Trying to create a custom menu and populate it with a few actions (python functions)

I'm able to edit "MainMenuCommon.xml" and do whatever I want with the main menu, but I would like to use "MainMenuEscape.xml". Comments in this file suggest that I can edit this file and menu items will get added to the main menu, however no matter what I add to "MainMenuEscape.xml" nothing appears, and I have to return to editing "MainMenuCommon.xml" in order to create the menus/items.


Things I've tried:

-Adding MainMenuEscape.xml to documents/houdini folder (as suggested by the documentation)
-Editing MainMenuEscape.xml in it's original location (houdini install folder)

What works

-Editing MainMenuCommon.xml in the houdini install folder


I would like to be able to just edit MainMenuEscape.xml and keep MainMenuCommon.xml in its original state if possible. Am I missing something that needs to be set (boolean/option/setting) so that the items get pulled from MainMenuEscape.xml to populate the menu?

The info here is very detailed in constructing the actual menu items but doesn't quite explain how these files interact, scoping etc..

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/basics/config_menus.html [www.sidefx.com]