Wed 25 Jun 2008
Grocery List Generators
Posted by cvc under Shopping, Software Utilities Tags: GTD
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Grocery list generators can save you the trouble of painstakingly and repeatedly writing out ingredients on a piece of paper that you may not even remember to take with you! Couple that with a few inaccuracies in transcription (flawed amounts, missed items, etc.), and your highly-anticipated day of cooking the long-awaited meal for you, your family, and/or friends turns into an exercise in frustration with return trips to the store. This is indeed the position in which I often found myself, prompting the exploration for a better way to make a grocery list and a better way to ensure I have it with me when I leave the house.
We took a look at 3 free services: AllRecipes.com, the Grocery List Generator Firefox Extension, and SlickRecipe.com, but decided that Cozi, while not exclusively software for grocery lists, was the most useful, primarily because you can copy and paste ingredient lists from any recipe online and have them instantly added to your shopping list. You can then opt to have that list sent to an email address or as an SMS message to your cell phone, the latter of which would effectively bypass the need to print it out. If you forget to send it to your phone before you leave, there’s a toll-free number you can call to request it.
But, let’s take a look at the others first. AllRecipes, Slick Recipe, and the Grocery List Generator for Firefox all allow you generate shopping lists for a recipe with just one click, a feature that Cozi does not have; however, to enter your own personal recipes, all 3 programs still require a tedious, line by line, data-entry process. If you’d rather avoid data-entry and use already-existing recipes, be aware that SlickRecipe and the Grocery List Generator rely on user-submitted recipes and therefore have small recipe databases.
Both SlickRecipe and the Grocery List Generator provide the ability to generate a shopping list based on any recipe you browse on their site (note their limited selections), and the Grocery List Generator has the additional feature of allowing you to download any recipe to your own installation of the GLG, but personal recipes on AllRecipes.com are not connected to their main recipe database; while you can still email these recipes to yourself or to a friend, you won’t have the convenience of being able to add ingredients to a shopping list you can take with you.
Now, Cozi doesn’t have the ability to store recipes in the same way nor does it allow you to generate a recipe-based shopping list with a single click, but it does have the amped up grocery list features I was looking for: the ability to easily copy and paste ingredients from any recipe you find online (ultimate ease and flexibility: no limitations on a site’s recipe database and no need for time-consuming data-entry) and the lack of requirement to print a paper copy/the ability to access the list from my cell phone.
You can send any list to SMS from the Cozi website, but in order to use the super-cool grocery list functionality we’re highlighting here — copying and pasting ingredient lists directly from a website — you have to download Cozi PC. Once Cozi PC is up and running:
- click the “Shopping List” option at the bottom of the screen
- select the “Groceries” list (or create a new one)
- visit any recipe online and copy the ingredient list to your clipboard
- return to Cozi PC and click the “Paste from Web” link
Your ingredients will automatically be imported into your current shopping list and any new items will automatically be imported into your “Recent” ingredients list.
You can add additional items to your current shopping list by clicking on the “Recent” link (there are pre-set values contained here — to remove the offending ingredients, simply click the “Edit Recent Items” link and click an item to remove it), or by typing it directly into the list. If the item already exists, suggestions will appear as you type.
We think it’s a pretty slick way to create shopping lists — and it comes with a whole host of other functionality we’re not reviewing here (e.g., shared calendaring, family photos, and a family journal) — but, unfortunately, Cozi PC is currently only available for Windows XP and Vista users (the Cozi website is available to anyone).
If you are already using a grocery list generator that you like, or if you want to leave feedback on your own experience of Cozi, let us know in the comments!
