Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Scrambling for Smaller Families
Deciding on portion and recipe size is one of the challenges in designing Scramble menus. I am very interested in your feedback on how the amount of food I suggest in Scramble recipes works for your family. Do the recipes generally make too much food, not enough, or are they just about right? What adaptations do you make to recipes to make them work for your family? Tonight my family of four had the Cheesy Tortilla Pie (see the Scramble recipe search) and we had zero leftovers, not even enough to pack Andrew a lunch for work tomorrow! But the good news is the kids absolutely loved it--I am thrilled about how their tastes just keep expanding, and they will eat almost everything I serve now! P.S. Next time I make this recipe, I'm going to try cutting the cheese down a bit and possibly adding some chopped vegetables or 1 can of drained and rinsed beans to make it even healthier.
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11 comments:
I've learned to check the number of servings before cooking - if it's listed as 8 servings, I definitely cut it in half. Any recipe that calls for 16 oz of pasta is too much for my family, so I use the 12-oz cellophane bags of pasta, and portion out about 4 oz to serve plain to the kids. That leaves the recipe with about half the pasta it calls for, so we just end up with a higher proportion of vegetables or sauce or meat in the dish, and it turns out fine! Last night's penne with asparagus was very good with only 8 oz of pasta, and made a perfect 4 servings.
Usually, we'll just cut down on the meat (if it's the main part of the meal) or pasta, and since we like extra sauce and vegetables, that works out well. Some recipes, we cook half and freeze half for later. It's just me and my fiance, and he will always bring leftovers for lunch the next day -- there's never a problem with leftovers going to waste anymore!
I really like the amounts--and like Kate and Diana I often halve a recipe (if its a casserole) to have one to freeze. I'll definitely be doing this with the baked pesto penne for this upcoming week. It's a great option! I also love having leftovers.
We have a family of six so my concern is always, "Is it enough?" I would love an easy way to increase the size of the recipe . . . and the shopping list accordingly!
Pam
I love the portion size. We are a family of 2 adults and 1 baby. We always have leftovers since there are just two of us eating, but we either freeze it or eat it for lunch/dinner the next day. So we end up getting 2-3 meals out of each recipe, it works great for us, especially since we don't have time to cook dinner every night... we can just grab one of the leftovers out of the freezer!
The portion size works perfectly for our family of 3. I freeze half of the the larger meals, and for the meals that serve 4, I take the "4th" portion to work the next day.
The portion sizes seem just right for our family of four (2 adults and 2 little kids), with a bit leftover. In fact, I count on having enough leftover for one or two lunches. One thought on "Diana's" pasta comment earlier - we regularly use half as much pasta as the recipe calls for since we much prefer a higher proportion of sauce (which is generally the more nutritious part anyway, if using white flour pasta).
I guess I'm one of the unique people in that I generally am cooking for just one. I used to cut the recipe in half and would have leftovers the next day. But now that I am getting more confident in my cooking skills, the recipes are now good suggestions on a meal. I improvise on what and how much to make. And since meat portions in the market are packaged for a family of 4, I generally freeze half of it. Unless the main meat is chicken, in which case it all gets cooked at the same time, but 1/2 is usually just seasoned with salt and pepper to make chicken salad sandwiches through the week.
We are a family of three, we make the full recipes and almost always have leftovers. I usually bring leftovers for work the following day, and then every third or fourth night we have "leftover dinner" with the greatest hits from the previous evenings. It works well.
Your portions are perfect! Don't change. I only have time to cook every other night, which means we have leftovers the following night. And since it's just my husband and me (and infant son who's only now starting solids), your dinner recipe portions are perfect for our family for two nights. If I'm cooking just one night's dinner, I usually halve the recipe.
We find the portion sizes to be on the small side, for our family (2 adults, 1 teen and 1 tween). I confess, portion control is an issue in our house. If the recipe states that it serves 4 - it usually is 3 for us. It still works, because we are rarely able to convince our 18 yr old to eat with us and not out with friends :-( For the recipes that serve 8-10, we either take leftovers to work, for lunch, or freeze them for lunch another day. No matter how large the Scramble recipe is, we never have an abundance of leftovers.
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