The Best Meal Planning App…Ever.

If you’re anything like me you can easily spend hours perusing Pinterest.  TOO. MANY. HOURS.

Now that I’m not having to spend all my Pinterest time pinning wedding stuff anymore, it’s proved super helpful for me in finding delicious and healthy recipes to cook! I love discovering new food bloggers with tasty, tasty meals and pretty photos. Follow me on Pinterest here!

While organizing all these recipes on a Pinboard is all fine and dandy- sometimes you need something else to take things from “Yeah I should make that someday…” to actually putting it into action! That’s why I was SO happy when I found the app, Pepperplate.

It creates your own database of recipes and menus, along with an automatic grocery list. And the best part? It syncs between your computer and your iPhone so you don’t actually have to re-write anything. And no more forgetting that one crucial ingredient when you’re at the grocery store!

And it gets better folks. To make it even easier, you can directly import entire recipes and photos by just copying/pasting the link. IT LITERALLY CAN’T GET EASIER THAN THIS. Lazy people, unite!

And for any recipe that’s not on the supported site list, it’s still really, really simple. It’s just a matter of copy/pasting the ingredients and directions into these nifty boxes.

When you’re done, it creates a swell little recipe page for you.

 

And if you ever need to half/double the recipe, you can select “Scale Recipe” on the right and it AUTOMATICALLY scales the recipe for you.

I don’t know why I’m so inordinately excited about this. Am I missing something? Have things like this been around forever and I’ve just been missing out?! What is life?! Anywho- just allow me to obsess a little bit. And no, I promise Pepperplate did not pay me to write this blog post, I’m just a little too excited…

Moving on!

So when it comes time to plan your menu for the week and grocery shop, you can just select the recipes from your database you want to use, and then it automatically generates your categorized-by-store section recipe list for you. And it’s also super easy to add random items that don’t have to do with your recipes.

I love the way they organize the ingredients as it’s super helpful and helps you maximize your time in the store. I know I’m not the only one who often on the total opposite end of the store of that one random item I forgot. I don’t mind the extra walking necessarily but time is often of the essence, people!

One of the best parts of this app/website is they aren’t continually trying to get you to purchase add-ons or anything. It’s simplistic, efficient, and clean. And it really helps in meal planning!

As you probably have guessed, I’m definitely not one of those fitness people that literally “meal preps” so intensely as to create my entire meals for the week at once and freeze them, mainly because:
A.) Ain’t nobody got time for that, and,
B.) Frozen meals a week later just taste gross to me. I get weird about leftovers.

There really is no need to do that. Just cook a large portion every couple days to last you a little bit and you’re good!

I also really recommend Pyrex Bake ‘n Store baking ware, which allows you to bake things then immediately cover it with it’s designated lid so you don’t have to transfer it to another piece of tupperware. (I really am not trying to make this blog post sound like one big ad but I just can’t help it! I love them so much! Thanks, wedding gifts!)

One recipe that I made this week that turned out really amazing was this Salmon/Veggie bake. Only 3 ingredients, super easy clean-up, and 20 minutes to bake. It literally cannot get easier than this. It cannot! I got the recipe from Mom Endeavors, and holy moly was it good, and super simple, at that. I substituted the green beans and tomatoes with asparagus, and added some brown rice with it and it was perfection.

Go download Pepperplate or just check it out on their website and let me know what you think! Do you love it as much as I do? I hope so! 🙂