Thursday, May 1, 2014

Easy Meal Planning: Money Saving Travel Tip

Eating meals while traveling or day tripping can be difficult and expensive! When we travel, I have to bring a lot of food with us. One of my daughters can't have too much dairy, another can't have gluten, and I have so many food allergies it is just ridiculous. The smart choice for us is to bring food wherever we go even if it’s just a day trip to the zoo.  Plus it saves it money- a definite bonus! Everyone knows one of the best travel saving money tips is to bring your own food. And if you are camping, it’s kind of a must. The hard part is having everything planned and prepared before you go. There was one trip where I completely spaced the food packing all together. I didn't eat all weekend except for a little bit of fruit.  Not making that mistake again! I'm so glad to discover Fits Me.  Fits Me is an easy online menu planning and recipe search site.

Here's why I like it:

1. All about the Layout- When it comes to recipes, I need pictures. I don't care if it is called, "The Best Food in the World Period"- if there isn't a picture of it, I'm not going to read the recipe. Fits Me gathers
recipes from around the web and shows them with pictures cards in a Pinterest style layout. You can see all kinds of recipes, give them a rating, or add them to a menu plan. As you continue to rate the recipes, it'll learn more of your preferences making it even easier to find things you like.


2. Allergy and Diet Specific Friendly- There is a Food Personality section that you can customize. On a Paleo diet? Simply check the box and it will only show you Paleo friendly recipes. Have food allergies? Check the boxes and it won't show you that food. Despise coconut? Add it to your dislikes and you won't see a recipe with it. Have a love of chocolate like me? Add it to your likes and see more recipes with it.  If you want really simple recipes add it to your preferences.  I LOVE the Food Personality feature. It makes all the difference to me. I really don't like sorting through tons of recipes to find just one that works for us. Fits Me makes it super simple. AND if you are having guests over with restrictions or a different diet than you are used to, the Food Personality can make it really easy for you to find something that will make everyone happy.

3. Searching Made Easy- Only need breakfast recipes that include eggs (thanks to the leftovers from Easter)? Simply add the tags Breakfast and Eggs to your search filter and you'll find all kinds of great ideas like Roasted Asparagus, Green Onion, & Blue Cheese Frittata or Avocado Deviled Eggs.

4. Menu Planning- Once you find a recipe you want to use, add it to your weekly menu.  Say you want to add it to Wednesday's Afternoon Snack- just click the Add to Menu button and it'll go where you want it.  You can save each menu you plan so if you are going camping and want the same things as last time, you have it saved and ready to go. You can click on your menu plan later and rearrange things around to get the most from your food too. For example if you had chicken on Monday night and another chicken recipe Friday, you can easily move it up in the week to make use of your leftover chicken from Monday.

5. Shopping List- Now this is a great feature.  Click on the menus you want (you can even just click on a day at a time) and use the Create Shopping List button.  It automatically gathers a list of all the ingredients you need in nicely arranged categories. Now I can easily go back through the list and check off anything that I know I don't need like the spices. Then I email it to myself and always have it with me. I can also easily see if there is a lot of one ingredient that I can just make all at once in the beginning of the week too. For example if I see there is a lot of ground turkey, I’ll make it all the first night I need it so dinner is quicker and easier the next few nights.

6.  Its FREE- Yep, it’s free. Simply go here to signup! (this is a referral link).  Can't beat free right? They also have great customer service so if you have a problem or even a question they are there for you. I recently asked a question related to popcorn and she gave me great tips in addition to answering my question.

Fits Me makes it easy to plan meals for while we are away. I simply add things to my menu board, print the grocery list and I’m good to go.  For a trip, I don’t check off the things I already have- I print the whole thing and highlight the ones we already have so I know what to pack and what to buy. For instance, I have most of the things listed under spices so I highlight those and go back and combine the spices needed for a meal in a Ziploc and write Taco Seasoning on it to make packing easy.  
Fits Me works great for day trips too like when we went to Manitou Springs for the day. I can add an easy lunch (like our Cracker Sandwiches) and some great snacks (like our Granola Bars) to a menu plan. Then I look at the shopping list the day before so I know if I need to hit the grocery store first.  I really like being able to save the menu plans and go back and use them over and over again.  I can just rotate through a few favorites for our day trips. 

What's one of your go-to meals while on vacation or on an all day outing?

10 comments :

  1. Oh, I love that you can customize for food allergies. That makes it so much easier!

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    1. Definitely my favorite part too Mandi! Thanks for stopping by!

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  2. Ok this is pretty cool! Definitely going to check this out!

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  3. This is something I will be sure to check out. Thanks for sharing

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    1. Thanks for stopping by Tammy! Hope you like it as much as I do.

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  4. It looks like a great resource. We bring a lot of food with us on vacation--one reason we take a car top carrier!

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    1. That's one of my next posts Tammy- how to pack it all! We've reached the stage where we need a car top carrier too!

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