How to feed a large family without going crazy. Business woman in the kitchen: how to feed your family healthy food? What delicious food to feed your family

Known rules
Purchase products from shopping centers I need it for a week. Make a list of products, follow it clearly and without concessions. With two trips to the store on Sundays, you can easily determine what is usually included in the weekly diet. This way, you can avoid temptations and not buy delicacies that neither your wallet nor your stomach needs. You need to go to the store with a certain amount.

Now about the meat
Due to their employment, women are accustomed to buying ready-made semi-finished products in the store. Store-bought semi-finished products contain a lot of flavorings, preservatives, and vegetable proteins, and high-quality semi-finished products are very expensive. Don’t be surprised, but it will be cheaper to buy fresh meat in a trusted store or market, spend 30 minutes of your time on a weekend, and make it from cooked meat. homemade minced meat meatballs, cabbage rolls, cutlets, dumplings and fill with them freezer. Enough for the next month. And if to minced meat add the same amount minced chicken, then this will make the minced meat tastier and more tender and will make it cheaper.

Chicken
For our convenience, stores sell chicken breasts, legs, thighs and drumsticks separately. Brought it from the store and onto the frying pan. And you go and buy several broiler chickens and whole chickens at the nearest supermarket and cut them yourself at home. Then approximately 20% of the cost will remain in your wallet. Don't forget, before you throw them in the freezer, sort and put the already cut up chicken into bags. Label each bag with what's in the bag and the date on the bag will tell you when to cook the chicken. When baked, chicken thighs and wings are very tasty, fillets go into main courses, drumsticks go into soup, and chicken backs, unnecessary and bony, will turn out rich and flavorful chicken broth.

Soups
It is not necessary to cook soup from a whole piece of meat; let's remember how grandmothers prepared soups. We will buy pork or beef bones and add boiled chicken to the broth we have prepared. The soup will be rich and will not be inferior in taste meat broth. The same method can be applied to stewed cabbage, potatoes, pilaf. If to chicken fillet Add to small quantity lamb, beef or pork, this will improve the taste of the prepared dish. It will turn out as if a dish was prepared from one kilogram of pure meat.

Fish
It is cheaper than meat, of course, if it is not trout, salmon or salmon. And it will bring considerable benefits to the body in the form of minerals and protein. From white inexpensive fish - hake, haddock, pollock, cod, you can cook fish cutlets and fish fingers. Don't bypass pink salmon; it will replace expensive Norwegian salmon steaks. Preserves, which are bought to save time and convenience, can be made yourself without much difficulty from mackerel or herring, having previously purchased frozen fresh fish.

As a side dish for homemade cutlets, in addition to the common potatoes and pasta You can serve legumes or cereals. For variety, you can prepare a side dish of vegetables. Cabbage in all its forms goes wonderfully with meat. All vegetables are bought in season. It is profitable to purchase beets, onions, and potatoes at the markets in the fall. You can stock up on these vegetables for the whole year. From radishes, carrots, beets, cabbage you can prepare unusual and gourmet salads, they will stand on festive table a real decoration. And how many vitamins do they contain?

During the season you need to buy fruits and berries; during their ripening period they contain more vitamins. In summer and autumn you can make jam from the berries, then you won’t have to spend money on imported confitures and jams. Some berries can be frozen in the refrigerator. You can cook jelly and compotes from them, which will enrich your diet with vitamins. Frozen berries are good to put in sweet pastries. Pie with raspberries or cherries will bring the whole family together for evening tea. These few principles of housekeeping and grocery shopping will bring significant savings to your family budget.

Naturally, every family has its own customs, tastes, and everyone acts as they see fit. But some of these tips, which are not invented, but tested on ourselves, may be useful to someone.

I don't understand why children must unconditionally love everything that will be theirs offered for lunch or dinner. We forgive an adult if he does not eat oysters, or salted watermelons, or almond cakes. No matter how hard I try to convince children that broccoli is incredibly healthy and zucchini is amazingly tasty, they won’t believe it. It is better to take a wait-and-see attitude: do not impose or press. This usually works - sooner or later priorities change, the range of tastes expands, and the hated broccoli becomes a favorite side dish, and zucchini pancakes become a wonderful afternoon snack.

Big family and small portions

Mothers of many children have to deal with one stereotype: a bucketful of food prepared for the week - an image that is fixed in the minds of the majority. This ever-boiling pot of the day before yesterday's borscht could have become my nightmare if I didn't have a sense of humor. In fact, everything is different. I cook in small batches and solve problems as they arise. I’ll say right away: all this is possible only because I don’t buy groceries myself. This task lies with the head of the family, and he copes with it brilliantly.

In practice it looks like this. I rarely make such substantial dishes as solyanka or jellied meat. Almost everything I make comes together quickly, very quickly, or on its own. There are household appliances for this: a blender, a mixer, a sensitive and obedient oven. You can bake, for example, a good piece of pork ham in it. I spend no more than 10 minutes manipulating the meat: salt, season with paprika, garlic, thyme and bay leaf, wrap tightly in a double layer of baking paper and place in the oven preheated to 150 °C.

You don’t need to do anything else - after 3.5 hours a signal will sound that the wonderful boiled pork is ready. Once cooled, it can be cut into thin slices and used for breakfast sandwiches. You can also bake a whole chicken, take it apart into small pieces and use it in a salad with couscous, raisins and pistachios, stuff it into pancakes or hide it in rolls. thin pita bread, spread with cream cheese, along with vegetables and finely chopped herbs.

What else can you do in advance?

What can be done in advance is, of course, better done in advance. For example, fillet a turkey and put it in the refrigerator in an airtight container. Or prepare minced meat for hamburgers, meatballs or cutlets. Remove the fish from the freezer and defrost it properly, without haste, on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Be sure to cook soup or, more precisely, two soups, no more than 1.5-2 liters each. This is not at all because I am so kind, but simply so that the “refuseniks” still eat: if not cream of champignon soup, then lentil, if not minestrone, then pumpkin.

Children are always happy with jelly or compote. It’s also better to prepare them in the morning, so that by lunchtime they “ got there" In the meantime, you can bake muffins, chocolate cupcake or a little bit - just one baking sheet - cookies. After all, it is possible that someone will want something sweet or need consolation: childhood life is not an easy thing. All these operations take no more than one and a half to two hours, so there is a lot of free time left before the active actions caused by the children returning home begin.

How to diversify standards

There is no need to reach the point of fanaticism. It's funny to cook a separate handful of rice for everyone. But make it from pre-cooked rice individual puzzle- it's exciting.

• Puzzle No. 1: vegetables ( for example red sweet pepper, petiole celery, carrots, garlic, spinach, champignons), sliced ​​and quickly fried in a wok in olive oil, + rice - for two vegetarians. 15 minutes!
• Puzzle No. 2: chicken breast cut into narrow strips + vegetables, also quickly fried in a wok, + rice.
• Puzzle No. 3: shrimp, the same wok, a drop of sesame oil, lemon, garlic + rice.

Same with pasta. Cook a pack of penne, spaghetti or fusilli for 15 minutes, then pasta with mussels, with tomato sauce, with bacon and cheese and cream sauce, with tuna. Each option takes another 10 minutes - you don’t even have time to get tired.

Afternoon snack and dinner

Perfect for a snack between lunch and dinner Ossetian pies, khachapuri, pizza or kulebyaka with fish, spinach, mushrooms and rice. If after lunch I bet yeast dough, it is just reaching condition by this time. I knead the dough from two kilograms of flour and immediately put half of it in the refrigerator in a tightly closed bag. There it matures very slowly, without having time to acidify, and by the next day it acquires a different taste and structure.

From such " slow» dough can be baked into breadsticks sprinkled with seeds and oatmeal, deep-fry pies with potatoes or roll out thinly in a round pizza pan, top tightly like tiles, cover with apple slices, sprinkle with almonds and powdered sugar or top with maple syrup. At an oven temperature of 200 °C, the cake is baked in 15-20 minutes. For greater effect, it’s a good idea to turn on the oven in grill mode for a couple of minutes - then an appetizing crust will appear along the edges of the apple slices.

Having dinner children always with an enviable appetite - will never refuse scrambled eggs or an omelet, pasta salad and roasted vegetables or cottage cheese casserole With canned pineapples, raisins or peaches.

Most likely, my tactics are flawed. We rarely sit down at the table with the whole family. In my defense, I can say one thing: in our village house there is a specially ordered table that seats everyone. And it can be very fun and delicious.

And the kitchen is our island. An island of trust, secrets, conversations, decision making. I love it and we never get bored.

After a working day, few people want to spend a lot of time at the stove. This article will tell you how to quickly feed your family, several simple recipes and tricks with which you will cook delicious dinner in a short time.

Pasta. Most pasta cooks for 10 minutes. Bolognese sauce is also quick to prepare: fry the onion and garlic, add the minced meat and fry until golden brown. Mix with tomatoes or tomato paste and add oregano or your favorite herb blend. Simmer over low heat for 15-20 minutes and serve with pasta. Bolognese sauce pairs with red wine. Mushrooms, sweet peppers and corn go well with this dish. Prepares even faster cheese sauce for pasta: mix grated cheese with cream, add pieces of bacon or mushrooms. On culinary sites you can easily find many recipes for pasta sauces.

Canned concentrated soups can be the basis for sauces for meat and pasta.

Fast pizza. Fry the onions, garlic and mushrooms, cut the French bread lengthwise and place on top mashed potatoes, water mushroom sauce, sprinkle with grated cheese and heat on the grill or in the microwave.

Omelette. This dish of eggs, milk (or cream) and flour is easy and quick to prepare. The omelette is especially delicious with salad, crispy potatoes or jacket potatoes.

. Slow cooker is a device that can be called a dolgovorka or slow cooker in Russian, an analogue of a pot in a Russian oven, where food is cooked for a long time. Using a slow cooker, you can get a delicious hot dinner in the evening by placing meat and vegetables in it in the morning.

Potato wedges. Instead of frying or boiling potatoes, cut them into wedge-shaped pieces, cook until half cooked for 7-10 minutes, drain, sprinkle olive oil and bake in hot oven 20-30 minutes. This dish goes well with fish, meat and cutlets.

How to quickly feed your family a fish dish? Rub the fish fillet with spices and salt, wrap in foil and bake for 15-20 minutes in a hot oven.

Curry or chili. Adding red pepper to the Bolognese recipe above creates a curry or chili that goes well with rice.

Rice requires constant attention when cooked in a pan. In a special rice cooker or steamer fluffy rice Can be cooked simultaneously with other dishes.

Chicken. Chicken breasts You can pre-marinate in the morning and bake in the oven in the evening. Chicken meat with salad and jacket potatoes is a healthy and nutritious dish.

. Jacket potatoes can be the main or second course. Cheese, mayonnaise, beans, curry, chili, bacon, mushrooms, shrimp, Bolognese sauce, cottage cheese and olives can be used as a side dish for baked or boiled potatoes.

Pork cutlets are quick and easy to grill or bake. You can get an original taste if you grease the cutlets with a mixture of orange jam and soy sauce and bake in the oven.

Large portions. Chili and other sauces can be prepared in large quantities at once and stored in the refrigerator.

Pre-prepared meals such as salads, pizza and mixed vegetables will significantly reduce the time you spend in the kitchen.

Rating. Make a list quick recipes and after preparing dishes, evaluate them. In a few weeks you will have collected a large number of favorite recipes that you can always rely on. Experiment with new recipes when you have free time.

Now you know how to quickly feed your family tasty and inexpensive. Bon appetit!

Our heroines proved that while pursuing a career, you can remain an exemplary housewife and cook for your family quickly, tasty and healthy!

Experts

Mikhail Zeigarnik
Candidate of Medical Sciences, Chief Physician of the Nutrition and Health Clinic

Menu of farm products

Who?Elena Korneeva, translator, 35 years old:"We buy exactly as much food as we need, and thanks to a clear menu, cooking takes little time.”

What? Our family has completely switched to natural products farm production. At the same time, we systematized food preparation, starting to create a menu for the week. This way we buy exactly as much food as we need, and little time is spent on cooking.

Why? We, like everyone else, bought food in supermarkets. But one day I noticed that we don’t eat about a third of our food, but throw it away. We bought too much of something and it spoiled, something turned out to be unnecessary because we didn’t know in advance what we were going to cook. Often, due to carelessness, they took food that was on the verge of expiration date, and then the meat that smelled of potassium permanganate did not inspire confidence and ended up in the trash. And then I thought - maybe I should buy less, but focus on better quality products?

How? When we first visited the farmers’ website, their products seemed insanely expensive. Eggs are twice as expensive as store-bought ones, and potatoes are three times more expensive. I even began to wonder why there was such a difference, and over the weekend we went to the farm to get to know each other. We saw the production with our own eyes and bought some products to try. It turned out that if you know the person who grew this tomato and trust him, then the perception of food completely changes. The process of eating food ceases to be a simple assimilation of calories, you begin to enjoy the taste.

In order not to go broke, we decided to create a clear menu for the week. I used to drive home and wonder what to cook; I didn’t remember exactly what was in the refrigerator. I had to pop into the store and fill my cart. And at home it turned out that there were already two cans of sour cream in the refrigerator, but not enough butter. Now once a week we sit down with my husband and daughter at the table, write a list of the dishes we want, then we buy food for them - what we need, and not what they want to sell us. I don’t waste time shopping, and after work I spend 30-40 minutes at the stove - and my dinner is ready. Sometimes I cook for two days. Our usual breakfast is porridge, eggs, pancakes, sandwiches or cottage cheese. We definitely buy kefir and fermented baked milk. We dine at home together only on weekends. I prepare soup and a main course for two days at once. I make salads according to the season, in winter and spring these are root vegetables and pickles. For the main course we usually have meat or fish with a side dish. I bake on weekends apple pie or cottage cheese cookies, and homemade compote.

Bonus! It turned out that if you buy the products necessary for specific dishes from farmers, you can easily spend the same amount of money that we spent at the supermarket. Feeding a family of three costs us 10 thousand rubles a week - a quite typical amount for Moscow. But our food has become much tastier and better: chicken broth smells like chicken, and there is a spoonful in sour cream.

Menu for the week from Elena

MONDAY

Breakfast: Oatmeal with jam, herbal tea with sandwiches

Dinner: Chicken noodle soup, cod with potatoes, baked in the oven

Dinner: T cod with potatoes, baked in the oven

TUESDAY

Breakfast: Cottage cheese with dried fruits

Dinner : Chicken noodle soup, beef cutlets with stewed cabbage

Dinner: Salad from boiled chicken and cheese

WEDNESDAY

Breakfast: Omelette with sausage and cheese

Dinner: Vinaigrette, beef cutlets with mashed potatoes

Dinner: Beef Stroganoff from beef liver with buckwheat

THURSDAY

Breakfast: Oatmeal with dried fruits and sandwiches with cheese or doctor's sausage

Dinner: Vinaigrette, pumpkin gratin with cheese and veal

Dinner: Beef liver stroganoff with buckwheat

FRIDAY

Breakfast: Cheesecakes with sour cream

Dinner: Vinaigrette, pumpkin gratin with cheese and veal

Dinner: Salad from seasonal vegetables, pumpkin and parsnip pancakes with sour cream

SATURDAY

Breakfast: Buckwheat porridge with milk

Dinner - on a walk to a cafe

Dinner: Cottage cheese casserole with sour cream

SUNDAY

Breakfast: Pancakes with jam

Dinner: Daily cabbage soup from sauerkraut, herring under a fur coat

Dinner: Baked chicken with apples. Garnish with baked root vegetables: potatoes, parsnips, scorzonera.

Expert comment:

I have no complaints about the heroine’s approach: if family income allows and there is easy access to farm products, I’m all for it. The diet proposed by Elena looks quite balanced and can even be called varied (taking into account the fact that her busy schedule does not allow her to cook every day different dishes- there is nothing wrong with repetitions). The only “but”: if someone in the family has a tendency to be overweight, then it can manifest itself, since the diet contains a lot of carbohydrates (root vegetables, potatoes, bread) and fats (butter, cheese, sour cream, cottage cheese). But if this is not a problem, then continue in the same spirit. Elena very correctly said that food should not be a simple assimilation of calories, one should enjoy the taste.

Freeze for future use

Who? Ekaterina Sukhova, company manager, 40 years old: “The essence of the strategy is to cook only once or twice a month and then reheat ready meals in the microwave or oven."

What? I make preparations for the month using the freezing cooking system, which is quite common in the West. I don’t buy semi-finished products in the store, but make them myself. And in the evening I need a maximum of 30 minutes to finish cooking a frozen dish.

Why? I naively believed that I would be able to combine a leadership position with household chores, but in reality this did not work out. I hired a cleaner and a nanny for my youngest son, but I decided to leave the cooking for the family to myself because I really like to cook and take into account the tastes of each family member. However, due to traffic jams, I get home by 9 pm at best. If you still need to stop by for groceries and stand at the stove for an hour, there is no time left for life at all. As a result, I was left exhausted, and my hungry family devoured sausage sandwiches. That’s when I found a master class on preparing dishes for future use. It has its own nuances, so it’s better to study everything thoroughly.

How? The essence of the strategy is to cook only once or twice a month and then reheat the finished dishes in the microwave or oven. A radical option is to prepare your favorite foods from start to finish and freeze them. Then the children will be able to heat up the food themselves. A simplified option is the primary processing of products and the production of semi-finished products. It is enough to allocate one or two days for work. We cook with the whole family, and my mother also comes to help. Freeze boiled vegetables, dumplings, stuffed pancakes, casseroles, turkey cutlets, meat hedgehogs, cabbage rolls, mixture of grated carrots and chopped onions, tomatoes, fish dishes, dishes with rice and mushrooms, etc. In the evening I put vegetables in one pan and cutlets in another. In 15 minutes food is on the table!

By the way, you can not only cook healthy semi-finished products, but also buy them. Supermarkets sell boiled and already peeled vegetables in vacuum packaging - they can be stored for months. Boiled cereals keep well in the refrigerator for four to five days. I keep rice, buckwheat, and lentils in containers - they can be added to salads or eaten as a side dish.

Bonus! Of course, it is important to have a spacious freezer and portioned dishes suitable for the microwave oven. Indeed, not all dishes can be frozen without losing their taste. Nevertheless, the strategy works. I am very pleased that I was able to find a clever way that allows me to feed my family delicious home-cooked food while being busy.

What can be frozen:

• meat broth (used for making soups and sauces)
• boiled meat (in a vacuum container; you can make sandwiches with it, add it to salads, or just heat it up and eat it)
• boiled beans, rice, potatoes in their skins (can be stored in the refrigerator, if not for long).
• “frying” of onions and carrots (for making soups)
• pickled onions (for salads and hot dishes)
• raw meat and poultry (cut into portions and marinated)

What should not be frozen:

• raw onion (taste changes)
• fresh vegetables with a high moisture content (dramatically change consistency)
• mayonnaise and other sauces based on fat emulsions (separate)
• fermented milk products (change consistency)
• boiled and boiled-smoked sausage, especially already sliced ​​(the consistency changes, then can only be used hot)
• ready-made cold salads (change the taste)

Regardless of our income, we all tighten our belts when it comes to our refrigerators. One third of all food worldwide is wasted in production and consumption systems. Using these losses, you can save the money saved for other needs of your family, creating new nutrition standards, maintaining physical health and family time.

Steps

Preparing for Success

Make lists and don't buy too much. When you go shopping, don't take anyone with you who might prevent you from following the list.

Set a budget. Take only cash with you and leave your cards at home. If you have a limited amount of money, that's all you can spend. Grocery stores will often try to add a few extra items to your cart; It is very easy to be tempted by this. Having a limited amount of cash will help you stay within your budget.

Plan ahead as a family. Think about how much you can afford to spend and what you no longer need to spend on. Consider the options that are most attractive to your family and try to find a balance between them. Compromise is the key to changing your shopping habits.

Look for sales announcements. It may seem counterintuitive to shop well in advance of cooking, but you'll save more if you plan your meals around what's on sale. If something interesting comes on sale for a great price, but you don't know what to cook with it, look for new and exciting recipes for you and your family.

Clip/print coupons. Look for grocery coupons in newspapers and online on special websites that highlight the latest food promotions.

Shop less and save more. Try to limit yourself to one productive shopping trip per week. This will give you plenty of time to make a list, check available products, and collect coupons. The more you think about your future while shopping, the more money you'll save, as well as time and energy, since you won't be able (or won't) to buy that "one extra thing."

Go to several stores. Some stores offer better prices on eggs, milk and cheese than others. Others may have better prices on toilet paper, while your favorite greengrocer offers the best prices compared to all the other greengrocers in your area. Do your research and ask your friends about theirs personal experience in saving.

• Take advantage of each store, but remember to consider the distance between them. There's no point in saving on toilet paper if you're spending more on gas.

1. Track your expenses. Control how much you spend at the grocery store. This way you will keep your budget under control. Don't throw away receipts. Save them to avoid unnecessary expenses in the future!

Cook at home with your family

Cooking meals with your children will spark their interest in healthy foods. Although they will still have a love of snacking due to their childhood, the most important thing is how they eat most of the time.

Bake bread yourself with your loved ones. Bread is fun and easy to make at home, you only need a few simple ingredients. Look for recipes and involve your loved ones. This way you will save money, and your home will be filled with the wonderful aroma of freshly baked bread!

Prepare large meals such as stews, soups, casseroles, and so on. Dishes that you can eat for a week will lighten the load. You don't have to think about what to cook for lunch. Lunch will be ready.

• Expand your horizons! Some cuisines, such as Mexican, Peruvian and Italian, use inexpensive ingredients to feed large families and communities. Introduce your family to other cuisines and take advantage of the opportunity to explore new places.

1. Cook with cheaper meat. Correct gravy or the right sauce can take a dish from a less expensive cut of meat to an unexpectedly fantastic one. Just keep in mind that some cuts will be tougher than others when cooked, so consider cooking in a slow cooker (you can buy a new one or a used one for less) to add flavor.