How Does She Do It?

This could have been the name of a website *I* came up with! But it's not. It's my new favorite place to plan meals and keep track of recipes. Last week I was making another effort to get organized for the week and plan meals ahead of time. It's such a simple concept, yet something that I struggle with all the time. It's hard enough to fit in everything I need to do to keep the house running. It almost feels like wasting time, to sit down and plan out a menu, shopping list, etc.

So I Googled. I just love making a verb out of a noun. What I found was 1. Most websites I came across either wanted a membeship paid, or money for a CD for a menu planner. 2. Most websites were not helpful at all. The layout was confusing, or not attractive or not helpful. 3. When I finally did find the right website - I realized how EASY it was going to be to get organized!

The website is called howdoesshedoit.com and is just wonderful. I can input my own recipes. I can search for other members' recipes. I can cut and paste members' recipes into my own menu planning. The recipes you enter are there forever (unless you delete it, of course) and then when you select a recipe, the entire shopping list is saved into a seperate link that you can print off! I can't say how much I love this site. My first week started last Sunday. I spent a couple of hours (ok - that's probably the only downside to this) entering in recipes and measurements. But when I was done, I had my entire week of dinners planned out and I'm happy to report that I stuck to it the ENTIRE week! Yes, that's right ladies. I actually followed my own plan. I figured out what I had already on hand, what few things I would need to buy and chose recipes. So far I have maybe 12 dinner recipes, 3 desserts, a couple salad and snack recipes. I will have to keep entering recipes in to my databases to be able to pull them out for later use, but then all the hard work will be over.

I was also smart and cooked up a bunch of shredded chicken, ground beef, cubed cooked top round and shredded beef, all from other meals and then I froze. Now, I just find recipes that fit the meat I have and type them up on my new friendly website!