Taking the pain out of meal planning and shopping

If I had to choose one secret weapon that saves me the most time when it comes to feeding my family, it would definitely be to have a plan!

This is one of those things that we all know, that almost seems too simple, and yet it’s so powerful in saving not only time but mental energy. And if you’re anything like me, the process of planning is one thing that can often get pushed to the bottom of the list.

Deciding what to make, then where to shop and what to buy can all consume a lot of time and effort before we even start cooking! I’ll confess it definitely isn’t my favorite task of the week, but Plan to Eat has made it tremendously less painful.

Now it’s never been more important to have a plan–between the holidays and covid, we don’t want to be making any extra trips to the store, and we don’t want to be forgetting anything while we’re there! I do a pretty good job of only going to Costco once a month.

Feeding 5 boys I always fill my cart to the brim, but there’s not a lot of extra room for all those things we don’t actually need but like to find their way home. I save so much time and money doing it this way!

I used to spend way too long meal-planning, because I would get lost in the web googling recipes and perusing all kinds of ideas without actually making up my mind. Now I’m sharing all the great recipes I’ve found with you in my Member Meal Plans.

I’ve done the hard work for you by giving you a jump start of great plant-based recipes that are working well for our family–they are relatively inexpensive, and easy to prepare for our large family. You get to decide which ones are a good fit for you and integrate them with your existing go-to recipes to make a plan that is doable but with some variety.

Plan to Eat is the other piece of the puzzle, the software I’ve been using since 2013 to keep track of and tweak my recipes, create my shopping list, scale recipes for batch cooking, etc. and make sure I don’t leave anything behind at the store.

Here’s how Plan to Eat has helped me save time and energy feeding my family:

Plan To Eat makes it so easy to import and adjust recipes from blogs and online sources. Usually all you have to do is copy the link into the Add Recipe feature, and it will import the recipe. This is awesome because you can then tweak the recipe to your liking, choose whether or not you want to print the picture or nutritional info, change the font size so it prints on one page AND adjust the servings to whatever you need. So no accidentally forgetting to double one ingredient and then ending up with a disaster.

Plan To Eat populates your grocery list. Simply drag the recipes you want to make for the week onto the site’s calendar, update the servings and it will populate your list. It’s easy to divide the list into different stores, keep a list of staples and then have your list categorized by section of the store. The app will do this for you, but also makes it really easy to adapt to your individual needs.

I started out using Plan to Eat as just the website, but they now offer an app that works great on your phone. I love being able to keep lists of things for both the stores I frequent regularly as well as the ones I might only pop into once a month or less. It’s also nice to be able to update my plan, add or check a recipe on the go. Each item on the list also links to the recipe, so if an item is out of stock or overpriced, you can make a good decision about whether or not you can substitute, live without it, etc.

I use Plan to Eat to create my member meal plans. This means that if you are a member, I can share these with you and you can easily digitally adjust serving sizes, add notes, tweak ingredients, etc.

Every year Plan to Eat has a Black Friday sale and it’s only $19.50 a year. Even though I always feel like I could do a better job of planning and that I don’t always use all the features, I always feel like I am getting more than my money’s worth by the many ways it helps me streamline the never-ending job of feeding my family.