Getting Organized: Helpful Meal Planning Tech For Your Phone
Do you need help with meal planning? Do you look at social media for inspiration but never cook the recipes you save? Check out these helpful phone apps that make meal planning easier.
Social media has elevated cooking and meal prep to an art form. It's packed with beautiful images that make you drool. Websites lure you in by showing “easy to make” cooking clips. Here is some good news if you aren’t making those ‘delicious meals’ because you feel a bit disorganized!
Three phone apps that can make recipes from social media easier.
The first is Recime, which is the app I use. I chose this app because I had so many recipes saved on my phone but found I wasn’t actually cooking them. What I enjoyed about this app is how easy it is to save ‘liked’ meal ideas from social media. It costs $49 per year, which seems average for this type of service.
Recime is straightforward, and recipes that I was curious about are easy to find on my phone and share via text message with my friends and family. The download also includes a link to the SM post, which is fantastic! I can rewatch the reel to make sure I understand what to do.
This app allows you to create cookbooks to organize your recipes. I quickly learned I wanted different cookbooks for miscellaneous recipes (making hazelnut creamer), sauces, and snack and dessert ideas. It also has a database of recipes that other users have made public. This is also cool, but I don’t use this feature often.
What I like about the program is it speeds up menu planning. It offers a menu planning feature that automatically generates a shopping list. I have tried this feature, and it seems incredible, but my brain short circuits, so I’m sticking with pen and paper.
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When I used this feature, I noticed that not all of the ingredients listed in the recipe made it onto the list. I suspect it is because not all recipes on social media list all the ingredients in the comment section. Some food bloggers ask you to text “Recipe” or another trigger word to deliver the full recipe as an instant message.
I also noticed some ingredients were duplicated. For example, if two recipes call for garlic, it is listed twice. Another example is ‘yogurt’ vs. “plain yogurt.” At my house, I have yogurt (vanilla). Seeing it listed twice, I didn’t recheck why; I just deleted the second yogurt. Unfortunately, I don’t recommend making Tzatziki sauce (a salted yogurt and cucumber sauce) with vanilla-flavored yogurt!
Other phone apps can help you get organized. Plan To Eat is very similar to Recime. It offers a clipping service and has many customizable features. It was a bit too technical for me but it is worth checking out.
Emeals provides 300+ recipes that you can organize yourself. You can upload your own, make menus and shopping lists. It seems targeted at people who don’t want to go ‘shopping’ for recipes on the web or social media.
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Create Shared Shopping Lists
I just learned that if your iPhone uses iOS17, it comes with a built-in shopping list (that, yes, can be shared with other people). Goodbye, refrigerator note pads, hello digital shopping lists!
Here is how to create a grocery list in Reminders
In the Reminders app, tap Add List. Choose the account you want to use if necessary.
Customize your list with a name and icon, then tap List Type.
Tap Groceries.
Tap Done.