Meal plan lists/services that lean into efficiency and customization?

September 21, 2018 9:40 AM

I am terrible at meal planning. I would like to be provided with a meal plan. I would like a site that takes our dietary preferences into account. I want to make a single grocery shopping trip per week with a pre-provided list. I DON'T want to buy 87 ingredients because no meals in the plan share ingredients or care about "using up" what you bought. Is there a website or app that can provide this to me?

Our situation: Two vegetarians currently eating low-calorie meals. We are looking for a meal plan with a provided shopping list. We would like said plan to have a little variety from week to week.

The twist? We would like the meal plan to work around the shopping list, not the other way around. We don't want to waste money buying a bunch of ingredients that will only be used in one meal and be stuck with most of it remaining unused where it can be avoided.

Is there such a service or app out there?

posted by FakeFreyja to Food & Drink (10 answers total)

Cooksmarts has the option to make every meal vegetarian, and they reuse ingredients across meals. They also let you know when there's an opportunity to do a step (e.g. making a batch of something) once to use for a later recipe.
posted by lettersoflead at 9:53 AM on September 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Fresh20 has a vegetarian meal plan - you buy 20 fresh ingredients, have a basic pantry at home, and the five dinners you make use up all of the ingredients. I have tried the vegetarian one, but the paleo is pretty solid.
posted by Jaclyn at 10:16 AM on September 21, 2018

The Fresh 20 addresses this specifically; it aims to use up as many of the same ingredients as possible across all five meals while still presenting a fair amount of variety, and none of the items on the shopping list were ever particularly obscure. We used it for quite awhile and were very happy with it.
posted by anderjen at 10:20 AM on September 21, 2018

If you don't find this exactly, I have found that Pepperplate can work this way with some tweaks. You add all of your own recipes and then you can add them to a meal plan and shopping list. This takes some upfront work on your part, but you can reuse meal plans once you have a good one.

The tweaking comes when you tag every recipe with any ingredient that isn't used up fully. So, if the recipe calls for 2 yams, you don't need that tag since you can buy just two yams. But, if it calls for 1/2 package of tofu, you do tag that because you can't buy just 1/2 pack. Now you plan your meals using as many common tags as you can. The shopping list part will tell you exactly how much of each item to buy, so if you only need one inch of ginger, you can find the smallest piece.
posted by soelo at 11:27 AM on September 21, 2018

We've been using Budget Bytes. Under Extra Bytes in the top menu is the meal prep section. Meals are broken down by cost and provides a shopping list. Once you've stocked your pantry with essentials, the shopping lists are fairly small for the meals. There are vegetarian options.

I'm not much of a cook but I've found this to be a fairly painless way to plan and prep.
posted by horsegnut at 11:46 AM on September 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is not quite what you are after, but my partner and I have been happy with the vegetarian meals we get from meal kit provider Green Chef. Three vegetarian meals for two per week, all the ingredients, easy prep and cleanup, about $72 per week

There are also vegan, gluten free, etc options.
posted by notyou at 5:15 PM on September 21, 2018

Eatthismuch.com might give you what you're looking for - you can set all kinds of dietary preferences, and you can choose recipes as preferred so they come up more often (or just keep refreshing the meal options until the whole week is stuff that sounds good).
posted by jouir at 8:20 PM on September 21, 2018

Check out cooksmarts. It’s quite handy, and as we normally only cook 3/4 nights a week, it’s a better fit for us than the Fresh 20.
posted by samthemander at 9:07 PM on September 21, 2018

I think you're looking for Workweek Lunch.
posted by squasher at 10:37 PM on September 24, 2018

I really like the weekly meal plans from Epicurious, especially their later ones, which give you one grocery list for the entire week and lots of flexibility. Their recipes tend to be reliable too, especially the ones with high ratings and good reviews.
posted by peacheater at 8:00 AM on September 25, 2018 [2 favorites]