Shopping Lists
How the shopping list works
Planning a meal does not fill the shopping list by itself. Tap the cart on the meal plan to add the week's ingredients, and pick what to leave off. Meals you have already cooked, nights before today and leftovers nights are listed but start unticked, since the food is already made; tick one if you do want it. You can also add ingredients from a single recipe, or add items by hand.
The list does not follow the plan afterwards. If you change a meal, tap the cart again to add what is new.
Amounts on the list
The list says how much to buy. When a recipe for six is planned for four, it might need ⅔ of a lemon or 1 ⅓ eggs; the list rounds up, so it says 1 lemon and 2 eggs. Weights and volumes round up to something you can find on a shelf: 3.67 kg of potatoes is 3.7 kg, and a big pour of oil or stock, measured in the recipe by the spoon or cup, shows in millilitres. A whole chicken weighed in the recipe shows as a count when the recipe says what one weighs.
The recipe and Cook mode keep the exact amounts for the servings you're cooking. An item you typed in yourself keeps the amount you gave it.
One row for each thing
When two recipes need the same thing, the list adds them up on one row, under the name a New Zealand supermarket uses: canned tomatoes are tinned tomatoes, a recipe's flour is plain flour, flat-leaf parsley is parsley, and turmeric powder is ground turmeric. Wholemeal flour and olive oil are their own rows. A recipe that just says oil goes on the vegetable oil row.
Ounces and pounds show in grams. A recipe that counts potatoes, onions or carrots adds them to another recipe's kilos at a typical size, so the row has one amount.
Under a row that two or more recipes share, each recipe's line starts with how much of it that recipe needs. When the amounts can't be added, such as grams of flour and spoons of it, the second one shows on its recipe's line as "plus 2 tbsp".
Meals on the list
The top of the list names the meals it is buying for, each under its night, with who is cooking it and how many of its lines are ticked: Hearty Beef Stew, You cook, 2 of 3 ticked. When everything for a meal is ticked it says All ticked. A recipe you added from its own page is listed under Added from a recipe.
Tap a meal to see only the things it needs, or tap a night to see that night's. The names above the meals narrow the list to one person's cooking, starting with My dinners for yours. The total then counts only what is showing. Tap the same one again, or Show everything, to see the whole list. A line two meals share, like onions, shows under both, and ticking it counts for both.
On iPhone and Android, Hide folds the meals away when you only want the aisles.
Checking off items
Tap an item to tick it off. Items are listed alphabetically in each aisle. On iPhone and the web, a ticked item moves to Checked at the foot of the list, so you can see what's left at a glance. On iPhone that section is folded away; tap Checked to open it. On Android a ticked item stays where it is, struck through, so the row under your finger doesn't change while you shop.
In the apps a tick shows straight away. If it can't be saved, say with no signal at the back of the shop, it goes back and tells you, so you know to tap it again.
Real-time sync
Everyone in your family sees the same shopping list. When someone checks off an item or adds something, everyone else sees the update instantly -- no refreshing needed.
This is powered by real-time sync, so you can split the shop with your partner and both see what's been picked up.
Adding items manually
- Tap the + button at the top of the shopping list.
- Type the item name and tap Add.
Manual items are separate from recipe ingredients and won't be affected by meal plan changes.
Shopping list rollover
At the start of each week, unchecked items from the previous week can roll over to the new list, so nothing gets forgotten.