Plan to Eat Giveaway
January 1, 2010 | Filed Under Menu Planning | 376 Comments
This giveaway is now closed. Winner is #204 Charity and #214 Ezzy!
Welcome to 2010! It’s a brand new year and I know many of you are deciding that this is your year to get organized. I have always said one of the best places to start in this quest is with menu planning. Planning for your week in advance, saving time in the kitchen, eating healthier, saving money on groceries and basically eliminating this stress from your life are all excellent reasons to menu plan. I feel such a sense of accomplishment from knowing what I’m going to eat for the week and my entire family benefits. Menu planning is totally flexible and with practice and/or with a little help it can be such an amazing tool to implement into your organizational plan.
There are many menu planning resources out there for you to utilize. Many of them do all the work for you and are a great service for those who feel they don’t have the time to menu plan or who just want someone else to take all the guess work out it.
However, like me, many of you enjoy perusing recipes each week and selecting your own recipes to include in your menu plan. I know for myself I’m very particular about the recipes I chose and have a specific recipe criteria in place to help me achieve my goal of finding easy, quick and healthy recipes to include in my plan. So when I heard about the service Plan to Eat I was very excited because it is a menu planning service that gives you the freedom of selecting your own recipes and then stores and organizes them permanently for you all in one place.
Plan to Eat allows you to import recipes from popular recipe websites or easily input them by hand. Then all you need to do is drag and drop them into your menu planning calendar, print off your calendar if you chose AND as well print off a complete shopping list based on your chosen recipes. It’s absolutely brilliant and organized!
Calendar:
Shopping List:
What makes Plan to Eat particularly brilliant though hands down is how easy the site is to use. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Things designed to make our lives less complicated tick me off when they are too complicated for us simple minds to figure out in the first place. I abhor complicated with a passion. So, considering I’m a pretty tough critic, I was very surprised when I checked out Plan to Eat and discovered the simplicity with how easy it is to use.
I just love the recipe import feature. Many other resources similar to this one require you to manually add your recipes to the site. Um no thanks, that would take me forever. As you know I get the majority of my recipes from sites such as Taste of Home, Tasty Kitchen and Kraft Canada. I’ve used the import feature with all three of these sites and all I have to do is add the recipe url, hit import recipe and voila my recipe is there, complete with ingredient list and instructions. You can even upload a photo if you’d like. It also keeps track of my favorite websites so I can go straight there from within Plan to Eat. Stuck for ideas? Plan to Eat has a “search google” toolbar that lists your results right there with a handy import recipe button beside each one. Just so awesome!!
I also love that you can add tags with each of your recipes to make finding them again a breeze. I can create any tags I like and am not limited by a select few.
I also love love love the shopping list feature. It automatically adds all the items from your selected recipes and then easily allows you to select/deselect items you don’t need. You can also add in additional items as necessary. Further making my life easier, when I print out the list I’m given a handy reference key that shows me which ingredients go to which recipe in case I need to make substitutions at the grocery store.
Plan to Eat is available for $4.95 a month or if you pay for a year at a time it is $39.00/yr which works out to only $3.25 a month. You don’t have to just take my word for the awesomeness of this site either because you can try Plan to Eat absolutely free for 30 days to see if you like it.
Today Plan to Eat has kindly offered to giveaway TWO one year gift subscriptions to two lucky readers. I’d really like to giveaway these two gift subscriptions to someone who thinks this service would benefit them in their menu planning endeavors. Take a look around and if you think this is a service that would work for you leave a comment on this post letting me know.
I’ll close the giveaway next Wednesday, January 6th at 9:00 pm PST and the winner will be chosen at random from the comments left.
Happy New Year everyone!!
The Dinner Solution Software Giveaway
May 31, 2009 | Filed Under Giveaway, Menu Planning | 226 Comments
Updated to add: Giveaway closed. The winner is #76 Rebecca!!
I recently had the opportunity to review a tool that assists with the whole menu planning process by allowing you to plan out your meals on a calendar, organize your recipes and print custom grocery lists. With a few clicks of your mouse, you can plan out a week of meals in minutes. It’s called The Dinner Solution and it isn’t a meal planning service but rather a software program designed to simplify and speed up menu planning in a way that is totally personalized for you and your family.
For a one time cost, you purchase the software and then easily download it from their website onto your hard drive in no time at all. It comes loaded with many recipes but you also have the option of adding your own. Then from the monthly calendar you select the recipes you’d like to make each day including sides and dessert if you’d like. You can do it by the week or even the entire month. Here’s what the calendar looks like:
Once it’s filled out to your satisfaction, click on “print reports” at the top of the page to get a complete corresponding grocery list (sorted by store aisle and store name) and fridge report. I think the fridge report is a really nice added feature as it allows your family to easily see what’s on the menu that week.
Another really great feature is that this system gives you the option of doing some freezer/once a month cooking by enabling you to menu plan and print grocery lists for both traditional meals and freezer meals all at the same time. They also provide additional tools to make your freezer meal making easy including freezer labels, a freezer inventory list to post on your freezer and grocery/checklists specifically for meal assembly day.
I find it reassuring that this software was created by two moms trying to fill a need that they saw for themselves. I’ve been emailing with one of the creators and found her to be very friendly and approachable. I identified an area that I felt could be improved on (I’d like to see the ability to add to the calendar from the recipe section directly rather than the other way around) and Karin not only appreciated the feedback but said that it would definitely be something they would look at for future upgrades. Customer service is important to me.
Have more questions about the software? You can find a list of frequently asked questions and answers here.
This ultimate menu planning and freezer cooking software is available as an instant download. Available at this time for Windows only. Price $59.95.
Karin and Kristi would love to giveaway a copy of their software today to one lucky reader. Simply leave a comment on this post by Thursday, June 4th at 6:00 pm PST to be entered.
For an additional entry you may tweet about this giveaway on Twitter (TinyURL: http://tiny.cc/vbcXn) and then come back and leave a separate comment with the link to your tweet.
A winner will be chosen using random.org.
For those that aren’t fortunate enough to win, a discount code has been provided and made available to Org Junkie readers. Use coupon code OJ25 at checkout to receive a 25% discount on your purchase of The Dinner Solution. This is a $15 savings!
THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.
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