By Elsie, Contributing Writer and Site Editor
You would think that for just two people, meal planning wouldn’t be too hard. But for the past few months, it’s been a struggle for me!
Part of the reason is due to the little baby boy who’s growing and making me grow. Often, I feel as if I don’t have the energy (or desire) to plan meals in advance.
But I’ve learned from experience that meal planning is one of the top ways we can save money in our kitchen. In the long run, it’s worth a little extra time and effort to plan menus ahead of time.
One of my resolutions for 2015 is to get back on track with meal planning, and I’ve found just the tool to help me do it!
Plan to Eat is an online meal planning tool that lets you save, organize, and share your recipes. Once you save your recipes, you can drag and drop them onto a calendar to schedule them out for the week or month.
The shopping list generator helps you create a list of each item you need to make your week (or month’s) worth of recipes. I also added all of my usual real food pantry staples to Plan to Eat, so that when I’m creating a new shopping list I can quickly check off the items that I want to pick up on my current trip to Aldi or Wal-Mart.
Plan to Eat even lets you organize your shopping list according to the categories that work best for you! (For instance, I group my items under four main categories, instead of lots of sub-categories.)
When it’s time to make your recipe, click on the recipe title in the calendar to print it off, or to pull up the “cooking view.”
I LOVE this feature! When I’m making an online recipe, I keep my laptop open and refer to it throughout the process. But depending on what website the recipe is on, sometimes the font is hard to read, or I have to keep scrolling down (with floury/sticky/wet fingers) to see the next step.
As you can see in the screenshot below, with Plan to Eat’s “cooking view” all you have to do is tap your mouse to jump to the next step, which is numbered along the top of the page. (The screenshot doesn’t do it justice, but when viewed live, the font is large, and the ingredients that you’ll need for the current step are highlighted!)
To see more of Plan to Eat’s features, I highly recommend that you watch this super-short video! It will give you a good intro to the site and help you decide if you want to sign up for a free 30-day trial.
I can’t wait to explore Plan to Eat in the coming year, and get this area of my life more organized!
Want to win your own subscription to Plan to Eat?!
Plan to Eat is giving away 2 annual subscriptions valued at $39 each!
Enter via the giveaway widget below! If you are reading via email, you will need to click to the site to enter to win!
You can also sign up for a FREE 30-day trial on the Plan to Eat homepage!
Disclosure: This giveaway post was sponsored by Plan to Eat.
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