Category: Housework

Composing a Meal

Published on by Kim1 Comment

You don’t have to be an artist or gourmet chef to plate an attractive and nutritious meal for your family.

I’ll say it again: You don’t have to be artistically gifted or professionally trained to put together a beautiful, balanced meal.

You just need to consider some basic principles.

Food Groups

When you are meal planning, take a minute to be sure you are covering the major food groups: protein, carbs, fruits/vegetables. A meal that is carb heavy is missing some nutrients. A meal that is entirely produce will not last very long, since our bodies metabolize that quickly. Your menu needs all three to be a balanced meal.

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God created us to enjoy beauty. When you include beautiful colors on the plate, your eye is attracted to the arrangement, and then you are naturally drawn to the nutritional benefit scattered throughout the colors. For a breakdown of the benefits associated with each color group, see this article.

Texture

It is good to mix up textures on a plate. You don’t want a meal that is entirely mushy or a plate full of dry foods. Keep in mind the consistency of your menu items as you put them together in your meal plan.

If you can run quickly through these three things as you choose your meals, you will be able to serve an appealing plate that also includes a variety of the nutritional needs for the day. Remember, as my mother always said, variety is the spice of life!

 

 

Meal Planning Tips

Published on by Kim1 Comment

Have a Few Good Cookbooks

As my mother told me, “When I was starting out with family cooking/meal planning, I had just a few cookbooks:  Mom’s loose-leaf of recipes from my past, the MN Meals cookbook, and BH&G. When I was looking for ideas, I mostly was in MN Meals as it was simple and broad.  Surfing the web to find recipes can be daunting; there are so many. Making sure you have a few good cookbooks gives you a more manageable body of info to peruse.”

I agree, and I tend to rely on my family cookbook (collected recipes we know and love) and two others that cover a lot of ground.

Plan by Time Required

You can keep a cheat sheet of often-used recipes or meals that are listed by how long it takes to prepare them (10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, etc.). Then when you need a plan for the day and know how much time you have, you’ve already narrowed down your options without having to think through it each time.

Plan in Advance

For pro calendar users, or just those who appreciate charts, an option is to plan meals out a month at a time. You can have a 30-day calendar of meals (1 or 2 or 3 a day) mapped out as a resource. Each month you can reuse the calendar by changing the order of meals.

This allows you to have plenty of options available, know in advance what you are doing, and shop in bulk (if you have the storage space). You will save gas on multiple trips to the grocery store if you have what you need already in the pantry. You still have the flexibility to move things around if you want to or to take advantage of sales or schedule changes.

Keep a Treasure Chest

As you collect tried-and-true recipes, you can collect them on note cards and keep a box in the kitchen. You will know when you pull anything out of the box that it will work.

A variation of this would be to keep meal plans on note cards (recipe included). When you do your meal planning, or before you go to the store, you can pull out what you would like to make and have it ready to go. Once you have made the meal, it goes back in the box until next time.

Know Some Versatile Basics

It is a good idea to include simple recipes in your collection that make filling and tasty meals or that serve as the basis to multiple meals. For instance, a good scratch biscuit can serve for biscuits and gravy or chicken and biscuits.

Many thanks to my mother for serving as a valuable resource for this post! It has been a blessing and privilege to observe her years of experience.

What else have you found helpful in your meal planning efforts? We’d love to see your comments with more tips below. Thank you!