Fast and Furious

I received this email last summer from a fellow 30 Day Gourmet cook.

"Hey Shelley! Just a quick note...we're doing a pig roast Friday night. (Actually, we're not roasting the pig ourselves, we hired someone to do that for us.) I'm in charge of the food, and we currently have 83 adults/teens and 20 kids coming. So I'm sitting down tonight to start putting my grocery list together, and figuring I need to make 4x my brownie recipe, and 2x my cookie recipe and 10x my baked bean recipe. As I sit there with pen and paper, at 10:30 pm, after a long day, trying to double my 5x column in my head, a light bulb goes off and I say "DUH!!! THIS is what my software is for!!" = ) Slowly but surely, I'm going to get this down to use my software all the time!! Thought you would appreciate my DUH moment! = ) Have a great day!!!"

I love it when people discover how versatile the software is. You don't have to be freezer cooking at the moment in order to make it useful. So, if you're putting your Thanksgiving menu together at the last minute, let the software make your grocery list for you! I have a fast and furious method for entering new recipes that will have you braving the lines at the grocery store in no time.

1. Enter the recipe name and category.

2. Enter the recipe ingredients (but not the instructions!)

3. Print the recipe and slip it into a page protector.

4. Drop the recipe card with the cooking instructions into the page protector with the printed recipe. (Photocopy any recipes used from cookbooks.)

5. Create a cooking day in the software and add the recipes on your menu. Don't forget to change the recipe quantities to reflect the number of people you're feeding.

6. Print the grocery report.

7. Detour through the kitchen for a quick inventory. Eliminate any items on the grocery list that are already stocked in your kitchen.

At some point, you might need to go back and add the instructions to the recipe. (But then again, maybe not!) If you leave the Thanksgiving Cooking Day in your database, you'll have a head start for next year's dinner, as well as a reminder of what you served this year!