About a year ago, I added technology. I came across the website Plan to Eat -- a menu planning website that I love!
Since I was already doing menu planning manually, the move to this online version was very easy.
Another key principle of Lean is to try things out manually first, then apply technology.
So this is how Plan to Eat works -- it is a subscription service, $39/year and completely worth it in my opinion! Plus you can try it for a month free, which I did and then signed up.
There are three sections to the website-- recipes, planning and list.
Recipes
You can either import from the web or enter your recipes by hand. For the later, I simply enter the recipe name, ingredient list, and then some tags/labels I've decided to use including meal (dinner) and main ingredient (beef). They also have tags you can use -- I use "holiday" and "camping" so I can search just for those types of meals.
There is a bit of start up work to get any of your own recipes into the system, but if you only enter the ingredient list -- it's pretty quick. You'll see why the ingredient list is so key in a moment.
Planner
There is a very user friendly planner tab that lists all your recipes on the left and a calendar on the right. You simply drag and drop recipes into the calendar. You can also add single ingredient side dishes like "broccoli" (which will be added to your shopping list) or include notes like "Leftovers" (which won't be added to your shopping list).
You can also set up saved searches. So if you read my initial meal planning post, you'll remember that I have a paper index of all my meals organized by protein type for dinner. Well on this website I created and saved a search to do the same thing -- basically show me all my meals sorted by main ingredient.
List
In my opinion this is the part that makes it worth the $39 a year. While the recipes and the planning isn't too much different than what I was doing on paper; the part I hated most was compiling my shopping list once I made my meal plan. This involved pulling out all the recipes to ensure all key ingredients had made it onto my list.
With Plan to Eat, you simply navigate to the List tab, enter your planned date range and it generates your list! Amazing! There is some cleanup required such as taking out six "salt" listings. But this takes only a few minutes.
Additionally, I created my own categories or "buckets" for different areas of the store -- such as "household" or "canned goods." Then I can order these to match the general flow of the store.
When I'm shopping I take my phone, pull up my list, and mark things off as I buy them. They don't have a specific app, so you just use the browser and mobile site -- it seems to work well enough. I really only use the list portion on my phone, and do all my planning on an actual computer.
Happy planning!
Heather
**I don't have any affiliation with or sponsorship from Plan to Eat. These are just my personal opinions.
**I don't have any affiliation with or sponsorship from Plan to Eat. These are just my personal opinions.
