Entry tags:
"Dear blender, won't you help a first offender?"
I'm looking for a meal planning app/site that:
* Works on a Mac (browser-based is fine)
* Lets me put in my own recipes
* Doesn't count calories/calculate nutrition, or lets me turn off that "feature"
* Calculates portions consumed and remaining
* Ideally doesn't suggest other recipes (I don't know why I'm shocked that most meal planning apps are in fact meal plan apps that tell you what to make, but that is not what I want)
* Ideally makes shopping lists
* Realizes that at a single mealtime, different people may be eating different things
That last one seems to be the sticking point, and I don't understand why! Surely the need to pack children's school lunches or accommodate a picky eater is not unusual. But all the screenshots I see have a single recipe for every meal of the day, as though everyone in the house is going to eat Easy Strawberry Parfait with Granola for breakfast like it's a sitcom. This isn't the same functionality as being able to add side dishes to the menu; dishes need to be specifically assigned per person per meal. Otherwise Monday breakfast will say "Omelette, smoothie" and I won't have any idea how many omelettes and how many smoothies we'll be making.
Regarding portions consumed and remaining, I want to be able to start the week with, say, 16 servings of chili, and allocate them throughout the week—but only to me and J, because X doesn't eat chili, and on some days I might have chili for lunch while he has chili for dinner—and know how much will be left to freeze at the end of the week. If we plan to make six servings of pasta on Tuesday, I want to be able to allocate four of them for dinner Tuesday night and two more for lunch the next day. I can use Airtable for most aspects of meal planning, but not for this one.
Am I going to end up writing my own app or doing this in Excel or something? Why is this so hard?!
EDIT: I figured out how to do it in Airtable. Grarh.
* Works on a Mac (browser-based is fine)
* Lets me put in my own recipes
* Doesn't count calories/calculate nutrition, or lets me turn off that "feature"
* Calculates portions consumed and remaining
* Ideally doesn't suggest other recipes (I don't know why I'm shocked that most meal planning apps are in fact meal plan apps that tell you what to make, but that is not what I want)
* Ideally makes shopping lists
* Realizes that at a single mealtime, different people may be eating different things
That last one seems to be the sticking point, and I don't understand why! Surely the need to pack children's school lunches or accommodate a picky eater is not unusual. But all the screenshots I see have a single recipe for every meal of the day, as though everyone in the house is going to eat Easy Strawberry Parfait with Granola for breakfast like it's a sitcom. This isn't the same functionality as being able to add side dishes to the menu; dishes need to be specifically assigned per person per meal. Otherwise Monday breakfast will say "Omelette, smoothie" and I won't have any idea how many omelettes and how many smoothies we'll be making.
Regarding portions consumed and remaining, I want to be able to start the week with, say, 16 servings of chili, and allocate them throughout the week—but only to me and J, because X doesn't eat chili, and on some days I might have chili for lunch while he has chili for dinner—and know how much will be left to freeze at the end of the week. If we plan to make six servings of pasta on Tuesday, I want to be able to allocate four of them for dinner Tuesday night and two more for lunch the next day. I can use Airtable for most aspects of meal planning, but not for this one.
Am I going to end up writing my own app or doing this in Excel or something? Why is this so hard?!
EDIT: I figured out how to do it in Airtable. Grarh.
no subject
ETA https://getfillet.com/en/ might be worth a look.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
What's a fridge organizer? I have labels on the shelves but no one pays much attention to them...
no subject
My fridge is basically like a chest of drawers inside using these clear rectangular organizing bins that are the perfect size for things.
Bottom shelf: I've got four that are the width of a normal jar, one for pickles and sour things (the big jars go in the door), three for jams and sweet things, so when I want something I slide out the bin a bit and retrieve the jar I want, even if it was all the way at the back of the fridge. Like a card catalog, but for jars? Then a large bin that takes up the rest of the space, for cheese.
Middle shelf: Large bin for meats. The rest of shelf is free-form, like egg cartons (I usually buy three dozen at a time, which stack perfectly in the space) and leftovers from takeout and stuff.
Top shelf: Large bin for breads (I generally keep on hand brown sandwich bread, nutty/seedy sandwich bread, english muffins and a fancy loaf from my local bakery, and maybe challah or something special like that). Medium for stuff like onions, shallots, lemons, herbs, garlic, apples and other snack fruit. Behind this bin is a cold spot that freezes anything that hangs out there, so that's where the maple syrup and next-milk live. A large for veg (which often overflows in the free space in the middle of the middle shelf, now that I'm buying like 3-4 weeks of food at a time. I've found that fennel, carrots, beets all keep really well for that period of time, so I go through my baby lettuces, arugula, spinach and other more delicates before moving on to broccoli, zucchini, and then to the sturdiest stuff, though I have had butter lettuce and arugula make it two weeks no problem).
If there's ever a spill in the fridge, it gets contained to one or two bins, which I can slide out, empty, clean, and clean whatever was in them before putting back. Often one random bin gets weirdly gunky, and instead of it being a big deal to clean the fridge, it's compartmentalized or subdivided and thus much easier to tackle. Also, liquid spills get contained, instead of going everywhere.
A picture is a worth a thousand words etc. and I can dm one to ya on twitter if you want.
[Took some clicking to figure out what graft on, stem, and uproot meant, whew. Hopefully I'm not just making a new comment but replying to yours.]
no subject
That chest of drawers idea is brilliant—I can totally visualize it. I'm not sure it's compatible with having a five-year-old (we're at the stage of wanting to encourage the idea of putting things in the fridge when one is done, which means we can't be too picky about where they go or set up obstacles to the milk being shoved in with the veggies or whatever) but it's a lovely dream for a few years from now.
no subject
no subject