Author: Jonathan Blundell

So I’m sure all of you are wondering how my experience with the HEB Meal Planner went.
So far – so good. It took me roughly 15 minutes to print all the recipes, meals and shopping list to the sizes I wanted (for storing in my cookbook).
I spent between 30 and 45 minutes shopping, which could have been shortened had I known the store better. And limited the number of trips to one side of the store before returning to the other side.
I spent $61.34, at HEB, on the entire weeks menu. Now that doesn’t include most of the meat products. I either had the meat at home or substituted one type for another (i.e. ground venison for ground turkey, etc.). I also purchased extras of some items that I knew I’d use more of on snacks or other meals.
I wonder if the store plans the meals to fit a certain price range or not. It will be interesting to track.
Wal-Mart or IGA may be priced differently as well. I bought store brands were possible – not because of price as much as I wanted to have plenty of store brand items to enter HEB’s 100th Anniversary game.
I spent roughly 20-30 minutes on preparing last nights meal – which was fabulous.
I probably made roughly three servings worth, but that gave me plenty for dinner and lunch today.
I’m not super good at following recipes. I know how and I can, but when cooking a meal if it calls for mushrooms or shrimp, or something else I enjoy, I tend to just go with the flow and add more of the things I like.
Because of the shrimp, mushrooms and pre-seasoned rice in last nights meal, I figured the meal probably cost me around $10. Which isn’t too bad considering I made two meals out of that — and the vegetables and other ingredients weren’t all used and will be used later.
Another thing I’ve enjoyed about the menu planner is I know exactly what I’m having for dinner that night. And if I forget – I can easily pull it up off the website.
tonight’s menu: Breaded Chicken Marinara sandwiches, Tossed Dinner Salad and desert.
But if anyone knows me – the desert will probably get left off. I’m not a big fan of buying deserts unless I have the priviledge of a lovely lady joining me for dinner.
Any takers?
Oh and one more great feature on the HEB website.
You can now upload your digital camera photos straight from your hard drive to your local store. If you turn them in by 9 p.m. they say they will be ready by the next day. I uploaded 25 photos today, all but two of them were 4×6 and the other two were 8×11. It only cost me $10 or so. That’s about the same as what I was paying with www.kodakgallery.com, but I can pick the pictures up the next day, rather than waiting and paying for shipping.
We’ll see tomorrow if the quality is the same.
Well I think that’s about it for this update. Time to wrap up the paper so I can go home and enjoy dinner.

My sister, Kathryn Shindoll, is embarking on a two month trip to Russia, beginning today. I’ve started a blog for her, Back in the USSR, so everyone can keep track of her trip and pray for her struggles and praise God in her victories.
Keep checking in for her latest updates.

Scobleizer writes that he thinks the new LenovoThinkpad T41 Tablet PC has a lot to do with Apple’s change to Intel Chips.
Maybe he’s right. He usually is.
Anyone know where I can get a “press demo” of that Tablet?

According to the Wrestling News:

WWE announced on Friday an interesting main event for the 7/11 Raw at the Continental Airlines Arena in NJ.
WWE is advertising Triple H & JBL teaming up against John Cena & Batista. I haven’t sat down to confirm it. But will this be the first Raw following the draft and trades? I believe it could be. Interesting that they are ignoring the roster split AFTER the draft. Nevertheless, it should be an interesting main event – if it goes down.

Cena was the first draft pick for the month long WWE draft.
As the Smackdown Champion, it will be interesting to see how they develop their storylines from this.
It could mean Batista will go to Smackdown. Or, if this is how they’re advertising their 7/11 show, I predict an invasion of Raw talent to Smackdown or vice-versa and hopefully a unification of the belt again.
Granted – it could all change at any moment – as it has before.

I just found the perfect bachelor tool on HEB’s website. AWESOME!
I went looking for a meal idea for tonight and they have a pre-planned menu for each week on their site.
You can click on the items and pull up a recipe. Then scale the menu for how many servings you want to fix.
Personally I’m going to try two servings. One for dinner and one for lunch the next day. Granted – that’s if I only eat one serving for dinner.
Once you have the recipe scaled to the number of servings you want, you can either print out a 3×5 size card, a 4×6 size card or a full page recipe. Personally I’m going with a 4×6 to fit in the handy recipe book my sister Amy made me for Christmas a few years back (another perfect gift for your favorite bachelor).
And then above and beyond that – you can print out a shopping list with everything you need to make that weeks menu on it.
Awesome.
Now I only need a nutritionist to let me in on how healthy I’m really eating.
Some of the recipes have nutritional information and some don’t.
But this is a tool everyone should know about. Use it and have fun. I’m about to go do my shopping for the week and I’ll try the Thai Curried Shrimp with Mushrooms tonight.