Tips and tricks to maximize the Recipe Catalog

I LOVE my recipe catalog for how much utility I get out of it. When starting to meal prep I struggled with how to buy in bulk, as well as how to use ingredients that were about to go bad. To read more about my personal experience with starting meal prepping including the different processes I went through see my article My Meal Prep Journey.

Often times I simply forgot meals I could make because I was over thinking. I forgot how things as simple as strawberries with different toppings like chocolate, Nutella, or whipped cream, created super easy and different desserts. I also was not efficiently going through all the ingredients in my fridge to be able to stretch my budget further between grocery trips. Through the main challenges came this idea of a filterable, searchable catalog.

#budget #recipecatalog #cheapmeals #mealprep

Believe it or not, it took me about two weeks worth of work to create it, and it is still a constant work in progress. I learned all types of coding and software systems and tried dozens of programs to try to get the functionality that I wanted. However I am always looking to improve so if you have any feedback I'd love to hear your ideas or criticisms in the comments below!

So, as it currently works the catalog gets the most functionality by remaining broad. It also works best for its users to keep an open mind to how they can modify the recipes to make them work best based on the food they have.

Recipes are grouped by their collection, ingredients, and number of ingredients. You can use all three filters, or just one. For example you can search for dinner's only, select ingredients you have like chicken, then select the number of ingredients you'd like to use like 3.

The search WILL NOT exclusively show you recipe that only use chicken. If you select bananas, along with chicken you will not find recipes that exclusively pull up dinner that use both chicken and bananas. It is designed to show you all possible recipes that you could make with any of the ingredients you selected. So if you know that you really only want to use one specific ingredient to see what you can make with it, only select that ingredient and then add more filters as you go through.

For example if I wanted to see all recipes I could make with strawberries I would only select that ingredient and leave all other fields open.

If you realized you only want gluten-free recipes just select that collection and let the program filter for you.

This allows you to focus on what you already own to see recipes you can make to help you stretch your budget.

Another key thing to remember is that the Ingredients filter is based on both specific ingredients and broad categories. While a recipe may call for apples and pears, you may notice there is a general ingredient called "fruit" where all recipes containing any fruit will be. There is a specific filter button for apples, because it's a more common fruit in baking, but that there isn't necessarily one for pears. So be sure to always select the general categories to find the most number of recipes you could make

Additionally, be aware that there may be easy substitutes for certain ingredients so they can be lumped into the same category, like garlic powder and garlic glove.

The last note that you may have noticed is that the filters are only as good as the number of recipes there are! Everyday I try to add recipes, but you can always add recipes by filling out the Add a Recipe form on my website to help the collection grow and to share some of your go-to favorites.

Summary Points:

• The catalog shows all possible recipes you could make with the ingredients selected and that fall into whatever collection you select (if you choose to select one)

• Play around with different filter settings based on what you're looking for

• If you're looking for dinner chicken recipes you may only want to select ingredients you'd want to use for that meal. If you select sugar you'll also get a lot of recipes for desserts.

• Include generic ingredients like "fruit" or "vegetables"in your search where if you have at least a few ingredients in those categories you could substitute certain fruits for others to make a recipe work for you.

• Submit more recipes to make the search easier for you!