My family likes to eat dinner every single night. Does that sound like your house? I’m guessing it does. We have a few go-to recipes that I can count on for almost the entire family to eat, but I am always looking for new ideas to keep us from getting stuck in a dinner rut. I have been a long time fan of Pinterest, so many new ideas, but getting to the recipe when I was ready to create my shopping list or make dinner became somewhat cumbersome. I would either try and print out the recipes and end up losing them or just trashing them week after week and would always forget to add some tiny ingredient to the shopping list by mistake and have to make an extra trip to the store or our fail-proof fall back… just order pizza!

Enter “Copy Me That.” This all in one app is an organizational dream! There are three main components to the app. Saving and organizing recipes, meal planning, and creating your shopping list.

First, you can save recipes in one spot. Like Pinterest, you can categorize your recipes as well; simply give them a tag. Every word in your recipe is searchable too, so if you don’t want to spend time tagging recipes, simply search “chicken” and the recipe for those tasty shredded chicken tacos will pop right up! To save a recipe, the first step is to open the app and go to the “more” drop-down menu. Click “add button/copy recipe.” This will add a button to your web browser with the Copy Me That icon. When you are on a webpage with a recipe you would like to copy, click the button, and that recipe will be imported to your app! I use the app primarily on my iPhone and iPad. To save on one of those two platforms, use the icon in the upper right that looks like a box with an arrow, the Copy Me That icon will now be one of your choices! Once the recipe has successfully been loaded in your app, you can review it for accuracy and move on to the next step!

I still use Pinterest for discovering new recipes but also use popular food blogs and even cooking magazine websites. One of my favorites is the Pioneer Woman’s Blog. Her food is great and as an added bonus, she is really funny! Her witty comments on processed cheese have me cracking up! There is also a community feature on the app that lets you search recipes that others have loaded on to their app.

When you are ready to start meal planning for the week, open your app and select a recipe. You can now add it to your meal plan. Select the date on which you would like to make the meal and view your calendar to see your whole week’s worth of choices. I love to get my actual calendar out during this time and look to see what activities we have going on during the evenings and try to plan meals around those. Soup in the crockpot is my go-to when the kids have sports practices! If you are a next-level planner, add breakfast and lunch to your meal plan as well, you can have multiple recipes for the same day! You can add side dishes and notes here too.

The last step is your shopping list. Each recipe you add to your meal planner has the option of being added to your shopping list. After I have added each recipe to my shopping list, I go through its entirety while standing in my kitchen to check off any items I may already have. And then, honestly, I head right over to the grocery store’s website, still using my iPad, and order groceries to be picked up the next day. With four kids, ages 7 and under, I will do just about anything to avoid an actual trip into the grocery store! Isn’t technology amazing!