Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I really can't compete with many of these awesome stories, but my favorite bad meal was at a dinner put on by the Knights of Columbus. We'd been on a tour bus for a long time, and we were starving. They herded us all off the bus to line up for our buffet dinner. The sides were a little eyebrow-raising, but the chicken, ugh, the chicken! It was just a piece of chicken breast--over-boiled chicken breast--no sauce, no seasoning. Then, they took all the meat and threw it into a big roasting pan to serve with tongs, so it just sat there, getting cold, glassy and hard. My husband sat down, had a look at his plate and said, "this looks like my grandma's foot!" We laughed so hard we made a scene--don't know if it was the picture-taking or the tears? Then we went and got a sandwich.

I make an Excel spreadsheet with the days of the week down the left column. Across the top, I have Entree, Side, Veggie, Dessert, etc. Below the grid, I have a list of main categories--poultry, pasta, beef, etc., and I 'X' each category so I can see what we're eating generally, which helps me avoid 5 days of pasta (which may happen). I just fill it in and go shopping once a week.