Writers and Cooks: Create A Digital Menu Board for the Holidays!

My mother is not a big eater, so naturally, she is not big on cooking. Every year for Christmas Eve, which we celebrate at my house, she tries to make it simple for me, the frustrated chef. This year, she has requested only one food item, grilled cheese sandwiches! It’s simply maddening! Grilled cheese for the holidays? Seriously?

So…wanting to make it special and taking a cue from the holiday issue of Southern Living, I decided to create a special made-to-order grilled cheese sandwich menu. At the last minute, I asked my husband to try and find one of those charming wipe-off menu boards, the ones held by a ceramic pig or French chef. As he was on his way to the golf course, he naturally found 1,000 reasons why this was a bad idea on the day before the day before Christmas Eve.

So on a whim, I decided to make the most of technology and create a powerpoint version of a digital menu board that I’ll display from my laptop. In terms of design, it’s fairly amateurish, but I’m thinking it will make things much simpler. The choices for our guests are clearly displayed, as is the note about self-service for beverages. It will be up to my husband to take the orders (hee hee) while me, the chef, operates the griddle.

Writers are artists by definition so I’m including this menu here in the hopes that it might help you in your party-planning.

I’ve already envisioned tons of applications, from birthday luncheons to Thanksgiving meals.

Now, if I can just figure out how to keep my screen saver from turning on!

Happy Holidays to all of you and best wishes for a joyous New Year. Looking ahead, I’ve got a smorgasbord of articles planned for 2013 that will hopefully inspire your writing in the New Year.