Making dinner every night can turn into something of a challenge. Without a little pre-planning, you can find yourself falling into the pattern of having the same things over and over again, every single week. However, with just a little bit of planning, you can make sure that you have everything you need to make terrific food every night of the week. Need some proof? Check out this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer's Food Section about Scott Murphy's dinner system. He reads cookbooks for fun and then enters the recipes that he likes into a spreadsheet. Then he'll decide what to make for dinner and create a shopping from the ingredients he's listed. His system might be a bit much for some people (especially for those of us who cook by inspiration), but there are some good tips that can be gleaned from it. Most importantly is to read and mark the recipes that intrigue you and then make sure to add the necessary ingredients to your shopping list.
11-29-2007 @12:02PM AS said... If you're a firefox user, you can upload an add-on called "Grocery List Generator." It allows you to input all your recipes and the ingredients. From there, you select what dishes you will cook and it will add all the ingredients to your grocery list, along with any other items you input (e.g., lightbulbs). It's a great *free* add-on.
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11-29-2007 @4:19PM Jason Levine said... Every Sunday, I plan out our week's meals. The plans aren't set in stone (any time you have a 4 year old and an infant, your plans can't be), but it at least ensures that I have all of my ingredients for the week. Plus, it helps my wife and I with our weight loss plan. We've found that last minute rushes to figure out a meal typically result in high calorie/high fat meals. (Sometimes even fast food!)
AS, That Grocery List Generator plugin looks interesting. Too bad it doesn't look like it allows you to track nutritional information.
I actually was planning on making a recipe/nutritional information website since I keep reusing the same spreadsheet over and over. I've got some big projects in progress right now, but I hope to be able to do some major work on it soon. (I've got it all planned out in my head.) Maybe when the time comes, I'll inquire about the Slashfood audience being my beta testers. :-)
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11-30-2007 @9:27PM bil said... I wonder what an Excel sheet for recipe content would look like. Wolud it total the amounts for the week: say the total amount of onions or whatever?
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