Pinterest Menu

DIY Meal Planning Menu Board

I always come across cute menu boards/binders like this on Pinterest (or through various blogs) and I think "I want to make one of those!"  Maybe someday when we have a bigger kitchen I'll find 1) space for something of that sort and 2) that I'll actually need it, but for now it would probably create more work than necessary.  As you well may know, Kyle and I do most of our recipe-browsing and shopping list planning online.  We use sites like Punchfork & foodgawker when we really have no idea what we want to eat.  They give us some really nice pictures and then we can click to a recipe that we're interested in making.  When looking for a particular recipe, Google is our best friend.  We like to add the word "healthy" to most normal recipes...and then Google will point us in the direction of one of our favorites: AllRecipes, Food Network, or our good friend Martha.  If it's anything baking related, I generally head over to the baking blogs I follow: Love & Olive Oil, Joy the Baker, & Mel's Kitchen Cafe.  After finding recipes, we use an app/website called Wunderlist to make our shopping list.  Wunderlist is great because there is an app for Mac computers, Google Chrome (the web browser), iPhones, & Android phones, plus a website!  We can access it from anything connected to the internet!  Double Bonus: you can rearrange items & it allows you to share lists with people - which means I arrange items by where we will find them in the store so we don't have to backtrack + Kyle and I share a "grocery list" which we can both add to at home and check off when we're in the store.  Pretty awesome, right?  I guess for people who don't grocery shop together, it's not actually that cool...but we use our weekly shopping trips as additional "together" time.  Kyle says it goes a lot faster when I'm there & we stay within budget...so I guess that's a bonus. ;)

I organize my yummy finds on Pinterest in hopes that someday I will be able to make everything (which is obviously not possible).  I have a board for Desserts, Salads, Breads, Breakfast, and even one for recipes we've already tried and loved.  Today I had the brilliant idea of making a Pinterest board for things we're going to make in the next week.  I have no idea why it took me this long to think of this!  Usually, I pin things on Pinterest and then I have to sift through all of the pins to find that one thing I was going to make this week.  And then every time I want to access it I have to scroll down and down and down until I get to it.  Every.  Single.  Time.  So now, I can put those recipes in one location with no extra clutter and easily access them when the time comes to make the shopping list as well as cooking time in the kitchen.

I'm really excited about my new board!  So much that I dedicated a whole blog post to it. ;)