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MENU PLANNER

READERS who follow my very infrequent Twitter posts, or Facebook status updates, will know I am often boasting about my culinary skills – ...


READERS who follow my very infrequent Twitter posts, or Facebook status updates, will know I am often boasting about my culinary skills – even though it’s apparently not the done thing. It’s not that the meals are fabulous, it’s just I am so damn chuffed at being so organised.

My partner and I share the cooking. I do Saturday, Sunday and Monday. I am relieved of my duties Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and Friday is what I like to call “catch and kill”, or “hunt and gather”. Others in the household shudder at my caveman analogy and call it “free night”.

During the week I sit down and plan my three days – and some – of meals. Rather than being weighed down by the tedious task of preparing meals, I’ve taken it on as an exercise in creativity and thumb through recipe books and clippings to decide what we’ll eat. I make up a shopping list and on Sundays I do a big cook-up, usually cooking that night’s meal – with the only dessert of the week – and Monday night’s meal in one go. Planning ahead is cutting last minute dashes to the village supermarket to find missing ingredients and means we’ve got more time early in the week to get on top of other chores. It’s also cut about $40-$50 from the week’s grocery bill. Simple home economics, I know. It’s not rocket science.

Last week’s meals were eggplant parmigiana, a salmon pie, and stracceatella – a broth of chicken stock, rice, spinach, parmesan, olive oil and seasonings. The dessert was an apple crumble. This week it was caramelised chicken and coconut rice, a frittata of leek, capsicum and cheese served with a warm roast pumpkin and pesto pasta salad, and beef chow mein. The dessert was custard rice.

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