Food on the Table!!!

I am so excited about a website a facebook friend posted on her page today. I went to it and after a few minutes, I was hooked. The website is (drumroll please) Food on the Table...www.foodonthetable.com!

I mentioned the other day that one of my New Year's Resolutions is to find new recipes to cook for my family and this website has me well on the road to keeping this resolution. This site asks you to identify up to 3 grocery stores you frequent the most, then to check your preferences for the types of meals you like to cook...poultry, beef, shellfish, vegetarian, etc. The next step lists cuts of meat on sale at your chosen store where you then check the boxes next to those you are interested in. Recipes based on your selections are generated in the next step. Here is where it get fun! Scroll through the suggested recipes and choose what sounds yummy to you. The selected dishes go into a cue and printable recipes and grocery lists become available at your finger tips. There are plenty of other features I have yet to explore, but this is enough to get you started.

The basic, free membership allows you to choose up to 3 recipes a week and gives access to 100 recipes along with organized grocery lists and other features. The paid membership offers quarterly, bi-yearly or yearly payments which gives you the ability to choose a complete weeks worth of recipes and access to thousands of recipes.

For now I am sticking to the basic, free option until I know whether or not I'm going to use it, but it is very user friendly so it looks promising. There is also a blog along with the meal planning part and there are recipes posted there as well. I already chose 3 recipes and cooked Smothered Pork Chops this evening. We all liked it and I can't wait to try the others.

I was able to plan my week in under 3o minutes and the recipes I looked at were easy, used real, regular ingredients that I already have on hand. Most food/meal planning websites put out unusual recipes or a new twist on regular dishes that require obscure or little used ingredients. Now I'm all for trying something new and different, but as a busy woman with two full time jobs as a teacher and a mom, I need easy, go to dishes.

I am very glad that I found this site and will keep you posted on how well the site works. If you try out this site, let me know how it works for you.

Happy Cooking!