It happens that in life difficult moments come when it is necessary to “tighten the belt” and spend the funds as wisely as possible. And then you need to make an economical menu for a week to calculate money in advance and not spend too much. You start looking for recipes that contain inexpensive, but tasty products, remember the "grandmother" tips for saving them. After all, you will not constantly feed your family noodles with spices! And then it turns out that there are a lot of recipes that allow you to make an economical menu for a week for a family without much work. True, no special delights are foreseen in it, but it seems possible to tasty and satisfying to feed home.
Savings Rules
- To develop an economical menu for the week, first of all, you need to make a list of necessary products. This will help you not to be distracted by unnecessary purchases (and the temptation to do this is great, especially in supermarkets). Let your economical menu for the week consist of inexpensive, but varied and high-quality dishes. And for this, products need to be purchased as cheaply as possible. But cheap - doesn't always mean bad!
- Find out what is happening in nearby stores and markets. Buy meat, cereals, vegetables where they are really cheaper. And also in large supermarkets constantly held promotions and discounts on certain types of products. Try to make the most of these opportunities. And buy not on the way from work, but purposefully. So you can save up to a third of your money.
- Mark on products to create a budget menu for the week, a certain amount of money. Try not to spend a dime more. Even if you really want something sweet or tasty.
Meat use
Most of the budget allocated to the economical menu for the week is spent on meat products. Vegetarianism is now out of fashion, and almost every family uses meat to cook a variety of dishes. In order to minimize the cost of meat products, there are some secrets. Buy offal to come up with an economical but tasty menu for the week: liver, stomachs, kidneys, heart. They cost much less, but with proper preparation they are very tasty and nutritious. If you bought meat, try to use it to the maximum for the preparation of several dishes: both the first and second. For example, cook a broth from a bone and make soup or borsch. Make minced meat from the pulp and cook meatballs or meatballs (they can be "stretched" for several days, eating one or two meatballs with a side dish per day per person). Purchased chicken legs can be boiled. You get a broth from which you can make soup. Free the pitted meat and use for salad or stew with vegetables. So one chicken can feed a small family of three to four people for several days. To stick dumplings is also a great option. Flour and egg for the dough will always be in stock with any housewife. And from the boiled meat we make minced meat with onions and spices and sculpt a whole mountain of dumplings. Some of them are cooked, for example, for lunch, and the rest are divided into equal portions and frozen in the refrigerator. There they can be stored frozen for at least a week. Pulled out, cooked in a pan - that’s a quick dinner ready!
Exclude fast food
Such food in itself is not entirely healthy. Moreover, you don’t get enough of it, and after a couple of hours you want to eat again. When compiling your economical menu for a week for a family, completely eliminate all kinds of fast food: hamburgers, pizza, sushi and more. In addition, they are not cheap, especially recently.
More vegetables
Buy and consume more vegetables. From them you can cook a lot of all kinds of dishes at very affordable prices. This is a variety of salads, and hot side dishes, and the first dishes (for example, beetroot soup with mushrooms), and the second (for example, potato pancakes or carrot cutlets). In addition, vegetables contain vitamins and essential trace elements useful for the human body. When compiling an economical menu for the whole week, make sure that there are more vegetables from vegetables. There are many advantages to this.
Compote instead of soda
When developing an economical menu for a week, exclude all kinds of carbonated drinks (we will not list the names, there have been plenty of them lately). Not only that, “liquid candies”, so beloved by children, are simply harmful, it is almost impossible to get enough of them. Drink clean water during meals, and children as a "third" can cook dried fruit compote. A large five-liter pan is enough for a long time! Shop juices also with great care. In addition to a fairly high price, they have even more flashy disadvantages: additives from dyes, preservatives, sweeteners, acidifiers and the like harmful substances.
Porridge
In order to make an economical menu for a week, use boiled cereals as side dishes: buckwheat, rice, millet, pearl barley - whoever loves what. Milk cereals are also good. It is enough to pour boiled rice with milk - this is a healthy and tasty breakfast for the whole family is ready. And if you add a spoon of meat goulash with gravy to a plate with buckwheat porridge, you will get a satisfying second dish.
Economy menu for the week: recipes
And we will start with borsch. Recipes for cooking tasty and satisfying borsch in each family are different. Let us dwell on the classic recipe, which does not imply the addition of all kinds of delights to the dish. First, we will need to cook the broth. To do this, you should take a good brain bone (fortunately, it is inexpensive). Put it in a large pan and fill it with water. You can add a few leaves of bay leaf, a whole peeled onion, a few peas of allspice. Cook the broth for at least an hour, removing the foam.
When the base is ready, you can proceed with further actions. To make our borscht thick, we need to put as many vegetables as possible there. We use a head of cabbage (per kilogram), 3 large carrots, 3 onions, 3 large potatoes, 1 large or several small beets. We chop the cabbage with a special knife, cut the potatoes and onions into cubes, grind the carrots and beets. Using a small piece of fat, we prepare a dressing for borsch from carrots, beets, onions (you can also fry in vegetable oil). Throw potatoes, cabbage, dressing into the broth gradually, bring to a boil and cook for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally. We try the dish. Let him insist properly. If you cook borsch, for example, on Sunday, then until Wednesday a small family of three to four people is provided with the first course. In addition, borscht perfectly saves your money. Its prime cost is low, and the taste is wonderful!
Vermicelli Chicken Soup
Another economical and nutritious first meal for the whole family. Cooking it is very simple. A well-cooked soup can be the first meal for the family for several days.
Take a pound of chicken wings. We make broth from them in a large saucepan. They do not cook for long - a maximum of half an hour. As usual, remove the foam. When the broth is ready, it can be filtered, and the wings “disassemble”. Throw away the bones, and pieces of meat - back to the broth: it tastes better. Next, peel a pound of potatoes and a couple of medium carrots. We cut the vegetables into cubes and put them in the broth - let them cook. We throw the vermicelli last. The most important thing here is not to overdo it, it has the property to digest and increase in volume. Well, as a last resort, you get porridge from vermicelli instead of soup, which is also good. Dietary chicken soup with vermicelli is ready! It can be consumed as a first course for several days, sprinkled with herbs and spices. Here's a sample menu for the week: the first-meal question from Monday to Saturday has been resolved! Let's deal with the second.
Navy pasta
A very economical and fairly easy to prepare second course. Take a jar of stew - beef or pork, it does not matter. Boil a packet of pasta from durum wheat (so that you do not have to rinse). Pour the stew into pasta and gently stir. A simple and economical second course is ready to eat - a decent meal in a sample menu for a week.
Fried potatoes with mushrooms
The ingredients for such a dish are relatively inexpensive. We need to take: a kilogram and a half potatoes (to fit into a large skillet), two hundred grams of fresh mushrooms (oyster mushroom), a couple of onions and vegetable oil for frying. That's all the components.
The dish is being prepared traditionally. Peel and cut the potatoes into strips. We dry from excess moisture on a towel. We fry over medium heat in a good and large pan. Separately, fry the onions until golden. Separately - mushrooms. When the potatoes are browned, mix the ingredients. Such a "student" dish more than once saved from hunger in the institute years - it has been tested by many people. It is good to eat without mushrooms, if they are not available. As a seasoning, you can use ordinary ketchup.
For breakfast: scrambled eggs with onions and salburger
A traditional omelet and a sandwich with butter or lard are good as breakfast. Beat a few eggs with a spoonful of milk. Salt and pepper. You can fry a small amount of onion and add it to the omelet. We fry it on both sides to a rosy state. Sprinkle with herbs. Spread slices of black bread with lard and serve with omelet.
How to save on food
An economical menu for the week for a family is quite simple. The main thing is to act according to the tips given above. Here is an example.
- Breakfast : buckwheat porridge with milk, tea, bread and butter.
- Lunch : borsch, dumplings, compote.
- Dinner : navy pasta, tea with cookies.
Or else (as an option).
- Breakfast : omelet with sandwiches, tea.
- Lunch : chicken soup with vermicelli, fried potatoes, stewed fruit.
- Dinner : rice milk porridge, kefir.
Of course, there are many dishes that are not covered in this article to make an economy menu for a week both tasty and inexpensive. So we leave a place for the flight of your imagination, the benefit is that the basic principles of economical nutrition are clear. It remains only to bring them to life.