Everyone says planning is the key to eating healthier and saving money. But finding time to organize recipes and meal planning can feel like a real chore, right? There are so many things that can hold us back from consistently cooking at home. 

For starters, keeping track of recipes can be a pain – there’s nothing worse than wanting to make that new recipe you found last month and not being able to remember where you saved it.

And then there’s the grocery shopping. How often have you started cooking only to realize you forgot to buy a key ingredient? Been there, done that (too many times!).

But the biggest hurdle is remembering to think ahead and plan out meals for the week! It’s hard to find the time to sit down and figure out what’s for dinner every night, especially when you’re juggling work, family, and everything else life throws your way. 

Plus – if you have multiple dietary needs in your household? COMPLICATED. Trying to balance gluten-free, vegetarian, and other special diets while keeping everyone happy sometimes feels impossible.

All these challenges can make meal planning seem more trouble than it’s worth. That’s where my secret weapon comes in – PlanToEat 

This app has been a game-changer for me. It’s taken all the hassle out of collecting and organizing recipes, planning meals for the week ahead, and making it easier to cook at home regularly. 

Let me tell you why I love it and how it’s made my life in the kitchen so much simpler.

Where I Started & How I Got Here

To understand why where I am today – planning my meals every week and regularly cooking at home – is such a big deal, you need to know where I started.

My mom did not enjoy cooking. She wasn’t bad at it, she just didn’t enjoy it. So I didn’t learn anything about cooking at home. Then when I was out on my own and working for a living – no time, no money, no skills. Fast food and quick, easy, convenient food was the name of the game. 

Not surprisingly, I gained weight and struggled with that for literally decades. I would lose a few pounds here and there. But I always gained it back. 

During an extended period of unemployment, I got hooked on Food Network and taught myself how to cook – and even learned to enjoy it! But planning ahead was still outside my skill set.

The Digital Age

I’ve always been an early adopter, which I got that from my dad (fun fact: my nickname among friends is “digigirl” because I’m always the one trying out new software, new apps, new gadgets, etc).

So there I was with a bunch of physical cookbooks and no way to find the one recipe I was looking for. What’s a digigirl to do? 

Get an app, of course! Fortunately, the world was on pace with me by then. I tried a bunch of different ones – I don’t even remember them all. But they were all lacking something …

And the list goes on. 

Then I discovered PlanToEat.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner! I fell in love.

What Makes PlanToEat So Awesome?

PlanToEat is like having a personal assistant for your kitchen. It takes all the hassle out of meal planning so you can actually enjoy cooking again. 

Here are all the ways it helps you:

It does everything I need. 

I’ve been a loyal user of PlanToEat for 13 years! That’s how good it is. 

Ready to learn more about my fav app? Let’s get into it.

My Favorite Features of PlanToEat

Effortless Recipe Management

One of the things I love most about PlanToEat is how easy it is to manage my recipes. I used to have recipes scattered everywhere – in notebooks, on my phone, saved in random bookmarks. Butt now, they’re all in one place. 

It’s easy to save new recipes from the Internet, sort them into categories, and find what I need without any hassle.

When it’s time to find a recipe to cook, the app offers a variety of ways to search and filter:

And more. And you can customize everything so it works the way you want it to. 

Simple, No-Stress Meal Planning

Planning meals used to feel like such a task, but not anymore. With PlanToEat, I just drag and drop my favorite recipes onto the calendar. It’s like playing a fun little game, and before I know it, my whole week’s meals are planned. It’s honestly made me look forward to meal planning!

I’ll talk more about my meal-planning process in future articles. Just know that it’s so much easier when you have everything you need in one place.

Automatic Shopping Lists (a lifesaver!)

This feature alone is worth it. After I plan my meals, PlanToEat automatically creates a shopping list for me. 

No more scribbling lists or forgetting ingredients at the store. Plus, I can customize the list for different stores, which makes grocery shopping a breeze. It’s such a time-saver.

I even the shopping list function for other errands besides just groceries. Since you can customize your stores list, I added Home Depot, Target, Costco – any place I regularly visit. 

Then I just manually add those items to my list, as well. Everything I need in one place.

How I Use PlanToEat in My Kitchen

Importing Recipes

Adding new recipes to PlanToEat is super easy. The app offers several different methods:

So when I find a recipe online I like, I just click the button on my browser and it does the rest. It even lets me categorize and tag my recipes before saving so I can find them in seconds – no more digging through piles of paper or endless links on your device.

Planning Meals with Ease

Every week, I sit down to plan out the week’s meals. 

I search my favorite recipes and drag the ones I want onto the calendar, and just like that, I have a plan. Or I filter by ingredients I want to use or a cuisine I’m craving and find something new to try (from the almost 8,000 recipes I have saved 😲).

It’s so satisfying to know what’s for dinner each night without any last-minute scrambling.

Generating Shopping Lists

Once my meals are planned, PlanToEat works its magic and creates a shopping list for me. I tweak it a bit for the different stores I shop at, and then I’m off. It makes my grocery trips quick and efficient, and I always have what I need.

While Cooking

When it comes time to actually cook dinner, I open the app on my iPad, then see today’s recipe on the calendar. One tap opens it up, ready to guide me through the recipe.

I can stand my tablet on the counter so I have the recipe right there all the way through. No more paper recipes that get covered with drips and crumbs or trying to keep a cookbook open to the right page, where I can see it and yet far enough way to keep it clean.

For me, it makes cooking easier, more fun and definitely more streamlined when I can refer to the recipe at a glance.

Why I’m Such a Fan (my real-life experience)

Using PlanToEat has made a difference in how I approach cooking and eating. Remember how I mentioned struggling with my weight for decades?

That didn’t change when I started using PlanToEat, even though I was cooking at home more. I was still carrying around a lifetime of bad habits.

My Health Wake-Up Call

But then I got a serious wake-up call from the universe – I had a stroke in 2023. Strokes run in my family (both of my parents died of strokes) so I knew it was a possibility. And carrying around too much weight wasn’t helping.

When it happened, my husband realized what was happening right away and we drove straight over to the hospital (it’s less than 5 minutes from our house). 

Thankfully, it was a relatively minor stroke and our quick action made all the difference. At the time of this writing (mid-2024), I’m fully recovered. 

But it was a scary and humbling experience to have my body stop responding the way it should and have to regain control of basic things like walking and talking.

How PlanToEat Helped Me Recover

I’ll tell you what – it’s amazing the motivation you discover when something like this happens. Prior to this event, I had been casually experimenting with eating a low-carb diet but wasn’t really sticking to it. 

But the minute I came out of the hospital, I immediately started a strict keto diet – a pretty big departure from our previous carb-heavy menu. On the plus side, being in ICU for a couple of days getting pumped full of medicine and other supportive supplements was an easy way to kick my lifelong Coca-Cola addition! So at least I didn’t have to deal with the headaches and cravings from that.  

Thanks to PlanToEat, I was able to quickly save a bunch of keto recipes and easily create my new eating menu for weight loss. Also, the keto diet is beneficial for the brain (it’s often prescribed to seizure and epilepsy sufferers), so that was good for my recovery, too.

If I hadn’t had this app as a resource to help me plan and prepare for this new way of eating, I don’t know if I’d have been able to stick to it. 

But I did and have so far lost over 40 pounds and kept it off for over a year (and counting). 

By the way, did I mention that PlanToEat also includes a Nutrition Calculator? This was very helpful in evaluating non-keto recipes I already had in my collection and adjusting them for my new plan as well as checking new recipes I find online.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of PlanToEat

If you’re a recipe hoarder like I am, keeping them organized can quickly become an issue. But this is an area where PtoE changes the whole game.

This app was designed by a husband to help his wife make meal planning easier and he had her there giving him feedback as he went. So this app really works the way actual home cooks want it to. No big corporate developers here, which I love. You can read more about how it was developed here.

Organize With Tags and Categories

I love how easy it is to organize my recipes with tags and categories. I have tags like “keto” “instant pot” and “favorite,” which makes finding the right recipe super quick. It’s such a simple feature, but it makes a big difference.

Rate Your Recipes & Add Notes

When you start using the app, remember to rate new recipes and add notes about what you’d do differently next time or who liked it and who didn’t. As your recipe library grows, you’ll be glad you did.

Plan For Leftovers

PlanToEat makes it super simple to adjust any recipe for more or less servings. Try doubling a recipe once or twice a week to give yourself leftovers for busy nights or easy lunches to take to work.

PlanToEat is the The Best Way To Organize Recipes and Meal Planning

Honestly, if you’ve been wanting to start meal planning or have tried and failed before, I can’t recommend PlanToEat enough. It’s made my life so much easier, and I think you’ll love it too. 

Whether you’re a seasoned cook or just starting out, this app can help you get organized, save time, and make meal planning something you actually look forward to.

Want to try PlanToEat? I promise – you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it!

Use this link to get a free 14 day trial (plus get 20% off if you subscribe)!