Pepperplate

Now that I have entered the world of mobile apps on my Kindle Fire, I am loving it. It is so handy having all of these things right at my fingertips. It has made everything from reading the news to lesson planning easier.

I would say Pepperplate is probably my #2 most useful app (#1 would be gospel library and #3 kid mode). It fills three functions that I needed. I've been wanting to put my recipes in kindle format for a while. I've been trying to get better about planning meals again. It can convert those meal plans into shopping lists.

Ever since getting a kindle last year, I have intended to make a file with all the recipes I use most. It would make them easier to reference, and I could have them on hand while traveling. I still want to do that, but in the meantime, with the help of a sister-in-law, I now have most of my recipes entered on the pepperplate site. You can synch your app to your online account, and it will download all your recipes onto your device (which I'm sure takes up a lot of room, but it's for a good cause). You can also share the recipes via e-mail, twitter or facebook. I anticipate this making it easier whenever someone says, "What was your recipe for...?" I wish there were an easier way to share all the recipes at once, though. For example, if I could just have a link with a list of my recipes to send to the rest of my sisters-in-law, and they could just click a "+" by each one they wanted to add to their accounts. (And they could send me their lists.)

The app and website also have a meal planner that synch together. I used to be really good about planning meals when we lived in Redding, which made both cooking and shopping easier (and we ate better). I have had trouble getting back on that ever since we moved here, but I have really been wanting to. Firebirdluver's new schedule had thrown us so off that I am finding I really need to plan meals, and I need to plan them for two weeks at a time. With Pepperplate, I can add recipes as well as text to the meal plan. Then when it's time to cook, I can just pull up that day's recipes. There's also a timer function, but I haven't used that.

Then you can add either meals from your meal plan or recipes from your recipe list to a shopping list. I am trying that for the first time this week. When I write my own shopping list from a meal plan, I inevitably forget something, so this should be good. The shopping list can easily be edited to delete ingredients you have stocked already or add other things. It even automatically sorts them by type (although not perfect, a handy feature).

What has helped you get more organized lately?