Weekly Dinner MenusWeekly dinner menus are a bear, aren't they? Don't know what you're going to fix? Play the "mystery dinner menu game." The Formula Approach for meal planning can be fun when you need to use up what you've already got, and when you are fresh out of ideas about what to do with it. Ideas for weekly dinner menus are below. Pick a protein from the list that you have handy, for instance:
Choose a STYLE, and optionally, choose a FINISH.A STYLE is a marinade, rub, or a set of ingredients used during the cooking process, and the FINISH is a pourover (or puddle under) sauce if you choose to have one. You may have fun choosing your mystery dinner menu. There is an economy of effort when weekly dinner menus are done in a batch. Meal planning becomes a lot like going to a Chinese restaurant and ask for one from column "A" and one from column "B." Plan menus for weekly dinners all at once and you will also methodically use up what's languishing in your freezer. You prevent waste of perfectly good food as well as minimize trips to the grocers. Let's take an example, you have boned chicken breast in your fridge. If you have a lot of chicken from a volume discount store, make that chicken seven different ways while you have it out and thawed, freeze six in your vacuum packing machine, and you're good to go for seven meals with one effort, one mess in the kitchen, and a great variety to boot. Try the same thing the next night with another protein (say a tuna steak) while those other marinades, sauces, and/or rubs are still fresh. Here's Case Study #1 that show how the weekly dinner menus are applied. But you say, "Not so, fixing several marinades at once is a lot of work!" Not really. Scanning a set of twelve marinades, I see that there are couple of acids (like vinegar or lemon) and a couple of oils (olive or vegetable) which, together with a handful of spices only require the odd defining ingredient that makes that marinade unique. This will be covered with detail in another chapter on marinades. And the same thing goes for sauces. Once those ingredients are done, make enough to store in a ball jar, pick another protein, and make a new set of meals the next night. Then vacuum pack and freeze. Here's a long and extensive sample entree menu just to get your creative juices going. Regard them as suggestions for your test kitchen. Some will suit your tastebuds and others, not so much. You can kind of tell by what you've enjoyed at restaurants. Pick seven and you have weekly dinner menus that are appealing - because they offer variety, timesaving - because you'll make them in bulk, and money saving - because you will use up all fresh ingredients in one good-sized effort. Cooking weekly dinner menus in advance makes for ONE trip to the grocers, NO stray veggies or herbs going bad in the fridge, ONE mess to clean up in the kitchen (followed by practically no clean-up the rest of the week), NO mind-numbing repetition of the same meal over and over, and LESS temptation to go to expensive eateries because you are too tired to cook or out of ingredients you need. There will eventually be 8000 test kitchen menu ideas. Which sound good to you?
Specific Menu Ideas for You to TryHow to Prepare Crab and NOT Drench it in Butter Tomato Based Marinade for Flank Steak Chuck Roast with Indian Spices Flounder with a Citrus Marinade Leave Weekly Dinner Menus, Return to Home Page
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