This week’s menu is known as “using up what I have”, also know as “shopping in my own cupboards”, also known as “why the heck didn’t we eat this stuff when I bought it the FIRST time?” To help me organize my meal planning this week, I’m using a new service called Springpad that I’d like to share with you as well. Springpad is free to join, free to use, and gives you tons of ways to organize your life.

When you create your Springpad account, you start out with a set of pre-made Springpads. Each pad is a page on your screen that you use to organize information, like your weekly meal plan including the shopping list and a page you can print out with all the cooking directions. Or a Christmas card log-contacts, cards you’ve sent, cards you’ve received. Traveling for the holidays? The Holiday Travel Planner has a page for jotting down notes about the trip, a page for your specific plans including events you will attend.

Now this is really cool and it’s available on several different Springpads- the restaurant planner. Let’s say you’ll be in Denver, Colorado for Christmas, and you want to go out for Sushi on one night.  On the Holiday Travel Planner, click the Plans tab, then click the blue square next to Restaurants. You’ll see this:

Click the “restaurants from the web” tab, and type in Sushi and Denver. Up will come a list of restaurants, click the one you want, and it gets added to your Holiday Travel Planner Springpad automatically. Participating restaurants will also show a link to OpenTable.com, which lets you click and make your reservation!

The Weekly Meal Planner Springpad helps organize your meal plan, your shopping list, even special cooking instructions, all on one handy page. You can type in your own recipes, add recipes from websites, and add restaurants for nights you know you are eating out. It’s so handy!

There’s something on Springpad for everybody, so go take a look around! Remember it’s free to join and free to use, and since the site is in Beta, they welcome your feedback as well. If anything, it’s a great way to stay organized while you are online!

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