Online grocery list

When it comes to grocery lists, I'm fanatical. In the past I've planned meals and painstakingly typed out my lists in Microsoft Word. It took most of the morning to do this and though I was happy with my organized and well thought out list, I wished that I could do this a little more efficiently. Well, my wish has come true.

As I was searching for recipes for my first shopping trip in nearly a month, I came across a wonderful site called ZipList. What I'm most excited about is that I found this site without the help of my tech-nerd husband and his toilet tech magazines (we have PC World by the toilet) I did it all by myself! I was beaming with pride as I shared with him my discovery. He was impressed, but I won't lie he really has no use for this site! I saw his eyes glaze over when I told him about it. I, on the other hand found this website to be by far the best online grocery list and recipe box I've come across in all my years of recipe and grocery planning and believe me I've seen a few.

Ziplist is the whole package- very easy to use and sync's with virtually any website with a recipe you can find. It has a recipe box that you can store your favorite recipes in. Recipes can be obtained through ZipList's online collection of recipes or any other recipe you find from an online site. You can even add your own hand written recipes to your recipe box. By downloading the Recipe Clipper feature, you can clip any recipe on any website and ZipList will grab ingredients from the ingredients and put it in a custom grocery list!

In the past I would find an online recipe and save it to a folder in my bookmarks. With ZipList its very easy save recipes to an online recipe box. For instance, I love traditional Italian cuisine, so one of my favorite sites to grab recipes from is Lidia's Italy. If I want to make a dish from this or any site it's very easy to grab the recipe and add it to my shopping list. Just pull up the recipe on the website and while on the page press the recipe clipper button (easily added to your links tab when you follow the instructions on the organizing recipes button.)

Copy and paste the recipe name, ingredients and put the directions in the notes box. You can either add it to your recipe box or add to the recipe box and have ZipList add the ingredients to your shopping list. You can also add a picture by going into the recipe box, selecting the recipe and clicking the edit recipe option.

When you add the recipe to your grocery list by selecting the add to list button, ZipList will add the ingredients to your grocery list.

ZipList identifies the ingredients from your recipe and puts them into two categories: Items that you  might need to buy and items you most likely have on hand. You can change this by clicking or unclicking the box next to the item if you do or don't have that item on hand.

The items will then be transported into a grocery list and you can edit the list and the aisles you will find these items in. This is very easily done by pressing the little pencil by the item needing the change.

In edit mode you can change the name of the item, the aisle you would find the item in and the store you will be shopping at.

The store option is handy because you can set the aisles specifically to your favorite store. For instance my favorite store to shop at is Redner's Warehouse Markets. I can set the grocery list to the aisles and path I take when I go shopping. I start at produce and weave in and out to the back of the store. I know my Mom likes to start in the back at the meat department and work her way front. Any route you take can be tailored to the way you shop and saved in the My stores section of website.

ZipList has many other practical features that make grocery shopping even easier. In shortcut mode you can set ZipList to recognize keywords that when typed, will add in the rest without you needing to typing the whole description.

Also very nice is the template feature which allows you gave saved items that you buy on a weekly basis.

When you are finished with your shopping list it can be printed out in a very neat and organized fashion, complete with the name of the aisle you will find the item in, the store you will be buying the item from and the recipe you will be needing the item for.

This website seriously saved me two hours as it was easy to navigate and setup. I hope that you find this website as helpful as I did!