Meal Planning with Trello!

In my last post I shared that my 2016 one word theme was productivity.  Today I will share a new thing that I am using to make sure that I am being productive and accountable for the things that I’m doing. There is a great app that you can also assess from your desk top (what I prefer) called Trello.  Trello is a free online app that uses a digital form of Kanban.  Kanban is a productivity tool used to organize production into categories such as to do, doing and done.  Trello is Kanban on steroid it allows you to create as many boards as you like based on the projects that you are doing. (I assume there is no limit, I currently have about 18 boards actively using 12).

Above is how I organize my main Trello page that shows my various boards.  I have numbered them in rows based on the order I want them to appear.  Row 1 is 1.1 to 1.4 then row 2 is 2.1 to 2.4 and so forth.

Each board has the option to create as many list as necessary for you to complete a project or task oriented goal.  Today I want to share how I use Trello for Meal Planning.  I have tried several things but this seems to work wonderfully.  I created several cards within the Menu Planning Board.  There is a board that contains the recipes that I would like to try towards the end of the board.

The First set of cards is the week that is most current of the meals that I have scheduled.  I’m currently doing two weeks at a time and grocery shopping twice a month.  The third list is the grocery list for the month. My goal is to plan at least four weeks in advance so that I can watch for sales on the items needed during the following month.  I will let you know how that goes by March.

Each of the cards in the list contains a picture of the dish.  It will either contain a generic pic from the web or the actual picture from the recipe for which I would like to try.  For example the card for hamburgers and fries doesn’t have a recipe in it because I mastered how to produce the well desired hamburger and french fry deal. However I've scheduled to try the Creamy Chicken and Broccoli Casserole this week so in the card is a copy of the recipe ad the source where I found the recipe. 

The thing that is most awesome is that you can create a calendar for your board and move the recipes around if you change your mind!

Now if having it on a calendar makes you feel warm and fuzzy you can go to calendar and the settings tool and get a iCalendar Feed link to add it to your google calendar (make sure it is marked private unless you want the work to know what you’re cooking and then you can add it to your google calendar.

Right click on Other Calendars then choose add by URL. The URL is unique to your board. Viola it’s on your google calendar with only a few steps.

Trello has become my greatest asset in planning out my year.  I’m using it for everything.  I will share more ways I’m using Trello to be productive in the coming weeks.

Trello is free and it is easy to use!  Let me know if you give it a try.  Also, let me know what meal planning tools that your using to keep the troops feed.

Disclosures:

The image of desk is from Jill Levenhagen Collection of stock photos