MEAL MANAGEMENT : AN OVERVIEW

Introduction and Scope Meal management is not a simple task, but a series of events concerned with menu-planning, food purchasing, preparation, and serving the meal. Proper storage is involved whenever necessary for food safety and preservation, i.e., after buying or acquiring the food, in pre-preparation and cooking, and in safekeeping any left-over. Quantity food service management will be an advanced course and requires basic meal management as prerequisite. While fundamental principles are similar, there are additional issues to be considered in quantity cooking because of the number of people served. For example, food laws and governmental policies have to be observed by hospitals, nursing homes, school cafeterias, military facilities, and the commercial food service industry. The latter group is more complex, because cooking for profit and menu merchandising are some of the main concerns of the meal manager.

DEFINITION AND BASIC CONCEPTS Meal management is the efficient application of the 5 Ms of management, namely: man hour (time), materials, methods, money and manpower (labor) in planning, purchasing, preparing and serving the meal in a sanitary and safe condition at the proper time and temperature. Another viewpoint to discuss an efficiently managed meal is to list the quality factors to be considered in serving meals properly. These are: y y y y y SANITATION AND SAFETY FACTOR NUTRITIONAL QUALITY ORGANOLEPTIC OR PALATABILITY FACTOR SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND OTHER CULTURAL FACTORS TIME AND ENERGY-SAVING FACTOR

A menu pattern is a general outline of foods served in one meal. It may consist of courses that require the proper sequence of offering the food, or the whole meal may be served all at once. A sample menu is a specific kind of the food, possibly with a description of how it is prepared. Menu patterns are variable, depending on the food budget of a family and the foodways of an ethnic group or food culture of a country. A simple one-dish pattern and sample menu could be just Congee for a Chinese breakfast or Cinnamon Roll with Nuts and Coffee/Milk for a busy working family. Kinds of menus are classified according to mealtime, such as: breakfast, lunch, supper or dinner, and snacks in-between meals locally called merienda or minindal . Festive menus are also recognized

by their names, such as baby shower party, birthdays, wedding anniversaries, graduation, and religious holidays. Menu cards when dining out, list items in the menu priced individually ( a la carte), or the complete menu has one fixed price (table d hote). Commercial restaurants may serve their specialties as their main offering. They are sometimes called: theme restaurants and they serve their signature recipes. They have menu cards that are quite attractive and reasonably priced, because of keen competition.

Filipino menu patterns and sample menus for the whole day Menu Pattern Breakfast Fruit Cereal Main dish Bread-Spreads Beverage Papaya Cubes Champorado Toasted Dilis (optional) Milk Banana Slices Rice Krispies Scrambled Eggs Pan de Sal Margarine Coffee-Cream Sample Menu #1 Sample Menu #2

Lunch Soup Main dish Vegetable or Salad Rice, Bread Dessert Beverage Example for packed lunch (baon) Chicken Noodle Soup Adobo Bun Banana Lemonade Example for Sun, Lunch (one-dish meal) Putsero(has broth, meats, green vegetables, potatoes) Steamed Rice Watermelon Ice

Supper Soup (optional) Main dish Stock from Sinigang Sinigang na Bangus Miswa-Patola Soup Chicken BBQ