Meal planning and recipes

Seven dinners. One Sunday evening.

You sit down for a while on Sunday and plan the week's meals together. With the recipe book in the app you quickly pick out the dishes and place them in the weekly plan. In a few minutes the week is done, and the shopping list wrote itself while you chose: just generate it and shop. And whoever forgets what is for dinner opens the app and checks, instead of asking "What's for dinner today?"

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  • Lunch and dinner, seven days
  • The menu writes the shopping list
  • Mobile and web
Week 25 on the phone: Monday's dinner, and the leftovers that became Tuesday's lunch.
How we thought about it

The deciding is the hard part. Not the cooking.

Below are the week's four steps, in the order they actually happen. Sunday first, because that is where the week is decided.

Meal planning sounds like a feature. For us it was a question asked too often: what's for dinner? It came at half past five, when someone was already hungry and nobody had shopped, and then it was pizza again.

What makes the difference is not being able to write dinners down. It is that you make the decision once a week, in peace, together. After that the week is a fact everyone can see, instead of something you bat back and forth and improvise every afternoon.

Then we took it one step further. Why should the menu stop at a list of dishes? The quantities are already in the recipes, so the week's menu can write the shopping list for you. You pick the food, the app adds up the groceries.

Scenario 01

Sunday. You plan the week together.

You sit with the week open in front of you and fill the days with dishes from the recipe book. Monday is spaghetti, and since there is always too much you put Monday's leftovers in as Tuesday's lunch. Friday is Midsummer at grandma's, so nobody cooks that day.

It takes ten minutes, and then it is done. Nobody has to decide anything again until next Sunday, and whoever cooks on Thursday already knows what to cook.

Week 25, lunch and dinner on every day. Under the plan sit the shopping list and the week's nutrition.
Sunday, the kitchen table

You fill in the week's dinners together. One decision, not seven.

Five minutes later

The menu becomes a shopping list with the week's groceries, grouped by category.

Thursday, five o'clock

Nobody has to ask what's for dinner. It is in the app, and the ingredients are at home.

Scenario 02

Whoever wonders does not have to ask.

Your partner is on the way home and wonders what tonight looks like. Instead of texting to ask, they just open the app: today's lunch and dinner sit at the top of the overview, along with the rest of the day.

And if nothing is planned for tomorrow, that shows there too, while there is still time to do something about it.

Read about households and roles
Friday morning: today's meals at the top, and tomorrow still empty.
Scenario 03

The recipe book is the household's.

The recipes you actually cook are not in a binder on the shelf and not screenshots in the camera roll. They are in the app, with a photo, cook time and servings, and everyone in the household sees the same book: it is the one you pick from on Sunday.

A recipe you already have can move in: paste a link, type it from a cookbook or photograph a page, and the ingredients and instructions land in place. Grandma's meatballs never have to be copied out by hand again.

The household's own recipes: photo, tags, time and servings on every card.
Scenario 04

The menu writes the shopping list.

When the week is set, you tap generate. The app goes through the week's recipes, merges ingredients that repeat and groups the items by category, so the list is sorted like a shopping list, not like a menu. You see it before it is created and can untick what you already have at home.

Then it is an ordinary shared list: the whole household has it, and whoever shops ticks things off while the others see it, without anyone updating anything.

Read about shared lists
The week's eight recipes become 42 items, grouped and ready to share.

Also.

What makes a weekly menu hold up in real life, and not only on Sunday.

Leftovers that stay in the plan

Monday's dinner can be marked as Tuesday's lunch. It then counts as leftovers and adds no new items to the shopping list.

Days when nobody cooks

A meal can be plain text instead of a recipe: pizza on Friday, or Midsummer at grandma's. The day is still filled in.

Copy a week

A week that worked can be copied straight onto another week instead of being typed in again.

Nutrition per serving and per week

Every ingredient carries its nutrition values, so recipes show kcal and macros per serving, and the whole week adds up.

500+ ingredients from the Swedish Food Agency

Government-validated nutrition data is built in from the start. If something is missing you add it once.

Your own ingredients

A favorite product that is missing gets added once, with its own nutrition values. After that it is there to pick in every recipe.

Frequently asked questions.

Do I have to enter all the ingredients myself?

No. 500+ ingredients from the Swedish Food Agency are built in with nutrition. If something is missing you add it once, and then it stays.

Can I import recipes I already have?

Yes. Paste a link, type the recipe out or photograph a page from a cookbook, and the ingredients and instructions land in place.

Does the nutrition work for my own recipes too?

Yes. The nutrition is calculated from the ingredients, so your own recipes and your own ingredients get a full nutrition overview too.

Anything else?

Write to support@epihem.com, we answer ourselves.

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Make the decision once a week.

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