New Years Resolution - Plan to Eat

With the start of a new year, many of us have new resolutions planned for the upcoming season. I know my own personal goal has been to get consistent with meal planning for the week and stick to it. While for me this is a lot about making healthy choices, it is also a financial thing to be able to stick to a budget. If I can put some time into planning healthy but practical meals for the week, I am less likely to go for the drive-thru if I am not wanting to cook. With all this in mind, I wanted to talk about a tool that I love called Plan to Eat.

Plan to Eat is a website that allows you to upload recipes of your own, import recipes from other websites, and plan out your week of meals. When the planning period is done, it actually generates a shopping list for you to take into the store. Trust me, it is oh so satisfying to get to mark things off while you are shopping!

The main page is the Cook page. This page houses all of the recipes in your portfolio. They can be organized by meal type, beverages, desserts, salads, etc. It is easy to search for various recipes in this view just with an ingredient or the name. You can even see pictures of the recipe to help trigger your memory or your appetite!

The next page is the Plan page. You can see below that I have a very rough outline of my meals for the week. The colored tabs are recipes I have planned. The grey tabs are notes that I have included. I use notes for meals that are not exact recipes, but I still want the individual ingredients to populate to my shopping list. For example, I love eggs with cheese and a meat in the morning. I do not have this as a recipe, but by including it in a note, all three ingredients will show up when I pull up my shopping list.

The last page is the Shopping page. This is my favorite part. You can organize the list by stores if there are certain ingredients you get from certain stores. It is organized by all the different sections of the grocery store such as produce, deli, frozen, dry goods etc. The best part of all of this is that yes, you can print this list out if you are a paper person, but there is a Plan to Eat app. This allows users to have the list you generate on your computer pop up directly on your phone! That way, you are free from the paper list while shopping.

Another great feature that my mom and I use together is that you are able to have friends with this app! Mom and I are friends, therefore we are able to look at each other's recipes and share easily. I can see all the recipes that she made growing up, and now I can easily try them for myself with just a click! I don't have to call and ask her for all the ingredients and instructions. They are all right there in the app.

There are two different payment options. You can pay $39 for a yearly subscription, or you can pay $4.95 per month. We do the yearly subscription option, because there is always a great Black Friday sale that allows you to renew for the year for just $20 - $25. There is also a free 30 day trial if you want to try this before committing! Mom and I will both testify and say this has been a great resource to have to help us eat healthier, budget better, and avoid the stress of wondering what in the world you're going to eat tonight. I hope that this is something that can help you in the new year!