Me v. Chocolate Easter Bunny

I received a delightful hunk of dark chocolate in the shape of a bunny for Easter. It's not one of those chincy hollow rabbits, either. This thing is made of solid, good for you in small doses, rich dark chocolate. Therein lies the problem. It's too thick and hard to just bite, and flakes when I cut it with a knife. Imagine me standing in the kitchen, chopping desperately at the innocent bunny to no avail. I'm thinking of a chocolate chisel. I've even considered melting it slightly. Pathetic or devoted? You can weigh in on that, but remember, we are talking about dark chocolate here!

While we're talking about food, let's move on to this post's actual content. I constantly hear people saying they always make the same meals, or they hate going to the store and not knowing what to get to make meals. We don't have that issue at the Anderson household (see "wife with overflowing cookbook and recipe ideas"). But I was thinking, "What could help if I did have that issue?"

This is the old school method we use: Every weekend, I find 3-5 recipes I want to make for dinner that week. I pull out the recipes, make a list of the ingredients we don't have, add on our weekly staples, and send the list with my husband to the store. This takes about 15 minutes, and the shopping trip takes 30-45. Pretty quick.

What if you don't have a stockpile of recipes, or don't feel like sorting through the old cookbook, or don't want to make a list? Here's where your blogging host comes in: Go to Monthly Meal Planner. It does all the planning for you. There's a monthly plan for a meal a day, and you can just print the grocery lists from the site for your desired number of days. It's pretty slick and best of all, it's free. Here's a sample of recipes from their website. My family would east most of them, but I would have to figure out what zuppa is first.

Weekly Snapshot

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
Breakfast for Dinner	Cheesy Rigatoni with a Green Salad	Greek Chicken with Cretan Wedding Rice	Mediterranean Pita Sandwiches	Zuppa Toscana and a Baguette	Pasta Primavera with Italian Turkey Sausage	BLT Pizza

I'm a sucker for free solutions, and this seems like it would be something I would use during a busy week or when I'm not feeling inspired to cook.

All my best,
Robin