A weekly menu planner is an inexpensive piece of software that, if used correctly, will yield benefits far beyond any other piece of home-based software you have. The menu planner is often overlooked as an essential piece of home-based software, but it delivers big benefits for a small price.

Bringing a little order to a chaotic kitchen:

Most of us cooks are just a little bit chaotic in our approach to daily family meals, and that little bit of chaos can keep it fun. But too much chaos just brings disaster, wasted time and wasted money. Let's look at an ordinary household kitchen, and what unplanned meals ultimately cause.

Without any planning, first of all, grocery shopping tends to be problematic. Shopping without a coherent weekly meal plan means that you may overbuy some items, fall short on others, and completely leave out key ingredients when you get to the checkout counter. The result? You spend too much money on things you probably don't need, and you waste time because you have to take last-minute trips to the store when you realize what you've forgotten. These quick last minute trips often lead to more impulse buying which only costs more money and rarely includes healthy choices.

When you do get to the kitchen and start to prepare the family meal, without a plan, every day you have to ask the same question: "What can I cook today?" And of course, when you ask that question, everyone has an opinion, and those opinions are seldom the same. If you have a meal planner, the question doesn't need to be asked, and you avoid the inevitable disputes and disappointments.

The shopping list feature:

One of the best features of a weekly menu planner is the shopping list feature. This is a simple list that is generated by the software, based on the meals you have planned out. It gives you an easy, printable shopping list that makes sure you get everything you need when you go to the store. The best part about a great menu planner shopping list is that it not only includes all of the items you will need to prepare the meals you have planned, but often the list is organized by store categories which can save you a lot of time in the store.

Avoiding the Grandma Syndrome:

Everybody knows this one. The traditional "old world" way of cooking was to make plenty of food, so there would be enough for unexpected guests, and plenty left over for later. Of course, Grandma would always encourage you to "eat, eat, bubela!" and she would be disappointed if you didn't consume every bite of the huge portions she would bestow on you. What it all came down to though, is that Grandma always made too much food, and much to her dismay, much of it would go to waste, or worse the extra food led to overeating

The weekly menu planner helps to avoid that situation, simply by planning portions ahead of time and allowing you to prepare just the right amount.

The weekly menu planner can be indispensable. It's no replacement for Grandma—but it certainly helps make the cooking go faster, saves money at the supermarket, and helps keep people on track with their dietary goals.