Menus!!!
I bought a PTE subscription for my mother in law, who came to my house last night to get some pointers on how to use it. I went hunting for the "save menu" setting, and discovered, to my shock and delight, the menus tab! I haven't used menus at all with PTE, because it was too cumbersome to review them, preview them, and edit them. The menus tab, with it's drag and drop functionality, is terrific, and somehow much easier to use.
After playing with it for a while, I came up with a few suggestions. Then I saw that you are already planning most of the important ones: previewing menus, dragging menus that are already on the calendar, and editing existing menus. All three of those would be just what I need to start using the menu planning.
Here is my only other thought: it would be great to be able to delete a block of menus from the calendar as well, and/or it would be nice to have a kind of scratch pad for creating menus. Here's my logic for that one: planning a menu is very different than putting a menu into a real week. In a "real" week, I often have notes related to particular days, and/or unexpected scheduling glitches. So if I save a week as a menu, then I also get: "Gramma here." or "School Committee Meeting" or "Use frozen turkey" in addition to my recipes. So then I mosey way into the future to find a blank week, and just kind of drag and drop recipes until I get a menu that can serve as a template. Then I save it. THEN I have to go through that week on the calendar and individually delete every single recipe that I dragged there. So maybe whenever you create the magic preview/edit menu window, it could be a preview/edit/create window instead. Open a blank Monday-Sunday week, and just start planning.
That seemed awfully wordy for a relatively simple idea. Sorry. :)
Support Staff 2 Posted by Clint on 29 Jan, 2012 08:32 PM
Hi Shelley! =)
I was kind of thinking the same thing – that the edit window could also be
the create window. Hopefully in a few weeks I can get back to finishing my
ideas for the menus because I think they are a key component to planning
AND sharing!
Yours,
Clint
3 Posted by shelleyevans on 15 May, 2012 11:30 AM
So, as you already know, I'm in one of those "play with Plan To Eat" modes, and I'm really getting into the menu thing. I'm increasingly committed to the idea of reducing food waste during our week, and saved menus are the best way to do that-- I can put a lot of thinking into how each meal "feeds" the next, and then save it as a template for the future. This makes me wonder...how's the menu stuff going? :)
4 Posted by Chiby on 16 May, 2012 12:57 PM
OMG, I had not even noticed there was a menu tab. This made my day!!!
5 Posted by shelleyevans on 16 May, 2012 05:31 PM
My whole experience with PTE is like that-- keep discovering things that make my life better. :)