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Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Works for Me Wednesday: Finding Recipes for What You Have

One of the ways I like to save money is to plan meals using what I already have on-hand. If I got a good deal on diced tomatoes two weeks ago, I might have 6 cans in the pantry. Or if my uncle shares some zucchini the size of a small country with us, I need to either freeze them or use them.

The problem...
Not always having recipes for the items that I have on-hand

The solution...
Websites that I can customize for what I have on hand

My favorite place to customize recipes is allrecipes.com. Once there I head to their Advanced Search area.



In the Advanced Search area, I can enter the ingredients I want included in the recipe. I can also enter ingredients I don't want in the recipe.

With the search shown above, I got back 595 recipes! The nice part is that they're all rated. I can even sort them by rating and just view the 5 star recipes.

I can also use the want/don't want feature when I know what dish I want to cook. I can enter the name of the dish, fill in the want/don't want lists, and find great recipes. I did this today to find a zucchini bread recipe that used what I had on-hand, including the country-sized zucchini from my uncle. The recipe was delicious!

What do you have on-hand? Can you make a meal from it? You just might be able to with the Advanced Search feature at allrecipes.com! It works for me!

For more ideas that work, stop by Works for Me Wednesday hosted by We Are THAT Family.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

That is great! I never knew of such a site. I will have to check it out!

Buffie said...

I've only ever used their basic search feature. I didn't realize that you could do all that with the advanced search. Thanks for the tip. I will definitely be checking out their advanced search.

Jessica said...

Fabulous! I once had a cookbook that was organized by main ingredient that was similar but the recipes were all fat and sugar-laded. I had no idea such an online feature exsisted! This has actually been my latest quest for budget savings - use more of what I already have so I'm not throwing away food.

Unknown said...

I love this feature! I use it often.