Recipe Keeper

    Over the years I have found some great recipes. I printed them, bookmarked them, tried to keep family favorites within easy reach. Alas, as I moved or sites merged, changed domain names, or just disappeared most have been lost to me. I'm not entirely sure how I found Recipe Keeper, I've had it for years. I started with the free trial and fell in love. The only really bad thing is that it is not cross compatible. At least, it wasn't when I'd found it. I'm not sure about today. I bought both the Windows version for my computer and the Android version for my phone. You can sync the two once they are purchased on both devices. I don't really know where to start with describing all of the incredible features. I guess I should start with where you would start with a brand new app...

Adding Recipes

    First you need some recipes. Sure, you can go old school and type them in - it's an option. Really handy for those family recipes that have been passed down but were never actually written down. Find a recipe online that you want to preserve? Just copy and paste the link - or you can even search for a specific recipe right in the add a new recipe section. It will scan the page and find the recipe for you. Incredibly helpful for those websites where the author tells you their lifestory before hiding the recipe amidst a ton of ads. Have a favorite cookbook - or even one on your Kindle - but don't want to type it out? Just grab your phone and snap a picture of it. I find adding recipes by picture (or website) much easier on the computer personally. I just back up the photos to the cloud and copy and paste it - or you can select one from your computer. It's really quite simple once you get used to it. The app walks you through the steps the first couple of times that you do it. Also helpful when you see a recipe on a box and don't want to take time to cut it out, snap a picture and add it whenever you like. There is also an option to add recipes from a PDF file. I've never used that option, I imagine it is very similar to the photo method.  

    As you add recipes you can select course - breakfast, lunch, dinner or categories - chicken, beef, pork, vegetarian, crockpot, instant pot. Whatever your little heart desires. You can delete and edit the categories or add your own. You can also create collections. Maybe you want to group all of your cuisines into separate collections: Italian, Mexican, Chinese, etc. Personally I have mine set by season. Soups are in the winter collection, pasta salads and no bake are in summer. Completely customizable.

Make a Plan

    There are two ways to make up a menu plan. First, you can browse your recipes and click the "add to menu" button while viewing a recipe. Or, you can go into their menu planner. This is what my daughter and I did. You can select how many meals you want to plan. Use filters if you want specific recipes based on your categories and collections. You can even tell it not to pull up recipes that have been scheduled in the past however many months. My daughter and I first selected 4 recipes from the chicken category. It's not really warm here yet so we didn't specify to draw from the summer collection. It produced 4 random recipes. Fear not, each listed recipe has a link to change this recipe. It will draw another random recipe. You aren't stuck with whatever it pulls up on its first try. So we decided on our 4 chicken recipes and scheduled them on Sundays. Rinse and repeat with 4 beef on Tuesdays. Thursdays were tricky, but luckily we aren't confined to just one category. For Thursdays I selected pork, egg, pasta, and meatless categories. It worked it's magic and TADA! one bonified meal plan. If you noticed the calendar displayed here, YES! it even syncs with google calendar to add your menu right to your calendar.

Make a List

    We have a plan, now we need ingredients. Well it's quite simple really. You select the recipes in your menu plan and click add to list. Or, if you are just fetching one recipe, there is an option to add ingredients to the list while viewing a recipe. Then things get a little complicated. In the menu planner screen it sorts your ingredients by recipe. You can go through each recipe and delete the stuff you already have - like salt, pepper, spice, sour cream, what have you. Or you can just add everything to the list. Then go into the List panel and here you can group by category. The produce will be grouped together, the dairy, the meat, etc. It will attempt to combine the items from different recipes and you might end up with 12 tsp of pepper or 3 cups of sour cream. We have 4 chicken recipes on our menu, one whole chicken, one recipe that calls for 2 lbs or approximately 4 chicken breast, one that calls for 4 chicken breasts, and one that calls for chicken breast cutlets. We'll probably just use regular chicken breast for that last one. You can edit the list so that it specifically says 12 chicken breasts in one line and delete the others. So there is a bit of finagling to get your list just right, not gonna lie to you. BUT then you can email the list to yourself - or hubby if you're sending him to the store. Or if you have the app on your phone you can just pull the list up in the store and use the handy check boxes as you complete your shopping.

And that's the end of the fun stuff

    Now comes the work, erm, I mean cooking lol. You can set the app to ignore your timeout settings so your screen doesn't go black while you're digging in a cupboard looking for that spice that always manages to fall behind the others. On the computer version I can set multiple timers. The phone app might have this option too but honestly I've never found it. Maybe not since your phone does have a timer.

Sharing

    Had a friend over for dinner and now they want your recipe? Maybe a co-worker got a whiff of the leftovers you brought for lunch and got jealous. Or you just like sharing recipes with friends. It is easy peasy. The recipe panel had a link for sharing the recipe, you can share it through text, messenger, email, prolly other social media, or just copy the links and paste it wherever you communicate with this friend. You'll get a lot of examples of this. You know how I expressed my annoyance at websites that hide the recipes? Here, if you see a picture, click on it, you'll be taken to the recipe. If you also have recipe Keeper, you'll get the option to add it right to your cookbook.

    I think that's it.  There are probably other features that I'm forgetting, it's such a handy app.