Scattered though out the saved yogurt and sour cream containers in a drawer are some very dog-eared recipes on bits of paper from all over. Regular printer paper bent in odd shapes, yellow sticky notes ripped from their pads, little dollar store notebook paper, crumpled and splattered, newspaper clippings, index cards and magazine photocopies in black and white. Why in the heck am I telling you about this rather gross assortment of bits and bobs in the bottom drawer of my kitchen? Well, partly because you really can't see it unless you open the drawer, and the drawer sticks pretty good, so it's not likely anyone would ever notice. And partly because my major plan is to get rid of these random and elusive papers with help from my next featured app. Mealboard!
When I started to look for a recipe app, I had a few requirements. I wanted to be able to plan meals, store recipes and create a shopping list using both these features. I was so new to the app world at first I didn't even realize that I could store recipes and plan a menu on the same app - how neat! Now I can't live without it. The thought of approaching a grocery store with out a menu plan and shopping list gives me the heebie-jeebies. I strongly dislike going into a grocery store more than once a week. Too many impulse buys! And I'd probably come home with another bottle of ketchup to add to my collection and no rice, tortillas or cumin. Wasted money, wasted time! Gad, the thought of unbuckling and re-buckling car seats more often than necessary just about makes me faint! If for no other reason, efficiency means less car seat buckles!
I did a bit of online research, checked out a few different apps and finally settled on this one. It's not perfect. It was created for ipod and doesn't rotate for a horizontal view (which I prefer). It can be a little clumsy and I wish you could access the internet through this app and import recipes from online. However, having said all that, I use it every single week. I've set myself a rule: I may not use a recipe that isn't in my ipad. So everytime I use a new recipe, whether it's from a website, a cook book or one of the aforementioned papers in my drawer, I have to type it into my ipad. In a year or so, I'll go through my paper collection and decide if the recipes I have left in there are really worth keeping. Then that mess will be gone!
My menu-making routine goes as follows. Wednesdays is the day I get my produce bin from the company I co-own. I go through my bin, freezer, fridge and cupboards as I plan out the three meals a day for the next seven days. You add recipes to each day in your set amount of time ( a week for me, like I said), designate them as breakfast, lunch, or dinner (I also have baking and snacks designations), and then create a shopping list. It creates the list from the ingredients listed in each recipe and I'll review the list, checking off what I already have. I like that part - it makes me pause a moment and think "do I actually have baking powder, or was that getting a little low?". There's an option to delete all checked items, which I do before I get to the store to make the list short, sweet and simple. Another feature I appreciate with this app is that you can arrange your list however you like. I have ordered the list by aisle so there's no heading back to the bakery section because you've forgotten tortillas.
And that's that! This app has kept me on track, on budget and prepared at three or four o'clock each evening. Now if I could just keep Oliver from touching the screen while my back is turned to the shopping cart, I'd have it made!
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