I am terrible at menu planning. Actually, I’m terrible at menu follow-through. I’m actually a wonderful planner. I make lists, charts, schedules…and for me they are usually a bunch of papers. I am BAD at execution of these plans. The big hang-up for me I think is organization. I am so disorganized it is paralyzing. So when Money Saving Mom reviewed a service called Stolen Moments Menu Planning, I went to take a look. After all, I love a good plan. So, I took and look and I was impressed.
Imagine if someone could come in and see how your family eats, how you like to cook, and then does all the planning for you – menus, recipes, and grocery lists based on the foods your family likes and avoiding cooking techniques that just don’t work for you. Now, I’m kind of picky. We have to eat as naturally as possible for Boo (although it certainly doesn’t hurt the rest of us), but if something is too complicated, I won’t make it. Have you ever seen some of those recipes for “from scratch” food?! So, with high hopes and a bit of skepticism I signed up.
I filled out a pretty extensive questionnaire on my family’s likes an dislikes, how I wanted my menus and grocery lists organized, what kinds of cooking work best for me (go crockpot!). There were even places for me to comment … things like “we use fresh whole wheat flour” which is important because some recipes do NOT convert automatically to whole wheat…and “we avoid MSG” which means no prepackaged seasoning mixes for us. I signed up for the full plan which includes breakfast and lunch. Let’s face it, the girls and I are home everyday and it is just as hard to think of something interesting and healthy for breakfast and lunch day in and day out as it is for dinner.
When I got my plan I was even more impressed. The recipes looked yummy. They were simple and doable. As I was noticing how the recipes were simple and doable, I got a brilliant idea! Everything was all in one place… plan, recipes…directions…the GIRLS could read what was for breakfast/lunch/dinner and then THEY could MAKE IT!!!!! Dreams of a life of leisure filled my head…
Okay, now I haven’t actually tried any of the recipes yet (remember that execution thing?). December was probably not the wisest month to try to begin. However, I am raring to go now, and I will give you an update next week.
The one caveat I must mention as a former desktop publishing guru is the layout of the menu plan. It arrives in it’s PDF glory (mine was around 50 pages for the month), and I found its layout to be less than polished. The content was excellent, but recipes broke across pages and the calendar, recipes, and grocery lists ran together a bit. Now this is decidedly a minor quibble that may only be an annoyance to those of us who fix up these sorts of things for a living, but in my eyes, it is the one thing that keeps the service from being perfect.
