Back to my regular routine and Menu Planning

Yesterday and today have been kind of busy.

I was hoping to travel to Pakistan to see my family but looks like the visa stuff is going to keep us held up for a while. So I decided to 'get back into' my life here in Cairo.

I am enrolled in an Arabic class here and once I started planning on going to Pakistan, I said eh..leme just slack off.  I was back in class today. Mary started going to her daycare again - during my Arabic class time.
I had an hour after my class ended and before I needed to pick up the kids (Budi from his school and Mary from hers).  So I sat down to menu plan. That didn't happen...buuut I did find a really nice recipe here.  Its the lunch recipe for Teriyaki wings. I've had a cooker's block? if there's such a thing lately.  Trying to break through it!

I need to get back into my weekly menu planning routine.  Some people like my sister do it monthly. I have trouble planning that far in advance, mainly because I know I'll come up with something I'll want to eat somewhere in the middle of the month ( i mean c'mon a month is a long time) and then I'll feel like I'm not sticking to the plan and then I might just throw the whole thing out. Soo weekly planning works great.

If you have never done it, and I know many of us menu plan WHILE shopping and hey if that works for you great, but if it doesn't work, try these simple steps:

1-get online
2-find 5-6 good recipes you want to try out this week
3-make a grocery list of the ingredients you don't have
4-go out and shop (or if you are in Cairo, then pick up the phone and ORDER YOUR GROCERIES.--heaven)
5-Your'e done!

Feel free to do this for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks as well, and free up your brain and time to think about other MORE IMPORTANT things :-)

With the gazillions of recipes you can find online, I sometimes wonder why people still buy recipe books?  Are you into recipe books? Why:-)? If so, what are your favorite recipe books?  I'd love to hear your comments.
:-)