Technology to Help You with Meal Planning

In a recent survey conducted by The Motherhood in partnership with PR agency Fleishman-Hillard, we learned that 96 percent of American moms plan to make changes in their food-buying habits in 2013; 67 percent want to be more organized with weekly meal planning, including taking fewer trips to the grocery store and making dinners ahead of time and freezing them.

Can you relate to these resolutions? We certainly can.

While many of our wonderful bloggers create their own meal planning templates, we understand it’s not always easy to organize meal planning on your own! That’s why we looked into some of the top meal planning tools and compiled them here for easy review.  You can check them out below!

Plan To Eat

Lisa from The Tripped Up Life told us about this helpful meal organization tool! This online resource stores all of your recipes in one place and lets you filter them by searching for specific ingredients, serving sizes or prep/cook time. We love that Plan to Eat has an automated shopping list maker based off of the meal plans you create either by week or month! They’re offering a free 30-day trial now if you’re interested in giving it a try.

Food on the Table

Create a weekly meal plan, and this free tool organizes the groceries you’ll need by department. Not only that, but Food on the Table will search your local grocery stores for the best sales on ingredients you need! You can also easily print shopping lists based on the meal plans you create.

Menu Planner

With this $2.99 app, you can create meal plans, store recipes, and keep track of what’s in your pantry. It also generates shopping lists for you, telling you exactly how much of an ingredient you need. One of Menu Planner’s unique features is the ability to track your calorie intake based on meals. The only downside we can see is it can be time-consuming to enter every ingredient.

Out of Milk

Manage your grocery shopping with this free app! Create shopping lists and log what you already have in your kitchen so you never buy something you don’t need! You can also easily share and email lists among friends and family.  A unique feature for Out of Milk is the Barcode Scanner—the ability to specify price, quantity, unit, coupons and notes!

Evernote

Have you ever cooked a winning meal and think, “I need to make this again!” But then months later, you can’t find the recipe? This free app helps you remember the recipes you love by keeping them organized in one place, along with details like when you cooked each recipe, making them super easy to find!  One of this app’s cool features is that it lets you discover new, local restaurants, mark the ones you’ve already been to, and flag the ones you want to visit in the future.  And with Evernote, you can easily share all food experiences via Twitter, Facebook and email.

My Fridge Food

Do you often find yourself scrambling to see what you can whip up for dinner at 4 o’clock based on what you have in your kitchen already? You can let this site do that for you! Simply check off the ingredients in your fridge and pantry and find recipes that only include those ingredients. Bookmark recipes and create shopping lists based on the recipes you want to make. This is a great way to avoid wasting ingredients!

Pinterest

Pinterest serves as an extremely popular menu planning tool. Not only can you browse amazing new dinner recipes, but you can search for specific recipes based on the food ingredients you already have in your kitchen! You can title your Pinterest boards with the week’s date and then mark the different pinned recipes with designated days of the week. For more on how to use Pinterest in meal planning, check out this post off of Mommy Kudos blog.

Free Online Templates

If you’re still having trouble coming up with your own template, a simple Google search will provide different planning templates that will either give you the inspiration you need to create your own or allow you to download free templates to use!

When it comes down to it, you have to do what works best for you. Every family’s schedule and meal styles are different, so don’t be afraid to try several different approaches to meal planning before you find the best one for you!