Nigel Slater) or more usually I just can’t be bothered to leaf through each tome to find 14 days worth of lunch/dinner possibiliities.
My solution? Ages ago I started a cutting file of magazine articles I liked. I was a real magazine addict but couldn’t store them all so started collecting any recipe which looked nice/easy and we’d all like to try (usually from Good Housekeeping or Country Living). I’d forgotten about this treasure trove until I recently unpacked the last box after our move in July. Had a flick through and suddenly had loads of tasty but EASY things to cook. Yay.
Tonight we are having lamb koftas which is simply minced lamb mixed with cumin, onion and fresh corriander, the other night we had falafels (very similar to lamb koftas only made with chick peas!), before that we had veg, coconut and lentil curry, coming up soon we have a beef pie, salmon macaroni cheese, home made baked beans, poached chicken and so on.
The trick to taking magazine cuttings is to have a sharp knife/pair of scissors to hand where you usually read the mags (the bathroom in my case while bathing the children), an empty box file to sling them in and then a lever arch file with loads of empty ‘pockets’ to actually file the articles every so often into their respective categories (in my case, gardening, cookery, things to do with kids and other misc.).
I’m really pleased I remembered my old files and had a flick through them as has brought joy to my kitchen but also as have just emailed the local Freecycle group to come and take a large box of Good Housekeepings off my hands. Will have to quickly go through and rip out anything of interest before they go to a new home.
Right better get squelching the minced lamb with the chopped onion and shaping them into long patties….
March 27th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
I think thats a great idea, I need to start planning meals to reduce our food costs. I hope you don’t mind me asking but how much does it cost you to feed a family of four on per month? Everyone keeps telling me that the only way to cut back and budget is to ‘plan’… so thats something we are ‘planning’
to do! somehow!