I’m treating the lockdown as we did when we crossed an ocean. Admittedly there were no weekly trips to the supermarket mid Pacific but the notion of menu planning, writing a shopping list of essentials then battening down the hatches and getting on with it is quite similar, even if we do live in the Midlands. The surrounding fields changing colour as the sun moves round and the growing crops are my surging seas.
Colliers Cookery School has recently launched a service offering a free weekly menu plan, accompanying recipes and a shopping list for key workers. The idea came to me as I sat and did my own menu plan — a habit that began with quarantine — for the family before I do my weekly shop.
I find that menu planning takes up a lot of time to research and be imaginative, something I have the luxury to indulge in but a key worker does not. I have made sure that the menus are more or less wholesome with a few treats snuck in, simple enough for the kids to have a go at a few of the recipes and above all not time consuming.
Typically, the menus would revolve around ‘Veggie Monday’, plus one other veggie day, fish on Friday and a roast on Sunday. I obviously ask for any allergies, dietary requirements and food dislikes before writing the menu plan.
For a few ideas for your own menu planning, this was our menu from last week:
Like everyone I am doing my part by ‘staying in’, only heading out once a week to go shopping. I am useless at sewing and have no access to a 3D printer to make PPE, this menu is one way that we as a family can help those that are helping us all.
Thank you to all key workers.
p.s. our 10-year old has just rushed in to the kitchen saying dramatically, “I need a piece of wood, a rope and a saw”, not so very different from being on a boat after all.
Contact Harriet Wakeford, Colliers Cookery School, here.