September 8, 2000 11:20 PM EST

Had a good time listening to a mix tape of The Judy's courtesy of cyberbuddy Dana, (Thanks for the tape trade, babe!) Very cutesy.

While listening, I was playing with the CyberDiet Food Exchanger dealie to see how it breaks up my servings over a day and comparing to what Karen wants me to be doing. It's too bad DietWatch doesn't also cover the food exchange business a little better -- but that's calorie based rather than exchange based. But I think exchange based teaches you portions so much better -- and, if eventually, you want to be able to just eyeball something and know you are about ok and not deal with food logging, sooner or later that's where you need to go even if you started out calorie counting.

Which is where I am right now. Trying to do this Vulcan mind meld and smoosh all the best parts of all these things I know, plus menu planning, so my food life can once and for all run like the smooth sailing I want it to be.

At any rate, the Power Food Exchanger gives me this:

I don't much care for the light breakfast and glomming everything into dinner, especially since at night what super active things am I doing? Sleeping? I need the fuel in the morning, not at night! Everyone I know puts the gas in the car before the trip, not after you've already gotten there.

So I rearranged it a bit to fit more of how I like to eat but still keep the same overall values for the day:

There -- now when I am planning menus I can have something in front of me that will help arrange it for me. It's great to know my calorie range, it's great to know I am supposed to have 3-4 servings of vegetables and 6-11 servings of grains and all that jazz.... but it helps a lot more if I can see it in some kind of pattern that I can hinge a menu on.

Ugh, what I need more than some food log type tool is a menu planning tool. Where do I get one of those?! I have to remember to ask Karen if she knows of or likes any menu tools. When I peeked at the NCES catalog I found they have FoodWorks, which is like a fancier, professional version of DietWatch. It does do a "cycle menu" thing but I'm not sure that's what I am thinking of. I also don't quite need to go that far with nutritional analysis!

I hear some people use "MasterCook" but is that just recipe filing or menu planning? And I don't mean menu planning like "what's for dinner?" I mean menu planning across several weeks, taking leftodors into account, what foods are in season,what I do or do not have in the pantry, how much I want to spend on food shopping. More like household food managment!

Maybe I'm asking for too much!

~Astrophe