I spend far more time looking for new recipes than I really care to admit. My husband usually finds me early on weekend mornings sitting in our sunroom, cup of coffee in hand, flipping through food magazines and Pinterest looking for new recipe ideas. I have such a huge collection of recipes that I probably really couldn’t cook them all if I wanted to. But hey, a girl’s gotta have options. The thing I have struggled with the most is how to organize recipes!
My favorite tool for organizing my recipe collection is called Pepperplate. If you haven’t ever checked it out, you really should! I’ve been using Pepperplate for about three years now and it’s really simplified my cooking life. Here are some of my favorite features:
I can access it from anywhere. So when I do the last minute stop by the store to pick up food on the way home from work, I can pull my recipe up on my phone and get exactly what I need! No more forgetting what to buy because I can’t fully remember all of the ingredients in a recipe! Or, better yet, if I talk my hubby into stopping by the store on his way home, I can simply add the recipes into the shopping list and he can log in from his phone to see what’s on the list. Easy peasy.
I can import recipes directly from my favorite websites. The best part is, the pretty pictures import too! Seeing an image of the food usually helps make my menu planning easier. I think it’s because it reminds me of what the dish actually is, beyond just boring old chicken.
I can use the Scale Recipe feature to automatically halve or quarter recipes. Or, I can double recipes if I have a crowd coming over. I love this feature because my new-mommy-brain is just too tired to do the math.
I can create my own categories for filtering my recipes. My best use of categories comes in with my “Healthy” category. I use this category so that I can easily filter my view to see only my healthy recipes. This really does help me avoid the temptation to make fried chicken. Man do I love fried chicken.
I can easily add recipes to the Planner. Then, when the week comes and I’m ready to shop, I can throw those recipes onto the shopping list and I’m good to go. You know what that means? I can do my menu planning for several weeks at a time! Here’s what my menu plan looks like for this week.
Perhaps my most favorite thing about Pepperplate though is that I can use it on my iPad while I’m cooking. It’s got a great “Cook Now” feature so that my screen doesn’t fall asleep.
What’s your favorite way to keep your recipes organized?