Simple Reference

I am fairly new to CommandBars, but I seem to always have trouble referencing certain sub menus.  I have actions in place and that works great, but if I wanted to update/populate a sub-menu OF another sub-menu WITHOUT using the update event, how do I reference the menu.  In other words, I have a "file" menu that has a "recent files" sub-menu. In order to populate the "recent files" sub-menu I need to reference it. Now ALL my menus have unique IDs, but I can't seem to get a reference to the menu item. I want to avoid using the FindControl because apparently that is not the best approach. Thanks!