Recipe Plan Hack to Save time in your life
When you say the phrase ‘meal planning’ to a friend, I’d wager one of the first reactions is a moan. I don’t care if you’re a working mom, stay at home, or somewhere in between, the idea of meal planning for a week can be daunting at the best of times. Particularly for a family. Prior to having LBB, I’d spend most Saturday mornings curled up on the couch with a cup of tea with the tv turned on to the Food Network. I’d usually have my favorite cookbooks splayed about me, trying to figure out what exactly I felt like making or consuming in the following week before heading to the grocery store. It seemed like such a ritual that I almost miss that moment in time. I’d always look at Aymeric and ask, ‘So what do you feel like eating?", most of the time he would give me an insufficient answer and we’d be at a stalemate. Ahhh nostalgia. However, as many of you may have guessed, this ritual evolved once LBB was born. No one had time for slow Saturday mornings meal planning, while simultaneously chasing a toddler around the house looking for the next activity to burn energy. Aymeric and I actually tried to think of ways before she was born to have a running list of some easy recipes that we could pull from to alleviate the burden of meal planning when baby arrived. Aymeric decided to make a list on his Notes app on his phone (his only included the names of recipes he liked to be fair). At first I bulked at this idea just from the overwhelming effort it would take to consolidate recipes or even think of what we liked in bulk. Or perhaps it was just the idea of losing my Saturday morning meal planning ritual. But eventually, I succumbed to the realization that my life was changing and got onboard with this game changing life hack. So want my favorite recipe planning hack to save you time? Make a Recipe Link Note in your Notes app on your phone, and don’t look back. Too simple am I right?!
Example of the top of my list from the early dates of adding recipes to this Note
Think of all of the recipe links you find online while scrolling instagram? Or that photo of a cookbook a friend sent you that they love or you tried at their house once that is buried in your text messages? Or even a text message of a recipe that isn’t even in the form of a website? They all can be dumped into this one organized note. Mine is fully loaded with all of the above. My only criteria for adding a recipe to this list is that the family has tried it and enjoyed it. That way I know I’m not cluttering my list with something I wouldn’t make again in the future. Just be sure you do take the time to add the recipe link at some point to your notes before you forget. Otherwise, you’ll be searching for that one recipe you made that one time and everyone seemed to like it, but you have no idea where you stashed it.
Having this organized food hub of recipes on your phone might feel so oddly simple, but so many people haven’t started one yet! I can’t tell you the number of friends I’ve talked to about this hack and their eyes light up in wonder as to why they haven’t done the same thing. I also really appreciate the ‘on the go’ nature of it too. It has come in handy plenty of times when I’ve been parked at the grocery store, still totally unclear what I’m going in to gather, but need a plan stat. Then I remember (insert epiphany light bulb here) I can just pop this note up and pick 3 recipes, and poof, you’re in and out of the store before you know it.
Another added benefit is that you can also send a recipe link to a family member or spouse to grab ingredients for something you need when you’re in a hurry. The handy uses for this are endless. Or yet another added bonus is that you have a group of liked recipes in one place so that you can reference whenever you’re traveling and need to stock your Airbnb fridge with ingredients you’ll actually put to good use. Trust me this has saved my bacon on a number of occasions.
This doesn’t completely substitute the need for a recipe box, (my favorite Rifle Tin Recipe Box found here) or cookbooks. It’s just a digital library of the recipes that you’ve found tried, and loved online. I still use my beloved recipe box, but I will say that I don’t have as much time as I used to to write a recipe down and add it to the repertoire. So I’ve only written one down that I feel will become an ‘heirloom’ recipe for LBB in the future. The family recipes that she’ll hopefully remember and ask for someday when she comes home from college. Or that I can give to her when she gets married one day. Tears, my baby is growing to fast already much less think about this!
One last note before I leave you to organizational recipe bliss… Just make sure you ‘name’ your recipe in your note before adding the link, just so that you have less clutter to scan through when you’re going back to search for something. I’ve found that web addresses are just too cluttered with useless consonants and takes too much time to scan and find verses just quickly typing in a name.
I hope this has been a helpful planning hack for you and will make your weekly planning ritual, whatever it may be, a bit easier for you and your family. Cheers!
Another example of the mixed media nature of my recipe notepage, from cookbook pics to links
