If you’re like me, you have to-do lists everywhere – on your refrigerator, cellphone, in your office, in your purse, etc. I plan my next steps for my daughter’s upcoming class party, taking my mom to the doctor, buying school supplies, getting groceries for the week, ensuring I have presents for the upcoming birthday parties this weekend, calling back so-and-so, so-and-so, and so-and so, calling T-Mobile to correct my bill, following up with the doctor to get back results, you name it, I have a list for it. But, before I know it, it’s dinner time. Uh-oh. No plan for that. Gulp. Quick, what’s my plan? Had I only thought ahead, I could have defrosted some chicken. Now what do I do? Here’s a plan…I use a website that helps me tremendously in this area….although I’m not going to lie. I still find myself without a plan for dinner. But when I do use this website for weekly planning, it’s great!
Allrecipes.com is a free website to get and post recipes. It’s well established and focused on recipes and the people who use them. They also offer premium services for an additional $17.50 a year, but unless you’re a foodie with a burning desire to blog about recipes and give personal reviews, its’ not needed.
I’m a HUGE fan of this website for many reasons:
- Tons of recipes – it has a huge recipe database with everything you’d want to make. In fact, every recipe is scalable to whatever number of servings you desire.
- My own recipe collection – I can create my own recipe database showing my favorite recipes from their database as well as add my own private recipes (for my eyes only).
- Recipe ratings – other people rate each recipe to tell you whether they liked it or not. Each recipe has a rating from 1-5 stars. I only choose the recipes that have 4 or above stars. I feel so comfortable with these ratings that I have often cooked things for guests without trying the recipe first. People almost always rave over the recipe.
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Recipe comments – people comment on each recipe to tell you how they changed it to make it better. I have found these comments very helpful.
- Nutritional analysis – most recipes have a nutritional analysis – so I know how healthy (or not) the recipe is.
- Shopping list – it has a shopping list feature which captures all the ingredients in each recipe and places them in a shopping list to print and take to the store. What’s even better, say you want to be super efficient and plan your dinners for the whole week. With each recipe just click “Add to Shopping List” and it will create a cumulative shopping list for everything you selected for the entire week. Wow! That’s a great feature!
- Ingredient Search – To save time, avoid the grocery, and see what you can cook up with what you have on hand, just type in items that you have in the house into this little beauty and you’ll get a whole slew of recipes to cook for the night.
- Daily Recipe Suggestions – every day I receive an e-mail from allrecipes.com which gives suggestions of sandwiches or entrees and items to accompany them. Now at first you might think, hmmm, I get too many e-mail’s already. However, this is a valuable way to add recipes your recipe box so that when you’re ready to cook, you already have many good recipes to start from. I’ve been adding recipes this way for several years and I have built up quite a good repertoire with little effort.
My “Squeeze” On It
Using allrecipes.com has been a great experience. It helps me try new things, establish new traditions and favorites with my family, and look like a cook who knows what she’s doing. My friends think I’m a super cook because of the variety and taste of the items I make. I laugh every time they say that because I know the secret behind my success. And now, you do too!
Bon Appetit!
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I also like the Meals Matter (www.mealsmatter.org) website, it has a vast recipe database as well as meal ideas, shopping list and meal planning functions.