Meal Planner - Frequently Asked Questions
About the Meal Collections
How do I create a meal plan using the Meal Planner?
Answer: Step 1 in creating a meal plan is located on the Meal Planner page. After you Log In, here's what you do:
- Select the number of "meals to make this week" from the drop-down box. The meal planner will select meals for you based on the preferences you establish in your Family Profile. (If you haven't customized your Family Profile, don't panic, a variety will be selected for you by default.)
- Next, check the box to "include this week's featured meal" on your meal plan, if you want to make the meal in the picture.
- Lastly, specify which Meal Collection should be used to select your meals, if other than "All Meal":
- “All Meals” - published & your private collection
- “My Meals only” - your private collection
- “Easy Gourmet” - delicious & fun, relaxed gourmet
- “Fast & Simple” - quick and easy published meals
- “Family-friendly” - basic family meals
What happens when I select one of “Meal Collections:” buttons?
Answer: The meal planner program will select meals only from the group you select on the home page. This gives you the option to select meals from a different meal collection every time you plan your meals. Regardless of which group you select, the meal planner will select meals at random, after factoring in your preferences and ingredient exclusions from your Family Profile.
What is the difference between each of the four meal collections?
Answer:
All Meals
This group includes meals put together from the Easy Gourmet, Fast & Simple and the Family-friendly recipe collections, as well as any meals you have added.
My Meals only
Only meals you have added to your Family Recipe Box will be selected. The meal planner will be looking for meals, not individual recipes, so if you have added recipes, but have not yet made them into meals, you will need to do so before this option will return any meals. Click here for more on Adding Your Own Meals.
Easy Gourmet
You could also describe these meals as relaxed gourmet - fun, interesting and delicious. Any of these meals would be terrific for a causal dinner party, or a family week end meal. Most of these meals take a bit longer than 45 minutes to prepare - or require marinating, baking or slow cooking in your crock pot. All these meals can be prepared easily by anyone who has the very basic of cooking skills - no chef credentials required!
Fast & Simple
This group of meals consists of recipes that can be made in 20 to 40 minutes (never more than 45 minutes), with minimal ingredients (2 to 12, but never more than 12, excluding salt, pepper and water). This Fast & Simple collection is a subset of the published meals. That means they will be selected along with the other published meals when you select All Meals, browsed along with all published recipes from the Recipe Collection, and included in any searches of the Published Recipes.
Family-friendly
Family friendly meals are back-to-basics recipes with no strong spices or flavors. It is our intention to deliver healthy, well-rounded meals that will appeal to everyone in the family, even young children. Therefore, we have excluded recipes with expensive cuts of meat & fish, such as scallops. There are no recipes with strong spices, such as curry; no strong tasting cheeses, such as blue cheese; no bitter greens, such as arugula; no olives or capers; no horseradish or wasabi; no okra, balsamic vinegar or liquor. Most recipes can be made in less than 45 minutes with 12 or fewer ingredients, except for the recipes marked as (Family Classic).
(Note: This new Family-friendly collection is still evolving, with more meals being added and refined. Your feedback is welcome!)
Mixing meals
Can I select meals from different meal collections to make my meal plan for the week?
Answer: Yes. You will need to run the meal planner separately for each meal collection. For example, let's say you want your weekly meal plan to include 3 meals from the Fast & Simple only and 2 meals from your own collection of meals (My Meals only).
- Step 1: Run the meal planner twice, once for 3 meals from the Fast & Simple collection and again for the 2 meals from your collection. On both runs, proceed to the grocery list, but don't print it yet, just navigate back to the Meal Planner page. (This action saves your meals to the database.)
- Step 2: Now that you have selected all 5 of your meals, go to Meal Selection page (small plate). On this page, you will see all 5 meals listed.
- Step 3: To print the grocery list for all 5 meals, scroll down the Meal Selection page and press “Preview Grocery List”. Review, revise and print your grocery list as usual. Press “Preview Dinner Menu” from the Meal Selection page to plan your dinner menu for all 5 meals for the week.
Not Enough Meals... message
I requested a few meals to be selected, but got the following message, why?
'There are not enough meals to satisfy your meal selection request.'
Answer: The meal planner program takes into account all your meal preferences and exclusions set on your Family Profile. It will not select any meals with a main ingredient that you have set to '0'; nor will it select any meals with recipes that contain one or more ingredients listed on your exclusion list, or any other excluded conditions.
It also skips any meals that you have made in the past 365 days, unless you have indicated otherwise. It will then select meals for you from the ones that remain. If you have excluded a lot of ingredients, and/or set many of the main ingredient categories to '0', there may not be enough meals left to select.
What can I do to remedy this situation?
Answer: We recommend reviewing your Family Profile - My Exclusions ingredient exclusions list. There may be ingredients listed that you typically substitute with other items. For example, if you listed 'butter' on you exclusion list, but typically substitute margarine on recipes that call for butter, remove 'butter' from your exclusion list. This will allow recipes calling for butter to be selected, and you can just substitute margarine for the butter when cooking.
You can also review your meal selection history on the Meal Selection page. If you have made some meals that you enjoyed enough to make again, click on 'Rate' and set the Make Again Soon value to a date in the near future. The meal planner program will always select these meals for you, according to the date you indicate.
