How to Plan and Prepare Interesting Meals

When planning meals, whether for your family or for expected guests, you should always make them "interesting". For example, you can plan a colorful meal that is always appetizing than a dull one. Most foods start out looking bright and colorful. You can keep them that way if you follow some general rules in meal preparation.

To add interest to the meals you are preparing, try to use the following principles:

Meat Loaf

1) Choose foods that make attractive color combinations. If the food itself has little color, plan to add a garnish such as parsley, lemon, or spiced apple slices.

2) Avoid repetition of flavors in a meal. For example, try to avoid serving tomatoes as soup, salad, and sauce all in the same meal; or apples in the form of a beverage, salad, and pie in a single meal.

3) Select flavors that blend. Some favorite go-togethers are roast pork and apples, turkey and cranberries, and lamb and mint jelly. Serve mild (or bland) foods with highly seasoned or strong-flavored foods. For example, bland spaghetti goes well with a highly seasoned sauce.

4) Avoid repetition of shapes in the foods served in a meal. For instance, meat balls, boiled potatoes, and whole buttered beets are all ball-shaped. Meat balls, mashed potatoes, and buttered shoestring beets provide varied shapes and more interest in the same meal.

5) Contrast the texture of foods served together. A meal is more interesting if some foods are soft and others are crunchy. For instance, crisp cookies are a favorite with ice cream. On a vegetable plate, a raw vegetable might be served as contrast in texture to soft, cooked vegetables.

6) Use more than one preparation method for each meal. For instance, add a crisp, fresh salad to an oven meal made up of meat loaf, baked potatoes, scalloped tomatoes, and apple pie. Avoid serving a meal in which all the foods have been fried or all have been creamed.

7) Provide variety in the temperatures of the foods served. The hot oven meal would be improved in this respect by the addition of cold salad and ice cream on the pie. Except in very hot weather, an all-cold meal has more appeal when served with a hot beverage such as cocoa, coffee, or hot soup.

8) In planning meals for guests, avoid foods or food combinations with strong, unusual flavors. Unless you know your guests' preferences, it is best to serve foods that are liked by most people.

It takes some amount of patience, precision movements, and timing to prepare an interesting meal. Your success will come easily with a good plan, good equipment, and enough practice.

How to Plan and Prepare Interesting Meals

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