Menu Planning

So I've been making menus and then grocery lists from them for years off and on. When I'm "on the wagon" I save money and always have what I need on hand which is a lot less frustrating than those nights that I'm standing in front of the freezer, fridge, or pantry and realizing I could make four or five different meals if I only had one more ingredient.

Lately, I've been using a program called BigOven. It's a website that has an app that syncs all the info onto your phone, iPad, etc. It has many recipes already in the program, but you can add your own as well. It stores the recipes and you just drag them into the calendar.

After that you tell it to generate a list and it will guide you through the ingredients for each recipe and you can uncheck what you already have on hand. The really nice thing about this is that it means I don't forget that I need noodles for a pasta dish (which I have done before even with making a list ahead of time). It automatically send the list to your phone and organizes it by department so it's easy to shop at the store. My husband also has it on his phone, so he can add something to the list for me to pick up at the store. Another thing I appreciate about it is that I don't spend an hour trying to think of another dinner idea. All my ideas are in there already. Now I thought about doing a similar system on paper, but I lose paper. Little lists get lost or sometimes even eaten around here. My computer and phone, I (usually) know where they are and they can survive (a little) drool. 

Dried Strawberries and Frozen Yogurt Drops

I tried two recipes off of Pinterest, and I have mixed reviews of both. Well, that's not true. The dried strawberries idea didn't work at all. The post claimed that if you cut strawberries into halves or quarters that they would dry out in three hours in an oven set at 200 degrees. Not only did it take a lot of longer for the strawberries to get anywhere close to dry, they pretty much just cooked a bit and got squishy. Nothing resembling dried fruit. Maybe there is more to it, but don't bother to try it.

The frozen yogurt drop recipe was very simple. Basically, you just took yogurt and squeezed small dots onto a cookie sheet and then but it in the freezer. My toddler loved them, but they melted pretty quick and by the time she was getting them to her mouth, her hands were already pretty messy. I sort of thought the advantage of this might be that she could eat the yogurt herself since she insists on touching all of her food right now, even if it means spitting out something I spooned in just to touch it. This sort of worked, and I guess was better than the alternative, but I'm sort of wondering if it's worth the trouble of squeezing all the dots onto the cookie sheet.

http://pinterest.com/sbarnard03/ehhh/