Data Coding suggestions

[steven.oldner]

Just learning Python and have a project to create a weekly menu and a
shopping list from the menu.  This is something I do manually now, so
I'm automating it.

What I'd like is a list of menu choices, such as:
CODE-  Description - Est Cost

'B01 - Pancakes, Sausage,and Eggs - $5.80,
'L01 - Tuna Fish sandwices and chips -$ 4.25 ,
'D01 - Dirty Rice and Garlic Bread' - $5.70.

>From the choices, I'll create a weekly menu, print the menu, and then
print list of ingredients ( and sum the commom items)

CODE- Item - Qty. - Unit
B01 - pancake mix - 1 - box
B01 - milk             - .3 -gal
B01 - eggs            - 10 - each
D01 - dirty rice mix - 1 - box
D01 - milk             - .3 - gal.

I would like to expand the ingredient list to include other fields
like 'last purchase date' and 'reorder point'.

I've used an example program and started to code it but just realized
I've been coding ABAP in Python, that is set up a data structure and
use that.  What I want is to learn code Python in Python.

Question:  How should I set up the data?  I'm looking at maybe 70 menu
items and maybe 1000 items for the shopping list.  I need to be able
to maintain each item also.

I am using python 2.6 but would like to use 3.0.

Thanks for any suggestions!