Meal Planning

I enjoy cooking for my family and our guests. We have a pretty steady of stream of company since hospitality is one of the primary ways I am able to be involved in our ministry. Because I have young children and we homeschool I am somewhat limited in how I can contribute, but opening our home is a natural one to me.

Since we are now entertaining an average of two to three times per week, I have had to get much more organized about how I pull this off. My natural inclination for just about everything is to just wing it, but at this scale that’s not a safe option. I’m also a list maker and for years I’ve lugged legal pads and half legal pads around with lists and lists of lists. I can admit publicly that despite my IT background I tend to be a bit of a Luddite and don’t naturally solve problems the high tech way.

However. I have deliberately approached this challenge by looking for techie ways to make this efficient. I’ve pulled a few ideas from other bloggers and moms and developed a system that works for me.

1. I collect only online recipes.
   No piles of printed paper for me where I can’t find the recipe I’m thinking about and don’t know what to do with it once I made it. If I see a recipe I’d like to make on television I can almost always find it on their website. Even when I find a recipe in a cookbook, I can almost always find it online by googling it.
2. I organize all recipe bookmarks on delicious.
   I made a tag bundle called “Cookbook” and then as I save bookmarks I tag them with relevant tags. By bundling those tags, I can easily find all my bread recipes, beef recipes, soup recipes, etc. (I’ll explain how to tag delicious bookmarks and bundle tags at the bottom of this post.)
3. I plan all hospitality dates on my calendar.
   I currently use Windows Calendar because I want to avoid the Outlook bloat and haven’t found another one I like better. (I am open to options on this part, so let me know if you have another calendaring option you really like). At the beginning of the month I enter all the “events” when we will have people over, then plug in who is invited and contact info.
4. I plan the menu for each event.
   I look through my online cookbook and choose the recipes I plan to make. I then enter the recipe links from my bookmarks into the notes section of the event.
5. I set reminders for event dates and shopping dates.
   As I schedule each event, I set a reminder to pop up so I always have a few days notice of any scheduled company. I also set reminders for shopping dates with a list of entertaining events to shop for. I don’t shop on a regular schedule so I want to make sure that I always have the food on hand that I need for the recipes I have chosen. Usually I will send myself a shopping reminder once a week with the upcoming events to shop for. Once I get that I look through the recipes, check my pantry and fridge, and make a shopping list.

Now that I have this system in place, I have found that entertaining is almost painless. As long as my house is fairly clean, I can easily make a dinner and welcome friends into our home with little effort on my part – no last minute shopping or panicked baking. Feeling relaxed is a great way to enjoy guests and make them feel welcome.

Organizing Recipes on Delicious

Now, for more details about how I organize my recipes online. I have only recently figured this out and still have many recipes to move from my browser bookmarks, but I’ve been plugging away at it. Feel free to look through my bookmarks and add me to your network so I can check out your recipe bookmarks.

1. If you don’t already have a delicious account, you’ll need to create one.
2. Once you have an account, go to your bookmarks page and in the upper right corner you will see a little blue control panel. Click on Tag Options and then click on Manage Tag Bundles. This is where you can create a bundle, such as My Recipes or Cookbook.
3. Once you have a tag bundle created, you’ll have to assign which tags are grouped into your recipe bundle. You can enter tags manually and separate them with spaces. Occasionally you’ll create new tags as you add bookmarks. You’ll need to go in and add them to a bundle so they aren’t just floating around.