Plan to Eat: Meal Planning Service Review & {Giveaway}!

I am so excited and pleased to share a fantastic resource and quality meal-planning service with you: Plan to Eat.

One of the best ways to ensure you are eating healthy is to plan your meal in advance, so that you aren’t scrambling for last-minute choices. I’ve tested quite a few meal planning services and can honestly tell you that Plan to Eat is one of, if not THE BEST service available for organizing your recipes, planning meals in advance, and creating grocery lists. Each aspect of Plan to Eat is user-friendly, efficient, and purposeful.

Plan to Eat consists of three main features: the Recipe Book, the Planner, and the Shopping List. The Recipe Book compiles all of the recipes you’ve added to the site in one convenient place. Recipes can be added manually (you’d type them in from, say, from Grandma’s recipe cards) or, more conveniently, by using the “Save Recipe” button. The Save Recipe button allows you to grab a recipe from any website and add it instantly to your Recipe Book or Queue (recipes that you’re waiting to plan). I’ve created a short video to show you how Plan to Eat can be your answer to sorting the massive amounts of recipes you might have floating around on your computer by way of bookmarks or pins on Pinterest. Plan to Eat easily takes your recipes and organizes them until you are ready to plan meals.

The Planner feature on Plan to Eat is quite superior to other sites I’ve tried. Planning can be done months in advance, and the site allows one to plan for all three meals of the day, plus snacks. If you are an overachiever, you could conceivably plan an entire year’s worth of meals! It is so simple to use: highlight a recipe from your Recipe Book or Queue, click the “Plan” button, and choose the date. Plan to Eat instantly adds the meal to a calendar where you can drag and drop recipes to your liking. Meals and meal plans can be copied to future dates, and it is all done with a few easy clicks. The simplicity is amazing and refreshing!

One of the best features of any meal planning website is the ability to create a shopping list based on the meals planned. Plan to Eat compiles your ingredients and organizes them by section of the grocery store. You can add “Other” items to the list, delete items, and place items in your “Pantry,” meaning that the site will keep track of what you already have on-hand and won’t add it to your shopping list. And Plan to Eat is mobile, too!I don’t mean you have to download an extra app for your phone. If you go to PlantoEat.com from your smartphone, it automatically becomes a mobile site and gives you a handy shopping list in the palm of your hand. No extra steps required! This, to me, is pure convenience and pure genius.

While I’m talking about genius, let me introduce you to the folks behind Plan to Eat. Lisa & Clint created Plan to Eat based on philosophies about the importance of meals made with real ingredients that are shared with family. (Hey–my kind of people, right?) Their business philosophy is equally wholesome: no tricks, no ads, no schemes. You can test Plan to Eat FOR FREE for 30 days without providing anything more than an email address. At the core, Lisa and Clint seek to provide families with a simple solution to a common stress: “What’s for dinner?”

My Experience

I utilized Plan to Eat for two weeks prior to writing this review. We are on a tight food budget in our house; we’re down to one income. We also have a 2-year old who eats like an 18 year old; the food supply dwindles quite quickly! Meal planning is essential to keeping our grocery bills streamlined. I was skeptical that Plan to Eat could really save me much money, since I was choosing the recipes for the week myself, with no care about the number of ingredients. Our grocery bill was around $100, surprisingly, but made delicious meals for seven days(!!) such as: Avocado & Pinto Bean Enchiladas, Curry Turkey Muffins, and Roasted Zucchini Flatbreads with Hummus, Arugula, Goat Cheese, and Almonds. I used to think I needed a meal planning service that chose my weekly meals for me, to keep me on track, budget-wise. Now, I can’t even fathom using another site. Plan to Eat gives me the freedom to choose my favorite recipes and plan them in the easiest way possible.

Plan to Eat is a quality product from quality people. Isn’t that the best place in which to put your buying power?

Plan to Eat is priced at $4.95/month or $39/year. (If you’ve never considered purchasing a meal-planning service before, think of it this way: if someone said, “Hey, I’ll make your life infinitely easier every day for a year…for forty bucks,” would you think that was a good buy? I would!)
To sweeten the deal, Plan to Eat is offering a 25% discount code until July 31, 2012 for Healthful Mama readers. Enter code HEALTHFULMAMA at PlantoEat.com

How about a year of meal planning for free?

Enter using Rafflecopter form below  to win a year’s subscription to Plan to Eat.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: I was provided with a free subscription to Plan to Eat in order to write my review. All opinions are my own. Referral links appear in this post. The few dollars I may earn from your purchase helps fund this blog. Thank you!