Creating Meal Plans

OVERVIEW

Now that you’ve created all of your recipes and managed the ingredients within those recipes, it’s time to start assembling your meal plans. After initial setup, the recipe and ingredient functions will only need to be maintained, and regular meal planning will become a swift and painless process that pulls from that information.

CREATING MEAL PLANS

To create a meal plan, click on “Create Meal Plans & Shopping List” from the homepage:

Creating your meal plan happens in 3 basic steps:

1. Name, Number of Individuals, & Group Descriptions

Naming your group will allow you to access or edit it at a later date. Enter the number of individuals by appetite size (small, medium or large) and any notes that you’d like to be included in the final meal plan.  If the group will vary in size throughout the duration of the event, use the maximum number of individuals that will be served.  You will have an opportunity to decrease the number of individuals served per meal in the final step.

2. Determine Group Dietary Restrictions (Optional)

Select which common dietary restrictions individuals may have in your group.  In the next step, recipes containing those dietary restrictions will be highlighted with a small warning so that you can avoid recipes as needed.  For more advanced automatic dietary restriction calculations see section 4.3 of this manual.

3. Add Recipes to Meal Plan:

If you’d like, use the filters above your recipe list to focus on just the right meal(s).  Show specific categories (breakfast/lunch/dinner), hide allergens found in this group, or show only recipes with custom tags.

DATES:   First, define the start date and end date for the event being planned.  The meal planning grid will grow and shrink as you define the dates.

MEAL SELECTION:  Drag and drop the selected meal into the appropriate cell in the meal-planning grid.

As recipes are added to the meal planning grid, they will also be added to the final list of meals below.  There is one additional optional variable that can be controlled in this list:

# of Individuals Served: This field will default to the full amount, that is all members of the group will eat this meal. If, however, some members of the group will not be partaking in a meal you can glide this slider down to the number of individuals that will eat this meal.