WFMW: Don't Throw Out Those Take-Out Menus!

It has been awhile since I have participated in Works-For-Me Wednesday, but I have been drained trying to get ready for the holidays. I actually had no original thoughts to contribute!

This week I actually had (I thought) a brilliant idea for those take-out menus that I get in the mail. Usually I get take-out menus from all sorts of restaurants in our area and we also get a booklet from a dining in service that picks up food for you so you don't have to run out and actually pick it up. Normally I throw these in the trash, but they came in handy this week as I have been preparing my menu plan.

This week I was stumped for ideas for dinner, but I pulled these take out menus out and I had a bunch of great ideas for what to fix for dinner. Say you want Italian one night? Well, whip out the Italian take-out menus and pick from those. Don't have a recipe? Well, just head to your computer and look a recipe up on AllRecipes.com. Craving some good pub food? Make your own at home. How about diner food? Why not make it at home instead?

Now since we all know that I love to save money, I had a blast preparing the food and then saying to my husband, "You know, if we went to such-and-such restaurant we would have paid a lot more for this same dish." Since I have the menus I can quote down to the quarter how much I saved us. I am sure it drives him crazy, but it makes me happy!

Menu planning became a lot easier once I saw the menus and even the uncreative can be inspired by reading these.

I hope this works for you too! Check out Shannon's blog for all of this week's participants.