Meal Tracking and Shopping software

[Hrafn]

Just curious, what do you all use to track meals, recipes, shopping lists, etc?

My family has some food related restrictions, and currently we use Lose It! for personal tracking, and then a bunch of '70-'00s cook books for ideas, but then nothing to come up with a full shopping list.

I'll frequently check https://www.budgetbytes.com for ideas, and I'll just randomly search for a few of my ingredients and how I want to prepare a dish.

 

[Herdfan]

For shopping lists we use Our Groceries.

It allows you to make lists for multiple stores or store types. For example, we have a list called Home that is meant for groceries for our house. We had one called Mom which was for groceries for her house (her caretaker would add items) and another list called Lowes/HD for stuff we needed from stores like that.

It allows multiple people to add things to a certain list. For example, our daughter when she was living at home could put food she wanted in it, my wife would add household groceries to it and I could also add what I might want. As you shop you can "remove" items by touching them leaving only what you still need at the top.

Once you have completed your list, you can remove the list. This came in handy because if I was at the store and had already removed the list, the wife knew I was at least checking out and that she couldn't add anything else.

And while it had a standard list of generic items like milk, bread etc, when you add something specific, like Kroger Large Eggs - 18 it will remember it. So once you get most of your items loaded, making the list is quick.

Both iOS and Android. The paid version has some more features, but not sure what they are.

 

[Clix Pix]

I'm old-fashioned. Then again, I'm living by myself, no family members to add in their choices and preferences to a grocery list, but even if this was the case, it wouldn't be a problem. I have a writing pad and pen in the kitchen and when I notice I'm running low on some item or decide I would like to buy some interesting-sounding new product next time I'm at the store, I simply jot it down by hand on the piece of paper and then when it is time to go to the grocery store I review the list and reorganize it for greater efficiency in walking through the store by putting items in more-or-less aisle and shelf order for ease and convenience. At the end of the shopping trip the piece of paper is tossed and a new list started, or if some item was unavailable at the last shopping trip it is added to the new list before I discard the old handwritten grocery list.

Because of my history of anorexia nervosa I do not use any sort of meal/food/calorie/weight/etc. tracking programs..... I have the very strong suspicion that this would not be a good thing for me. I've been more-or-less in recovery from the A/N for a number of years now and would like to stay that way. For the same reason I do not weigh myself except very occasionally but do of course consent to being weighed at medical appointments when necessary.

Every now and then I'll run across an interesting sounding recipe and sometimes I will actually go ahead and print it out. Ah, but....do I ever make it? Well, to be honest, no..... I truly am not that interested in cooking and preparing meals, and since it is just me I'm feeding anyway, I tend to keep things fairly simple. Thank goodness for my microwave oven!

 

[fischersd]

Paprika - the recipe manager app I use has the capability of putting the recipes you're going to use into a calendar and will generate shopping lists, based on your schedule (I don't use that part of it though - I just keep my recipes in it) . I did plug all of the nutritional information into it when I was doing keto - and have a keto category in my recipe list. . Has built in cloud storage of your recipe DB - sync's across all of your devices (provided you have the app installed/configured), allows you to easily send recipes to people from within the app and has an export db feature - that you could send your entire recipe DB to a friend (or just a specific category) to help them get started (for example, I have 118 recipes in my Keto category - when my niece and nephew wanted to give keto a try, I exported that category and put it on a Google drive share for them (back in 2018 - it was only 110 recipes then)
Oh - and almost forgot one of the most powerful parts - it has a built in browser to easily import any recipes you find on the web - just paste in the URL, click download, then save.

 

[Alli]

I don’t use recipes, so that’s not a thing I’ve ever thought about. For groceries, I use Alexa. Even my husband is now in the habit of saying “Alexa, add xx to shopping list,” when he’s finishing the last of it in the kitchen.

 

[Hrafn]

For shopping lists we use Our Groceries.

It allows you to make lists for multiple stores or store types. For example, we have a list called Home that is meant for groceries for our house. We had one called Mom which was for groceries for her house (her caretaker would add items) and another list called Lowes/HD for stuff we needed from stores like that.

It allows multiple people to add things to a certain list. For example, our daughter when she was living at home could put food she wanted in it, my wife would add household groceries to it and I could also add what I might want. As you shop you can "remove" items by touching them leaving only what you still need at the top.

Once you have completed your list, you can remove the list. This came in handy because if I was at the store and had already removed the list, the wife knew I was at least checking out and that she couldn't add anything else.

And while it had a standard list of generic items like milk, bread etc, when you add something specific, like Kroger Large Eggs - 18 it will remember it. So once you get most of your items loaded, making the list is quick.

Both iOS and Android. The paid version has some more features, but not sure what they are.

For shopping lists we’ve been using FamCal which allows for lists per store, and we can all add or modify lists and they all synch, too.

 

[rdrr]

For shopping lists we use Our Groceries.

It allows you to make lists for multiple stores or store types. For example, we have a list called Home that is meant for groceries for our house. We had one called Mom which was for groceries for her house (her caretaker would add items) and another list called Lowes/HD for stuff we needed from stores like that.

It allows multiple people to add things to a certain list. For example, our daughter when she was living at home could put food she wanted in it, my wife would add household groceries to it and I could also add what I might want. As you shop you can "remove" items by touching them leaving only what you still need at the top.

Once you have completed your list, you can remove the list. This came in handy because if I was at the store and had already removed the list, the wife knew I was at least checking out and that she couldn't add anything else.

And while it had a standard list of generic items like milk, bread etc, when you add something specific, like Kroger Large Eggs - 18 it will remember it. So once you get most of your items loaded, making the list is quick.

Both iOS and Android. The paid version has some more features, but not sure what they are.

I actually went to there site to check it out, and the ringing endorsement on the main page has me wondering if you're a paid influencer named "Plazman888".

“Wish I could give it 6 stars! My wife and I have used it almost daily for YEARS.”—Plazman888

 

[Herdfan]

I actually went to there site to check it out, and the ringing endorsement on the main page has me wondering if you're a paid influencer named "Plazman888".

I wish.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Paprika - the recipe manager app I use has the capability of putting the recipes you're going to use into a calendar and will generate shopping lists, based on your schedule (I don't use that part of it though - I just keep my recipes in it) . I did plug all of the nutritional information into it when I was doing keto - and have a keto category in my recipe list. . Has built in cloud storage of your recipe DB - sync's across all of your devices (provided you have the app installed/configured), allows you to easily send recipes to people from within the app and has an export db feature - that you could send your entire recipe DB to a friend (or just a specific category) to help them get started (for example, I have 118 recipes in my Keto category - when my niece and nephew wanted to give keto a try, I exported that category and put it on a Google drive share for them (back in 2018 - it was only 110 recipes then)
Oh - and almost forgot one of the most powerful parts - it has a built in browser to easily import any recipes you find on the web - just paste in the URL, click download, then save.

I’ll just add that it’s nice that most recipe sites conform to the same format making it easy to extract everything needed for Paprika in the right format. Whenever I see a recipe online that I think I’d be interested in the first thing I generally do is scroll the page to make sure the recipe appears in the format. A lot of times its at the bottom and you have to scroll for days past paragraphs, advertisements, and pictures. But if it’s there Paprika will quickly find it to extract. No manual copy and paste bullshit. That was kind of a long winded explanation of your last point.

Also when creating a shopping list from recipes it automatically groups the items on the store isle you would most likely find them on which makes the store run a lot quicker.