My new toy...

So the other night we went to Best Buy and the strangest thing happened. I bought something and Mike didn't, not only was this a rare occasion but its the second time its happened this month! He didn't want to be one-upped or suffer withdrawal so last night he stopped there after work to buy a CD. We have both got our fix for awhile.
I bought MasterCook. It is recipes and recipe organizing software. I'm hoping it will help me keep track of my recipes and menus. I tend to be losing them lately. Anyway, I've been playing around with this program quite a bit and have realized that I LOVE IT! It has over 8,000 recipes, a place for me to keep my recipes, a meal planner, a menu planner, nutritional calculators, shopping lists and pantry trackers. I pick the recipes I want to use, make a meal with them plug the meal into what day I want to serve it and it will figure the groceries I need to purchase based on what I have in my pantry/fridge. Right now I already do all of this but it takes me about 3 hours a week to come up with main dishes, sides and a grocery list based on those. Now I just input the meals I regularly use, click and drag to the Meal Plan and merge this with my usual shopping list. Easy cheesy, except for the EXTENSIVE amount of data entry I need to do to inventory what I have and what I make every month. I've been putting recipes in a little each day, when I have that done I will start on inventory... I've dreaded doing inventory ever since I worked in the retail industry. Let's see, now all I need is a laptop in the kitchen and a data entry clerk!