This is not new information. Three things you should do to save money when you go grocery shopping is:
- Leave the kids home
- Don’t shop hungry and
- Adhere to your shopping list
Now that I’ve stated the obvious, here’s another thing I came across while roaming around the internet. It’s a software that not only helps to store, create and organize recipes, but with a little tweaking it can keep track of what is in your pantry, help you to plan your meals and create your shopping list based on your meal plan and ingredients in your pantry.
Living Cookbook Sounds Too Good to be True
The name of the software is Living Cookbook (I’m currently evaluating the 2008 version). Just for grins I decided to check it out. I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but I tend to create recipes off the top of my head. I generally don’t use established recipes. That is both good and bad.
The good thing is that cooking without a recipe is a truly free and creative process. You learn to use what you have in your house and make balanced, good tasting meals for your family. The downside is that no two meals taste the same and you never remember what you cooked or how you cooked it.
My family often puts in a request for a meal as follows: “Mom, why don’t you make that meal you made about 3 months ago…you remember don’t you? It had the chicken and that spicy sauce and you added that white wine to it and served it over orzo. Remember mom?” Hmmm…no, I don’t remember. Once I create a meal it leaves my head.
After too many such conversations, I decided to keep track of some of my creations. The only problem is that I kept misplacing the notebook of creations. After losing one too many notebooks, I decided to track recipes on my computer. That’s great, but I could never remember what I nam
ed the file so I couldn’t find it when I needed it.
Software to the Rescue
As I said before, while wandering around the internet I found a few recipe tracking software programs. There are several of them out there, but I chose the Living Cookbook for two reasons. First of all, I read the reviews and found them to be extremely helpful. The second and most important reason is that I could try it before I buy it. You can download a fully functional 30-day trial version to see if it works for you.
I’m still in the trial version phase of the evaluation, but I’ve got to tell you the potential is amazing. Not only can it save money by creating shopping lists, but if you are so inclined, it has everything you need to create your own recipe book. Once you’ve compiled your recipes and added your photos, it creates the cover page, table of contents, etc and makes a .pdf file of your recipe book. You have the choice of distributing it as an ebook or having it printed and distributed off line.
Practical Application of Living Cookbook
I’m not ready to create a cookbook or anything like that, but being able to put all of my new creations in one place and have the ability to find them again is a great start. If you’re anything like me, you should check it out. The software currently goes for $34.95, but it has the potential to save (or even earn) money.
Tags: keep track of your pantry ingredients, manage your recipes, save money grocery shopping