My favourite meal planning apps

We’re doing well with the Healthy Family Challenge — having lots of fun and trying our best to incorporate lots of healthy options into every meal. I’ve come to realize that the best way to approach things with food in our family is to really try to offer only healthy options at mealtimes and go from there. My oldest is going much better than the little one, who likes what she likes and refuses to budge. I know this will change as she gets older — her brother is proof of this because he was exactly like her.

If there is one area where I can definitely improve when it comes to mealtimes though, it’s planning. I’m awful at it. I’m that person that’s staring into the fridge at 5 p.m. wondering what to make, night after night. When I win the lottery, the first thing I’m spending my money on is a full-time chef. Until that time, I’ve been online checking out some cool apps and websites that provide great meal planning tools. I thought I would share three that I discovered that I think would make meal planning much simpler.

Supercook.com: It's a cool site that helps you create meals with what you have at home. You can enter the available ingredients into the search engine and you will get meal options for those ingredients. You can also search recipes, save them to your own list and create shopping lists. And it’s a free website!

Pepper Plate: This website that also offers an app option for any of your devices. You can import recipes from your favourite sites and add your own as well. Using those, you can create menus, plan out all your meals and create your grocery lists. I love that you can add their button to your toolbar to make adding recipes effortless. This one might just be my favourite.

All Recipes.com and Dinner Spinner: The very popular Allrecipes.com site and its app, Dinner Spinner, is another great way to plan out your meals. Dinner Spinner allows you to "spin" your options for mealtimes — you pick the dish type, the main ingredient and the amount of time you want to spend on the meal and it will give you a list of corresponding recipes. The app can also work in tandem with the site where you can access your lists. It offers endless recipe possibilities for meal planning.

Do you use websites or apps to plan and organize your meals? What are some of your favourites?