Which cooking subscriptions/apps do you have and why?

Question

To aid in meal planning, I decided to give a couple of subscriptions a try:
1. Plan to Eat - I used this for about 3 years when they first started and WOW the functionality has improved so much. Recipes are a snap to add to your account (back in the day there were too many websites that they couldn't read properly). Meal planning is so easy, and the shopping list is a great tool. I love the "queue" function too. Now I feel like recipes I want to try won't end up in a Pinterest black hole, never to be seen again. I signed up for only 30 days but will definitely get the one-year subscription when it expires.
2. Eat Your Books - I've seen this mentioned in cookbook threads here. I signed up for a one-month membership to check it out and I'm still a little on the fence about this one. I admit it was nice to type in "chicken thighs" in the search bar and have the results showing dozens of possibilities (especially from cookbooks that I haven't done a lot of cooking from yet - ebook bargains, haha!). The reason I'd keep this is that my cookbook collection isn't huge but it's now divided between books on shelves and ebooks, so it takes more time and mental energy to even *see* the books - if I just walk in the pantry and look on my cookbook shelf now, I'm missing all the ebooks.

What are your thoughts on those subscriptions? What else do you recommend as far as subscriptions or apps?

Answer

Can you use screenshots to save a recipe in plan to eat?

If so, it might be interesting to me. I'm using Organizeat now, see https://home.organizeat.com/

I needed a tool with which I could save recipes using phone screenshots, mostly from facebook. I'm following a few recipe groups on facebook (kinda deleted all my actual friends lol) and need a quick way to save them. I don't really use it for anything else. I believe I'm paying 12 euro a year. What I really like about the app is that it seems made by a genuine bubbly person doing everything herself, great fun messages with lots of smileys.. :)

Answer

I never got into EYBs. I think based on what I have read here that it may be a user issue ; ) maybe I just need to sit down and play with it. 
I use the NYT app a lot. I like to search and get lots of options, plus you can get several emails from them (what to cook this week, what to cook this weekend, etc) that I can use as a jumping off point for my menu planning.

Answer

I pay for the New York Times Cooking (cooking.nytimes.com). Many of my favorite recipes were behind a pay wall after a short while, so I ponied up for the subscription. I've found many great recipes there, so it's well worth it to me.

David Lebovitz (davidlebovitz.com) has just rolled out a new format. You can get his newsletters for free or sign up for an annual subscription which gets you Q&A sessions, exclusive recipes, videos, etc. I am so appreciative of Lebovitz fantastic recipes that I would pay even if I didn't get anything extra. A while back, he said that he might pull back from posting dessert recipes because of all the complaints about what readers believed to be excessive sugar (believe me, his recipes are never overly sweet). I made a spreadsheet of the recipes I've made from his blog and books. The number is over 60, many of them are favorites in our household.

I considered paying for Alison Roman's enhanced newsletter, but decided against it. I have had great success with several of her recipes. The reason I'm not signing up for the paid subscription is that many of her recipes are for meat dishes and I don't eat meat. Also, she doesn't include weights in her recipes. Once I tried baking by weight I've never looked back.

Answer

The only thing I’ve paid for is a one-time purchase of the RecipeKeeper app. It was under $10, not a subscription, and I can use on my iPhone and iPad. It’s great for organizing all the miscellaneous-sourced online recipes, easy to search, and very customizable for categories and courses. It also has OCR functionality for the occasional screenshots or cookbook photos, and I find it to be pretty accurate. I had to contact customer service to get help importing my recipes, and they were incredibly responsive.

Answer

I've had Eat Your Books for 6 years now, after using the free/5-book version for 6 months of that time. I'm still not using all the features but feel I'm getting value for my yearly fee. In addition to helpfully tracking my ebook cookbooks as well as the paper versions, I have added several cookbooks I borrowed/used from our public library to my own bookshelf (tagged as such). And some of the magazines that are indexed which have many/most recipes online a month later. The search options to find recipes from all books and indexed online sites as well as narrowing it to just the books on my own bookshelf is very helpful.

For menu planning I use a simple Word document with a grid box for daily lunch & supper plans at the top and a long list of foods on-hand that are available for use - fresh veggies/fruit, cheeses, and a large freezer-inventory of meats, breads, and frozen meals/soups (homemade and commercial)

For any tool or app to work well, you need to put in some effort to keeping data current. I just realized I've added some ebooks over the holidays that need to be reflected in my EYB account. And today's grocery haul needs to be added to my planning inventory list.

Answer

I am a Plan to Eat evangelist. We've been using it for 4 or 5 years... it makes shopping easier and has reduced our impulse buying and food waste. My husband or daughter can add items to the list AND they can start cooking dinner before I get home because they both have access to our account. I have hand-typed a bunch of recipes from cookbooks into my account so they will populate the shopping list etc.
Like Masha I do have access to the NYT cooking site, but I import any recipes I want to keep into PTE!

Answer

I use Eat Your Books regularly. It took me a while to get into it of course but it is very useful! I like being able to search for a recipe based on ingredients I have but also being able to search only recipes I’ve already made.

Answer

I use NYT Cooking often. I've been a NYT subscriber for decades, so it comes free with my NTY subscription. I probably make a recipe from NYT at least 1/week. 

But I don't import recipes from other sources to NYT Cooking. I just book mark those recipes if they are from an on-line source & save them on my laptop (or save them as PDFs or Word docs), and then print them when I am ready to make them. If they are "keepers," they are 3-hole punched & placed in a 3-ring binder.

Answer

Like others replying, I use EYB. I don’t do a lot with bookmarks or categories, but as with the OP, I find it especially useful for turning up content in the many ebook editions I own, among other things. I also appreciate the indexed blogs/websites and option to search for online recipes, and it is where I search when I’m looking to peruse recipes for a specific dish, rather than random googling. I also read users’ notes on recipes, and try to write notes myself (though I’m not consistent about it).

I use the Paprika app on my phone and tablet to save online recipes. I think it has a lot of features people cite among the apps they use, like shopping lists and menu planning, but I can’t weigh in on those because I don’t use them. I was using the (then) free Pepperplate app and site, but when the bookmarklet stopped responding, I ignored it for a long time, then discovered they were switching to a subscription model. Paprika was a $5 purchase, and it allowed me to import all the recipes I had saved to Pepperplate seamlessly, with their tags intact and populated the app with all the tags I’d set up, which was a major selling point. Its in-app browser and recipe download function seem to work quite well. 

My current NY Times subscription includes access to recipes, but I do save the ones I’m interested in to Paprika, in part because if I eventually change or cancel my subscription, I’m unlikely to pay for the Cooking access separately.

Answer

I use AnyList for groceries and importing recipes from the web. It's free to copy/paste ingredients (which you can do as single lists, and it sorts neatly), or ~$10/year for a full license which includes a web import gui. I use the gui. The recipe feature scales — so if you want 1/3 of the recipe, just tell it 1/3, and it will update. Of course, that depends on ingredients being entered correctly (I double check before scaling), but, yay, no math!

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Which cooking subscriptions/apps do you have and why?

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