After a long working day, you don't necessarily want to spend another hour behind the stove... So if you have to find in 3 seconds the recipe that will delight everyone, it's almost an impossible mission, especially if you have to do everything by yourself!
Prepare the menu
Never again become a slave to the "what's for dinner tonight? "and emergency cat meals, our best ally is menu planning!
There's no need to bother, we make and print several copies of a table of the days of the week with the "noon" and "evening" boxes. To help us, we create a bank of menus, with :
- the favorite dishes of each member of the tribe...
- dishes "less than 20 minutes of preparation" that can be cooked even if you come home a little later from work
- all the dishes that we master well and we create a history in which we gradually add all our recipes and menus, from which we will come to pick when we are out of inspiration!
If we do this all together on Sunday evening, it takes barely 15 minutes, and we're sure to find menus that please the whole family!
Shopping
Once again, it's the organization that's going to save us. Good news: with a list of menus in your pocket, you can say goodbye to the famous "uh...what am I going to buy? " and to the " Damn, I forgot the chicken breasts! ».
To make the most of our time, and since we often need the same "basics" (eggs, cream, butter, fruit, vegetables, meat) why don't we ask the little one to print out a sample shopping list for us? That way, all we'll have to do is tick and add the ingredients we need according to the week's menus as we go along!
And to avoid wasting time and money, we don't hesitate to indicate the brands and quantities needed.
With a shopping list like this one, we can even afford the luxury of delegating the shopping to Chéri and the children, and to take a little 2 hour break for ourselves...
"I'm saving time" special menu
Time-saving tips: Now that we've found menu and shopping tricks, how about some time-saving tips in the kitchen?
Every evening of the week we write next to the menu the name of a person who will help us to cook: it saves us time and gives us a little bit of fun. And on top of that, it allows us to pass on our cooking tips to our clan!
We don't hesitate to do a cooking workshop with the family on weekends. We put the prepared dishes in the freezer in advance, and that's it!
In the same vein: we always plan a "leftovers" evening at the weekend. Why bother cooking when the fridge is full of good unfinished dishes?
We always post the menu schedule in a prominent place on the fridge, and next to it, a "back-up menu" in case of unforeseen events: pancakes, mini-sandwiches, etc.
It's clear that cooking for the whole family is a challenge. But by getting organised and putting our whole tribe to work, it can be a real pleasure for everyone!
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