I came upon RecipeZaar a few months ago and found a fantastic frugal tool there that I MUST share with you. I’ve only been using the site for a couple months now so I’m relatively new to it. I’m not familiar with all of the features they offer but I can tell you about the one that’s sold me.
You can search their thousands of recipes by ingredient. I know what you’re thinking – that’s nothing new. However, it’s the simple and quick interface that makes it so fantastic. You pick a category – like Main Dish. Then they give you some sub categories – I picked chicken. Then you click “sort by ingredient” at the top where it says “Open The Recipe Sifter.” It opens this whole list of ingredients. If you have them in your house you click on them. In one minute, I’d clicked on about 15 different ingredients and they gave me recipes that I could make that I already had all the ingredients for at that moment. It’s great because I don’t have to rack my brain, hoping for sudden inspiration. It does that for me.
Usually a clean-out-the-pantry night would go something like this:
What could I make with …. chicken, broth … ummm …. carrots …. ummm (opening and closing doors, hoping for something to jump out, picks something up) What is this? How old is it? Ew.
You get the picture. It’s tough to just think of something on the spot like that. This is really exciting for the frugal part of me. If you want to have a clean-out-the-pantry night or week this could be an excellent tool. This does all the recipe sifting for you, so the only recipes you’re looking at are ones that you can make with things you already have. It’s ingenious. You could also use this to think up new recipes to add to your regular rotation.
Anything that makes my grocery shopping and menu planning easier is a big deal to me. Stick around because I’m working on a cool tool for grocery shopping that I plan on sharing with all of you really soon.
Why I do what I do ~ I brought Chloe to a new playground yesterday. It isn’t new really but it’s new to us. After we’d been there for about 20 minutes it was nearing lunch time so I told her that we needed to leave. “No Mom, I need to play.” She insisted. I felt bad because I hadn’t let her play there for very long so I told her we could stay a couple more minutes. She said, “No Mom, I just want to play for 7 more seconds.”
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I have gotten a few recipes from RecipeZaar before, but I haven’t spent enough time on the site to realize this feature was available there.
I do occasionally use the ingredient search on All Recipes, but this will be another great source for me.
Thanks for sharing this information Nicki.
Amanda´s last blog ..5 Lessons You Can Learn from Kids
I’ve used that site for about a year now. It’s come in handy when I procrastinate going shopping and I’m trying to “get by” for that night…lol.
Britt´s last blog ..Hint ‘O Banana Bread
OK I’ve been saying someone needed to invent something like this and I guess someone else had the same idea. I’m all over this!!!! Thanks for the tip!
Kelli M´s last blog ..Sarah’s Bridal Portraits
This is the second time I’ve heard of that site. I’ll check it out. Thanks!
Angie´s last blog ..Making Time for Others