iPhone Apps for Quick and Easy Meal Ideas

Balancing the demands of a busy career and the needs of your growing family isn’t always easy and rarely leaves time for preparing elaborate meals at the end of the day. Parents that prefer to take their meals at the family table as a group rather than in a crowded restaurant are faced with the challenge of whipping up something wholesome that doesn’t take all evening to prepare. That’s where these 10 iPhone apps come to the rescue, allowing you to access a variety of quick and easy recipes that are collected at your fingertips.

1. The Betty Crocker® Mobile Cookbook – This free app comes from one of the most trusted brands in cooking, providing more than 13,000 recipes with clear, step-by-step instructions that make preparing a tasty dinner easy for even beginner chefs. The app also allows you to access the nutritional information of the meals you prepare, as well as sync grocery lists for your favorites.
2. Clean Eating – Clean eating not only puts food on your table in the most natural state possible, but also makes preparation much easier in most cases. Even those who aren’t so familiar with the inner workings of a kitchen can prepare health-conscious, satisfying meals quickly and easily with the help of this app. Clean Eating is a free app that facilitates in-app purchases for individual issues.
3. EatingWell Healthy in a Hurry – Healthy in a Hurry is a free app that emphasizes the importance of healthful, nutritious fare while keeping preparation and cooking times low. Ideal for families that are watching what they eat, as well as how much time they spend preparing it, EatingWell’s Healthy in a Hurry app is definitely a great value.
4. Martha’s Everyday Food: Fresh & Easy Recipes – Few names are as trusted in the realm of homemaking and entertaining as Martha Stewart, and this $0.99 app only serves to cement that reputation. Dinner Tonight features allow you to find quick, simple meals that are both in season and kid-friendly each day with recipes straight from the editors, along with shopping list and favorites tools.
5. Cozi Dinner Decider – Not only will this free app take the guesswork out of choosing a dinner recipe by suggesting one for you, it also learns your likes and dislikes over time in order to improve those suggestions. While the app is free, there are in-app subscription prices for the service that vary depending upon the package chosen. The app allows you to customize your preferences and access a menu plan each weekend with five weeknight suggestions for the following week, saving you time at the grocery store as well.
6. Half Hour Meals – Quick & Easy Recipes – One of Apple’s “New & Noteworthy” apps in July of 2012, Half Hour Meals delivers just what it says: quick and easy meals that will satisfy the whole family and keep your time spent in the kitchen to a minimum. You can even store and share recipes of your own for the rest of the community to try!
7. 20 Minute Meals – Jamie Oliver – Celebrity foodie Jamie Oliver’s $6.99 app is filled with recipes that can be prepared in or around 20 minutes, allowing you to provide wholesome and delicious meals for your family without spending the entire evening in the kitchen. In addition to the 60 easy recipes, 20 Minute Meals also includes step-by-step photographs for each recipe and 21 exclusive videos that offer advice, tips and kitchen skill enrichment.
8. 15,000 FREE Easy Chef Recipes – This free app delivers 15,000 recipes to your iPhone, and allows you to brows by ingredients, recipe title or special occasion. You can even shake your phone to generate a random recipe when you’re having trouble settling on the best choice, and email the recipes in order to facilitate the creation of a grocery list.
9. Best Recipe Finder – TasteBook – Called the “iTunes for Recipes” by Daily Candy, this free app allows you to find recipes from websites, magazines and cookbooks as well as your own personal collection. Filter by ingredient, cuisine type or dish in order to access a staggering array of recipes, right from your phone.
10. Allrecipes.com Dinner Spinner – Shake your phone to generate a random meal inspiration or search the database by ingredients in order to find the best, tastiest and quickest recipes to feed your brood each night. You can also enter your favorite ingredients in order to generate recipes that feature them prominently, filter by dietary restriction, and search recipes by cooking time to avoid more complicated dishes.

Managing your time and planning meals on the go is a great perk of having one of Apple’s powerful iPhone mobile devices at your disposal. It’s important to keep safety first, however. Planning the menu during your evening commute might save time in the long run, but it also presents a very real distraction risk that could put both you and the drivers around you at risk. If you’ll need to plan a grocery list for your evening meal in order to stop on your way home, do it in the parking lot or before you leave the office instead; speeding down the highway while using your iPhone is both reckless and dangerous, and could cause significant injuries to yourself or to those around you.

Source: (http://www.babysitters.net/blog/10-iphone-apps-for-quick-and-easy-meal-ideas/)