eta: Meal Planning is really going to help you reduce waste.
Startingfrom the start has a lot of good points! It reminded me of a post I wrote a while ago in the Grocery Shopping FireDrill! Thread - which has some great hints and tips and recipes people have shared! The main thing this site has done for me is made me aware of what is in my fridge/pantry so my food waste has gone WAY down.
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/throw-down-the-gauntlet/fire-drill!-skip-this-week's-grocery-shop/I basically wrote a mini-review of the website I use to do all my meal planning. I have been using it since Dec 2012 and am still loving it. I have also found it really useful that it allows you to customize and divide your shopping list by store - very useful if you have a few you can frequent!
Anyway here is that post:
Hi Everyone!
Had some successes I'm pretty stoked about and wanted to share. I have a complete inventory of my cupboards, freezers and pantry!
I was given a three month trial to a website called Plan to Eat*. I was really skeptical because I have tried tons of recipe organizing software and they all seem bulky, time consuming and not that useful. Well after test driving it and playing around with it, I can definitely see it's uses!
Might not be for everyone, but for someone like me who loves to cook...is horrible at organizing blog recipes I want to make, and can only grocery shop one a month at the most, this is brilliant. I don't know how many items are in my pantry because I wasn't sure if I needed something so bought another "just in case" or was upset with myself because I forgot something I really did need.
The website is divided into three main categories: Recipes, Menu Planning, and Shopping List. The brilliant thing is how these categories interact.
You input your recipes either copy and past or there is a widget you can put on your search bar that you click and it will take the recipe from whatever site you are on. This works really well for the main recipe sites, it is hit and miss for blogs that have lots of text and pictures (Hubby was very impressed with what it could do, he says the coding would be a bear) but it usually gets the ingredients, a picture, the title and it saves the link to the recipe.
This works fine for me because I like going back the original recipe to read all the comments anyways. I love this because I have a very bad habit of looking up countless recipes and then keeping them all open in tabs because I want to make them but might not have the time or ingredients. Now that I have closed all those tabs, my computer (which I thought was dying) is working much faster:) and I have also saved lots on ink and paper!
There is a "recipe book" where all your recipes are and you can hover over it without clicking on it to list the ingredients, it also tells you have many ingredients are in the dish, and how many of the ingredients are already in your pantry.
Then there is the menu planning feature...the recipes are on one side divided by category and you can drag and drop them onto a calender to get your meal plan. Then the ingredients for any recipe you select are automatically put on your shopping list. This is accessible by mobile...but I don't have one so can't test out those features. The very coolest part of it, given this particular challenge, is there is a "Pantry" section...you have to enable it though by using the little gear on the shopping list section. It allows you to type in everything that you have in your pantry...even better it allows you to search for recipes based on your pantry ingredients! (can you tell I'm excited?) So I can do a pantry search, it lists recipes I have in order of least ingredients needed - then I add those recipes onto my planner and automatically get a shopping list for the ingredients I don't have.
The pantry also allows you to break it down into categories I have tried to do this on a spreadsheet in the past one for the fridge, one for the pantry, one for the freezer...not only did it take forever, I wasn't good about updating when things got moved around or used. I'm hoping it will be easier and more fun to do online:)
There is also a bit of a community around it so you can share recipes and such with other people and use their recipes as well.
*The site is run by a husband and wife team and the regular subscription rate is 3.25 a month or $39.00 for the year. I actually think the time, food, and money it will save me is worth the price. However, they do have an affiliate program that gives you 20% of anyone you refer. The neat thing is they offer you a free month trial to see if it is something you really will use. Like I said, it probably won't be as perfect for many people and it does take a bit of time to set up. You can sign up for the free trial and the affiliate program right away, but you won't get paid unless you subscribe...so in the first month you can test it out and if you like it share and perhaps get your subscription paid for - and more people to share recipes with.
If you are interested in getting an invite for a free month trial and don't mind if I get a bit of the money if you do end up subscribing, link is:
http://www.plantoeat.com/ref/y0ycnpcikm