As a contributor to One Green Planet, I was delighted to learn a few months ago that they were developing their own recipe app, Food Monster.
The newly-launched One Green Planet Food Monster iPhone app offers powerful search and browse features making it a comprehensive resource that’s also easy to use.
One Green Planet is a go-to destination for plant-based information. The Food Monster app contains over 5000 recipes with new ones added every day. No more wondering, “what’s for dinner!” And all of the recipes are free of meat, dairy and eggs.
It’s easy to download the app and jump right in. Food Monster is available at iTunes and you can log in with either your email address or Facebook account.
Since recipes are nothing without photos, the app is image-driven. This makes it enjoyable to browse for long periods of time. Arriving at the home screen, you’ll see high-quality images of the latest recipes. The navigation provides fun and easy ways to browse by criteria like seasonal ingredients and holiday recipes.
For example, the app currently features spring recipes with seasonally-appropriate ingredients. It also includes recipe ideas for Passover, Cinco de Mayo, Memorial Day and Mother’s Day. I like how the app anticipates that you’ll be looking for these types of recipes and curates them in an intuitive way.
You can also explore recipes by meal, ingredient or diet. For example, let’s say you have a lot of cashews to use up. Go to the “Explore” section in the navigation. From the dark green horizontal band, tap “By Ingredient.” Then tap a type of ingredient such as “Nuts and Seeds.” Finally, tap “Cashews.” This is an easy process that quickly takes you to an assortment of 253 delicious cashew recipes.
If you’re a fan of QUICK recipes like I am, you there are collections like “Quick Meals” and “Under 5 Ingredients.” Other collections I look forward to exploring are “Cheesy Meals,” “Hot & Spicy” and “Spiralized Veggies.”
Another powerful aspect of the Food Monster app is the ability to bookmark recipes. Not only can you save your favorite recipes to a list, but you can easily organize your bookmarks into sections for Meal and Diet. When you tap the yellow bookmark icon on the recipe image, you select the section to save the recipe.
As anyone who bookmarks or pins lots of recipes knows, lists can get unwieldy quickly, making it impossible to find anything. So this feature to help organize your bookmarks is a life saver.
(Note: Some of my recipes are in the Food Monster app, too! You’ll find them both on the app, as well as on the One Green Planet site).
Food Monster’s emphasis on searching, browsing and exploring recipes is a smart one. They have an ever-growing number of recipes that are now arranged in an interesting, intuitive way. Both vegans and the veg-curious can have very different dietary preferences. So the ability to browse recipes using a variety of methods is especially helpful.
You can download the app for free from iTunes. A monthly or yearly subscription is required to unlock premium features.
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