When my husband and I decided to become vegetarian the first time we decided to "wing it". Fueled with the romantic idea of living off the land whilst commuting two hours a day to and from our jobs, We'd figure it out along the way.
We ultimately succeeded in transitioning into heralded "cheese pizzatarians" and while we briefly enjoyed this diet (who wouldn't!) we ended up reverting back to eating meat in order to maintain our previous level of health.
The second time around, I vowed to learn from our past failure and prepare by researching and perfecting vegetarian recipes high in protein, nutritional fats, and complex carbs. Our goal was to become vegetarians who cooked nutritious, diverse and, time sensitive meals. At first I struggled to bookmark websites and recipes, resorting to archaic methods of print outs and categorizing emails. I was sinking, spending more time attempting to track down recipes I liked, than I was cooking them. I could feel my inspiration deflating yet again. In comes the app Meal Board.
MEAL BOARD OVERVIEW
This app is a true catalyst for meal preparation. It is a one stop shop for importing recipes from the web, customizing directions and ingredients to your unique tastes and helping with grocery lists and weekly planning.
Quick Importing Recipes
Prior to this app, I was attempting to wrangle notes, emails, and even text messages containing recipes I found interesting. Mealboard allows me to import my recipes effortlessly! In the example below, I've found an incredible recipe from one of my favorite food bloggers, Minimalist Baker. With one copy/paste of the URL, I can permanently import her blog page into the app for future reference! By the way, this Turmeric smoothie is mouthwatering, definitely check it out on her site!
Recipe Customization Options
Not only can I import a recipe as is, I can customize it to my tastes by adding or changing ingredients or directions.
The final recipe permalinks back to the Minimalist Baker's Blog page for quick reference of the original recipe.
I can't tell you how this catapulted my ability to re-create healthy meals specifically geared towards our vegetarian life style.
In addition, the app allows me to customize categories of recipes by meal types or overarching themes such as: vegetarian, vegan, dairy free, high protein, or low carb! Ah, the OCD me is rejoicing!
Meal Prep Support
This app includes a powerful array of planning options including weekly calendar links to recipes of your choosing and the ability to exporting shopping lists based on days you desire. If I wanted I could get extremely granular and keep track of ingredients I have in stock from which grocers, however I don't personally have time , nor the need to do that. I suppose if I we're a professional chef that could come in handy.
IMPROVEMENTS
Aesthetics
The interface is fairly bare bones. It seems the creator of the app focused on use, not aesthetics. I can respect that as a first step, but to improve the user experience it would be great if the interface was more aesthetically pleasing.
Export Options
This app could be a powerhouse if I had the ability to export or share recipes with other users of this app! I'd love to swap and add booked marked recipes with other vegetarian or vegan users! This is somewhat frustrating since the only export option available is through email.
Overall Thoughts
This app had been essential to my smooth transition to a vegetarian lifestyle. It's made recipe saving and categorizing efficient for my busy lifestyle. Please do yourself a favor and check out this incredibly useful tool! Have any veggie recipes to swap? Leave the link in the comments below! I'd love to find additional meals to add to this wonderful application!
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