To use the meal plan effectively and efficiently, it's sometimes a good idea to create "placeholder" recipes. By "placeholder" recipes, we simply mean ones with a title, and nothing much else.
For instance, let's say you have young kids who like the occasional frozen pizza. Do you really need to type the ingredients all in there? No. You could have one ingredient line in it called "frozen pizza" so your shopping list works out.
It can be very useful to have a "Frozen Pizza" recipe in your recipe box, since you can simply drag and drop that placeholder onto the meal calendar, and tag it with keywords like "@Bridget Likes", "@Jake Likes", etc. You might even consider doing as we do, and tagging it with a keyword like "@Placeholder".
TIP: You might also want to create a generic recipe called "Leftovers from the night before", with no ingredients. This way, you can simply drag it onto your meal calendar to use as a placeholder.
In short, BigOven isn't just about the recipes themselves -- the meal calendar can really help you plan meals well in advance, and avoid that painful "what shall we make tonight?" dilemma that so often strikes when you don't want to think about it.
Using placeholder recipes really speeds up meal planning.