Meal Planning Doesn’t Have To Be Hard, You Just Need A System

Meal planning for the week is often stressful, so stressful in fact that people end up eating out or eating rubbish. I’m here to share with you my system that will allow you to have both a Grocery List and your Recipes be easily accessible. If you follow this, you will know exactly what to buy each time you go to the market and reduce food-waste. (How many times do you buy groceries that you don’t end up using and they go bad?)

Step 1: Create a “Recipes” Folder

The Notes app has come a long way since its introduction. You could now utilize folders so first things first, create a “Recipes” folder by hitting the bottom left corner Folder icon. It will pop-up asking for “iCloud” or “On my Phone”… choose iCloud so you could share this in the future.

Step 2: Inside this Recipes folder, start creating a note for each meal you will.

Anytime I find a recipe of something I want to make, I create a new note in the Recipes folder and throw the link to the recipe in there. The example of my recipes folder is here on the right.

Make the first line of each note the title of the dish. (i.e., Burger w/ Caramelized Onions)

If you make a recipe and decide you like it enough to use again…

• Update the first line with how long it took to prep and cook. (i.e., 30min)
• Copy paste the ingredients from the link into the note for faster reference next time.
• Jot down anything learned from making this (such as what to prep first to save time, modifications/substitutions, etc).

If you make it and don’t think you’ll make it again, delete the note!

Step 3: Create a “Grocery List” note

Open your Notes app and go to the “All iCloud” folder and create a new note. (The reason you want to make it under the iCloud is so that you could share it and be able to collaborate.)

Copy paste the following into your new note: 

GROCERY LIST

• Eggs
• Milk
• Greek Yogurt

What are we making?

• Burger w/ Caramelized Onions
• Salmon with Honey

Meats in Freezer

• Ribeye steaks
• Frozen Bread

Things To Do Around the Home

• Oil the squeaky door hinge.
• Do the Amazon Returns

Recipes I’ve Made In The Past

• After you make a meal, if you will make it again, cut the meal from the “What are we making?” section to this section for faster reference of what’s a tried and true go-to.

Step 4: Share this Grocery List note with your family so all of you could update this.

You could share it by simply tapping Share, tap “Send Copy” and switch it to “Collaborate” and then text it to them.

Next time, before you go shopping, think of a few meals you want to make.

Collaborate with your loved ones. Ask them what they would like to eat. Give suggestions from your list of recipes.

• Throw the ingredients you need in the grocery list. 
• Update the “What are we making?” section with the recipes you will make.

Step 5: To switch quickly between the Grocery List Note and Recipes Folder, utilize the Widgets!

When adding ingredients to the grocery list, it was a little cumbersome to go from the recipe notes back to the grocery list, but I figured out a solution was to utilize the widget feature! The goal is to add the Shared Folder and Recipe Folder individually as widgets so it will look like this:

Here’s how to setup the Notes widget to display your Grocery List and Recipe folder with one flick! I’ve included a video of this process on the right:

1. 1. Swipe right from the Home Screen or Lock Screen to get to the widget space.
   2. Touch and hold a widget or an empty area and wait for apps to jiggle or choose Edit Home Screen.
   3. Tap Edit in the upper-left corner.
   4. Tap Add Widget.
   5. Search Notes to add that.
   6. Choose the 2nd-view (my preference).
   7. Tap Done.

Do this twice so you will have TWO Notes widgets.

One will be the “Recipes” Folder and the other will be the “Shared” Folder (which contains your Grocery List that you’ve shared).

Here’s how to edit the widget to display those folders:

Touch and hold one of the Notes widgets and choose “Edit Widget” and you will be able to choose a different folder. Make one display the “Recipes” folder. Then edit the other Notes widget to display your “Shared” folder. When you finish, you can touch the widget and choose “Edit Home Screen” to then rearrange the way they are displayed (I like mine at the top).

Bonus Tip #1: Want to copy paste a recipe from an Instagram caption? Take a screenshot of it. Then go to the photo and you can select the text!

For some reason it’s not possible to select the text from an Instagram post, but if you take a screenshot of the page and go to your photos, you can select the text and copy paste it into your preferred note for faster reference. I show how I do this in the video below.

Bonus Tip #2: You can create hyperlinks of your actual notes.

Select the text, go to the right until you see an “Add Link” button and then start typing the note name and select it and it will create a link to the note. This will make it easier for you to go immediately to the recipe you want from your Grocery List note where you’ve eventually gotten a list of “Recipes I’ve Made In The Past.” 

Again, I show how I do this in the video below.

Bonus Tip #3: You can pin the recipes you want so they are always on the top. You do that by sliding the displayed note to the right and hit the pin icon. 

Extra Tips To Save Cooking Time

1. Get an air fryer that is also a toaster oven AND normal oven. This is the one I use. Air fryers warm up way faster and reduce cooking time dramatically which saves a lot of time!
2. Prep ALL your ingredients before you start cooking. This is known as “Mis en place” in French. Sometimes I prep the ingredients in the morning so it’s ready to go in the afternoon or for dinner.
3. Use one-pot meals. These are quick to make and require less clean up. Some of my favorites to give you something to work with are:
   • Cabbage Roll Soup
   • Goulash
   • Paprika Chicken Thigh Bake

And finally, cooking is a lifelong skill that you must cultivate. Following a recipe is very easy. All the information you need for preparing any food is at your fingertips with the internet.

To take a snippet from Brazil’s incredible dietary guidelines:

Hope you found this helpful! Please share it with your loved ones and let me know what you thought of this, especially if you would like me to post more details (recipes?) by contacting me here.