Menu Management Made Easy: A Must-Have Meal Planning App

Our philosophy at MOMeo Magazine is that if your family life is running smoothly, your work life gets a whole lot easier and vice versa. If your work life is organized, your family life is a little less chaotic, but that’s a topic for another day. Today’s post is about making your family life easier to manage during the week so you can focus on building the business without feeling like you are sacrificing the quality you give to your family.

That brings us to our favorite work life balance strategy: meal planning! The workweek just goes smoother when you know exactly what you are cooking for dinner each night. No need to pull out the frozen chicken fingers, no need to order in pizza (AGAIN), no last-minute trips to the grocery store, no late-night dining because you had to thaw whatever you had frozen in the deepest depths of the freezer.

That’s why we love the MealBoard Meal and Grocery Planner app for iPhone, iPad and iTouch! Thanks to this handy-dandy little meal planning app, you know exactly what you are cooking when AND you know that you have all the ingredients on hand because it’s tied to your grocery list and your pantry inventory.

If you are one of those fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants types, you can make up your meal plan IN the grocery store because you can import all your favorite recipes into the app. Speaking of grocery shopping, if you shop at more than one store, you can customize your grocery lists to match your shopping preferences (and the app will remind you what you already have so you don’t buy double).

It does take a bit of time to get it all set up, especially if you have loads of recipes that you like to use, but once you do, it’s ready to go so we recommend spending the time to maximize all the features of this app! Once it is set up, all you need to do is keep adding recipes and update your pantry inventory and the app will do the rest for you (except for the cooking part, you still need to do that…sorry).

How the MealBoard Meal and Grocery Planner App Works:

Decide on a Weekly Meal Plan — Pick which recipes you would like to make that week and click to add to your weekly menu, then drag and drop recipes to the day you would like to make them on and you have your meal plan!

Shop for Your Menu — Add the ingredients from your meal plan to your grocery list by choosing the sync function. The app automatically populates your list with what you have to buy (minus what you have already told it you have in your pantry). Don’t worry if you haven’t completed the pantry inventory, you can just unselect what you know you already have from your grocery list.

Follow Your Meal Plan — Now that you have your weekly plan ready to go, start cooking! You can view your meal plan as a list or in calendar view. If you decide to change your plans, simply drag and drop that menu onto a different day.