**WINNER – Congrats StarTraci! You’ve won!**

You may have figured out that I do love to cook. What I love a whole lot less is the whole planning part. Planning my meals and of course planning my shopping list. That alone can take HOURS as I comb through the recipes I love to figure out what I’m going to be in the mood for and then comb through the recipes to figure out what ingredients I need and then resort said list into an order that makes logical sense to me… you know grouped by where it is in my store because after spending HOURS on this task, I’m aiming for efficiency once I finally DO get to the store.

There are a plethora of services out there that will provide you with meal planning services for a fee and then send you the list but I’m also a bit of a control freak and I know what my family loves and what they like less.

But then? Then I found a new app that intrigued me.

First a note about what this app is NOT – It is not a fountain of recipes for you to comb through.  Those meal planning services I mentioned above?  They will provide you with recipes for a weekly or monthly fee.

What this app does however is save me HOURS of OCD work.

Simply put, this app allows you to collect your favorite recipes – either from scratch or from the web – and then with the click of a button allows you to create your meal plans based on the recipes you’ve saved.  

And then from THERE it creates your grocery list from the recipes.

Click. Of. A. Button.

You can keep your grocery list in your phone if you want, or you can email it to yourself or whoever is doing your shopping.  This is a great way to edit your list if needed and since you aren’t having to type it all up, it’s a huge time saver.

Using a patent-pending planning engine, Spinning Meals considers your food preferences and the seasonal variations which go along with your family’s favorite meals. Customize each recipe in your queue so the “spinner” will know how often you wish each dish to appear on your meal plans. Give the app a spin and “Voilà!” Your grocery list and meal schedule is all ready to go.

More features include:

• Automatically plan breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and/or dessert
• Group recipes into meals (Pork Tenderloin with Mashed Potatoes and Asparagus)
• Organize meals by category, season, and desired frequency
• Control planning behavior with spin settings
• Shop from the grocery list generated from the meal plan
• Build meal plans manually if you prefer
• Internet recipe capture searches popular recipe sites to save in the app

Now that said, there are still a few minor tweaks that could make this fantastic app EVEN BETTER and after talking with the creator, there are many great things in the works, but even as it is now, it’s pretty darn great.  

I really loved being able to set the seasonality of my families favorite dishes because I’m not gonna make chicken and dumplings in the heat of the summer any more than I’m likely to make my favorite Zesty Lime Shrimp Salad in the middle of an ice storm.  

You can plan just dinners like I have, or can plan all three meals per day and even add things to your grocery list that you always buy no matter what… like Milk.  I swear I buy a gallon or two every time I hit the store.

I really love the ways you can customize this to your family and needs – want to limit meals that take longer than 30 minutes to weekends only?  Cool.  Just tell it that.  

Does your family LOVE having a particular recipe over and over again?  Cool.  Just tell it that. 

Do you have a standing pizza night?  Cool.  Just tell it that.

I could go on and on but I think you get the picture.

It took a few minutes to add in some of my favorite recipes but it was well worth it.  Added bonus is that those recipes don’t ever need to be added again so the more you use it, the better it becomes FOR YOU.

Buy it

Head on over to the iTunes store to grab this app. Currently priced at a one time fee of $3.99, it’s well worth it for all the time it can save.

Win it

Thanks to Spinning Meals, one of my readers will get the app at no cost!  So enter below if this is something you’d love to check out!