D is for Dinner
I have been a kind-of-planner my whole life. Never really totally committing to planning everything but never really just flying by the seat of my pants either. But since having kids I have changed my tune a little bit. I try to plan some activities for my kids and now have started to plan out meals. With all the technology we have these days I’ve tried to use some of it for planning my meals. Using my IPad I am able to find new recipes and also plan out menus for my family so I’m not at a total loss when it’s time to start dinner. So here are some of the apps that I use on a regular basis to help me not feel so flustered once dinner time rolls around.
First I have my meal planning app. It’s called Pepperplate
So you can add recipes and then put together menus from your recipes. Once you have those things put in to your app then you can put together your planner. I can stay a little bit ahead and know what meat I need to defrost and what ingredients I need to have ready since I already have our meals all planned out. Another feature that is nice that you can also put together a shopping list which might help save money in the end. If you shop like I used to I just kinda guess at what I might need for the week or month. But now that I have my meals planned I know exactly how many packages of chicken I need to buy for the month. Also I forgot to mention this app is Free. Ya I love free 🙂 so here are a few pictures of the app.
Second I use the Allrecipes app (or allrecipes.com)
I use this to find new recipes for our family to try since you can see the rating these recipes get and how many people have tried them. My standard mostly is it has to be at least 3 stars and at least 300 people rating it. I feel like if that many people thought it was good then it might be worth a try :). My personal thing is to try one new recipe a month and it can be anything from a side dish, main dish or a dessert. I tend to get bored with eating the same things over and over again. And once again it’s a free app so easy on the budget 🙂
How do you do your meal planning? I’d love to hear what ways you plan out your meals.
Jessi
Also check out these other blogs that I am Blogging through the Alphabet with
Jessica Buxton 