Spice up your cooking with Food Planner for Android
I love to cook and since I also love my tablet, I have tried many different ways to put the two together. I was looking for an app the other day that would help me when I was working in the kitchen. I wanted something that I could use to plan meals for a week, input my own recipes, and create a grocery list with. I was surprised at how long it took me to find a decent app that would do those three things. I downloaded, installed, and then uninstalled at least a dozen apps before finding one that worked.
The major problem with most cooking apps I found was that they were simply recipe repositories. They would have 10,000 plus recipes, but no way to add or edit your own. Some of the apps were full of beautiful pictures, or had a chef to explain how to do each step of the way via in app video. You could search the recipes by inputting different ingredients you had on hand, or simply browse by what type of meal you were preparing. None of these met the three basic criteria I had.
The one I finally found is simply called Food Planner. Part of the reason I went through so many before finding this one is because it did not catch my eye at all. The logo is a boring chicken leg on what appears to be an ugly yellow calendar page. The app doesn’t get any prettier when you open it up, but I’m very happy I decided to give it a try. There is both a free and pro version of the app. The free version has a few limitations on the number of recipes you can have, and will also have ads starting at the end of November. The developer seems to be very quick to address bugs and takes user comments well.
The screenshot above has three of the functions of this app. The recipes list page, the food planner, and the shopping list. As I said before, it’s not much to look at, but it gets the job done. The app has some pretty cool functions built in as well. It has the ability to sync across multiple devices which is helpful when my wife gets home early and wants to get a head start on dinner. You can add all the items from a particular recipe to your shopping list, or choose just the ones you need. The app also has an inventory list where you can keep track of all the items in your pantry. I haven’t tried this function out as I feel it is a very daunting task to have to inventory my whole kitchen for the first time.
This app has all the features that I wanted in a kitchen companion app, and because it does them so well I am happy to overlook the graphical plainness. If you find yourself in the same situation that I was in, I recommend giving Food Planner a try before you install any of the other pretty cooking apps out there.
[Market]
