{"id":3995,"date":"2010-08-31T13:22:18","date_gmt":"2010-08-31T19:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/?p=3995"},"modified":"2010-09-03T11:52:40","modified_gmt":"2010-09-03T17:52:40","slug":"menu-planning-resource-and-a-giveaway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/31\/menu-planning-resource-and-a-giveaway\/","title":{"rendered":"Menu Planning Resource and a GIVEAWAY!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve mentioned many times how crucial menu planning is to making my week go smoothly.\u00c2\u00a0 But it does take time to sit down, look through my recipes, compare with the grocery store sale ads for the week, and check to see what I&#8217;ve got in the freezer.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially with a super active three year old that is constantly demanding my attention!<\/p>\n<p>What if <em>someone else<\/em> took care of your menu plan for you?\u00c2\u00a0 Enter <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodonthetable.com\/\">Food on The Table<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 I had the opportunity recently to try out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodonthetable.com\/\">Food on the Table<\/a>&#8216;s menu planning service.\u00c2\u00a0 They didn&#8217;t ask me to write a review and I don&#8217;t normally review products for my blog.\u00c2\u00a0 However I think this service could be of great use to many of you!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodonthetable.com\/\">Food on the Table<\/a> is a menu planning service that is just the solution for busy moms like me.\u00c2\u00a0 This graphic below sums it up perfectly!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Picture-10.png\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Picture-101.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3998\" title=\"Picture 10\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Picture-101.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"557\" height=\"155\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Picture-101.png 557w, https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Picture-101-300x83.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 557px) 100vw, 557px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nHere&#8217;s how <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodonthetable.com\/\">Food on the Table<\/a> works:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You select your grocery store.\u00c2\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodonthetable.com\/\">Food on the Table<\/a> then finds the current sales at your local grocery store, and you have the option of incorporating those items into your menu for the week.<\/li>\n<li>You select your food preferences and what you&#8217;re in the mood for.\u00c2\u00a0 Have a craving for shrimp?\u00c2\u00a0 Select it here, and you&#8217;ll get a shrimp dish (or two!) as part of your weekly menu.<\/li>\n<li>Then <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodonthetable.com\/\">Food on the Table<\/a> provides meal suggestions based on your grocery store sales, food preferences, and what is most important to you (quick recipes, cheap meals, etc).\u00c2\u00a0 At this point, you can use the suggested recipes or view some similar recipes to create your meal plan for the week.<\/li>\n<li>Time for your grocery list!\u00c2\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodonthetable.com\/\">Food on the Table<\/a> generates a cumulative, printable grocery list for the week based on your menu plan.\u00c2\u00a0 You can review the list and delete things you already have on hand and add personal items.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Things I liked about Food on the Table:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Nutritional info for recipes is provided along with the serving size.<\/li>\n<li>I love that you can personalize by grocery store sales and food preferences.\u00c2\u00a0 I usually only buy the meat that is on sale, and we&#8217;ve got picky eaters here, so this is perfect for me.<\/li>\n<li>Tasty recipes!\u00c2\u00a0 All the recipes I tried were delicious!<\/li>\n<li>Grocery lists keep the whole week in mind, and figure out the total amounts needed.<\/li>\n<li>Easy to use website!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Things that need work:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;d like to see fewer processed foods on the ingredients lists, but I am comfortable enough making substitutions that it&#8217;s a non-issue for me in most cases.<\/li>\n<li>A way to exclude certain ingredients for allergies or special diets.\u00c2\u00a0 Luckily we don&#8217;t have food allergies anymore, but when my son was allergic to eggs and milk this would have been a helpful feature.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Overall, this is a great service for anyone who needs a little help planning their menus.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only are you getting your dinners planned, but you can save time and money at the grocery store and try delicious new recipes at the same time!\u00c2\u00a0 Head on over to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodonthetable.com\/\">Food on the Table&#8217;s website<\/a> to check it out.<\/p>\n<p>Now for the<strong> GIVEAWAY!!<\/strong> The nice folks at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodonthetable.com\/\">Food on the Table<\/a> have offered one of my readers a <strong>$25 gift card to the grocery store of your choice! <\/strong>(How cool is that?!\u00c2\u00a0 You get to pick the store!)<\/p>\n<p>You can earn up to THREE entries:<\/p>\n<p><strong>(1)Please leave a comment answering the following question:<\/strong><em><strong> What&#8217;s your biggest meal planning hurdle?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>(2) Leave a separate comment after you subscribe to The Picky Apple&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/ThePickyApple\">RSS Feed<\/a> or via email.\u00c2\u00a0 Or let me know that you already subscribe.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>(3) Leave a separate comment after you join <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/The-Picky-Apple\/110451919009938\">The Picky Apple on Facebook<\/a> or let me know that you&#8217;re already a FB fan.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll leave comments open until 12pm EST on Friday, September, 3.\u00c2\u00a0 The winner will be selected randomly and announced on Friday evening.<\/p>\n<p><em>Disclaimer: I was provided with a free 30-day trial of Food on the Table&#8217;s premium service, but they did not require me to write this review. <\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"linkwithin_hook\" id=\"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/31\/menu-planning-resource-and-a-giveaway\/\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve mentioned many times how crucial menu planning is to making my week go smoothly.\u00c2\u00a0 But it does take time to sit down, look through my recipes, compare with the grocery store sale ads for the week, and check to see what I&#8217;ve got in the freezer.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially with a super active three year old [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-menu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3995"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4036,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3995\/revisions\/4036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}