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Wouldn’t it be a dream to have every meal of the week planned FOR YOU, complete with a MOBILE SHOPPING LIST tailored to how much time you have to prep/cook, how many times you want to cook, and what ingredients you want to cook with? Dreams do come true thanks to REAL PLANS meal plans!
No more last minute scurrying around the kitchen to scrounge up a quick breakfast, afternoon snack or weeknight dinner, no more lengthy browsing pinterest, cookbooks, websites for what to make for the week, no more crinkled shopping lists that got misplaced in a different pair of jeans, no more last minute trips to the grocery store because you forgot an ingredient and no more drive by pizza runs because you are too overwhelmed at the thought of “what’s for dinner?”
Instead, I am so excited to introduce you to Real Plans, the dream maker. Real Plans, has streamlined the process of planning, shopping, and cooking by creating custom meal plans to suit your family’s size, busy schedule, dietary needs, and wants AKA hassle free, stress free Meal Planning. In fact, I was so impressed with Real plans, I decided to partner with the founders, Antony and Emily, to offer you over 200 Carlsbad Cravings Recipes along with their curated database of over 1500 recipes. Many of you have asked about custom shopping lists for my recipes – here you go – plus SO MUCH MORE!
About Real Plans
Real Plans offers:
- Access to over 1500 carefully curated recipes to suit every taste and occasion
- Personalized weekly meal plans
- The ability to Meal plan in 5 minutes with custom settings
- Flexible cooking times/schedules to suit changing needs
- To easy exclude or include ingredients
- Adjust portion sizes or family sizes
- Automatically generate shopping lists
- Edit shopping lists
- Mobile shopping list app
- LIVE CHAT Support with Meal Planning Specialists
- 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
- The ability to gift a Real Plans subscription to a college student, newly wed or busy mom
HOW IT WORKS
Real Plans is an online meal planning service that will automatically generate a meal plan for you (and shopping list!) based on your preferences. For example, you can specify how many nights a week you want to cook, how long you want each meal to take to prep/cook, how many people you are cooking for, etc.
Real Plans will then generate a Meal Plan for you that looks something like this:
From here, you can review the meal plan and drag and drop meals to different time slots or swap out any recipe you want in a few seconds by a simple “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.”
Another feature I love is that Real Plans automatically offers suggestions of side dishes to serve with your meal. Simply click the “+” button (see below) and your side of choice will automatically get added to your meal plan/shopping list!
CUSTOMIZED MEAL PLANS
Real Plans is a dream come true for any family but for families with food allergies or intolerance, Real Plans is a life saver. You can customize the settings to fit your family’s dietary needs (Paleo, vegetarian, gluten free, diary free, etc.) and/or preferences. Someone in the family hates mushrooms? Won’t eat fish? Is egg intolerant? Just check a couple boxes in your settings page and you will never see those ingredients again (unless of course you change your mind 🙂 ). This feature is PRICELESS for so many families with dietary restrictions. You can also include foods you want to cook with that week as well.
You can even customize the types of recipes you are feeling like for the week – craving fakeout takeout? Click Asian. Craving soups? Click soups. Craving some outdoor deliciousness? Click BBQ. If you have family favorite recipes or recipes you find online, you can easily import them to be included in your meal plans as well. Everything you could think of, it’s customizable with Real Plans.
SHOPPING LIST
Once you’ve generated your Meal Plan for the week (which has taken you MINUTES), Real Plans generates a custom shopping list – this has to be my favorite part. You can leave the list as is or you can change quantities, add or subtract items, and even divide items among multiple grocery stores. Print or email the list or my favorite – use the APP to shop entirely from your phone! The Real Plans Mobile App lets you check items off your list as you go so you can be more efficient and never miss an ingredient for any of your meal plan recipes which means you are shopping a whole lot less.
Once the meal plan is done (in minutes), the shopping is done (so easy with the automatic shopping list), then all that’s left is to cook the meals in the time you have specified. And dig. And feel great about the healthy, homemade meals you are serving your family.
SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE AND TRY REAL PLANS
Real Plans is quite simply the easiest, most efficient, customizable, meal planning tool to alleviate feeding-your-family-stress. If you are curious about Real Plans and how it can simplify your life, then I encourage you to try it out because there is a 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE as well as unparalleled LIVE customer support available 24 hours. For less than the cost of one takeout meal, you can enjoy Real Plans custom meal plans with access to over 1500 carefully curated recipes to suit every diet and lifestyle starting at only $14/month. For $1 more per month ($15/month), you can add “Carlsbad Cravings” and over 200 of my recipes will be added your weekly meal plans. No more wasting time, money/ingredients or wondering “what’s for dinner?”
Camille says
Hi Jen, I used to use ZipList for the shopping list part and was sad when that went away but this looks even better. Thanks for sharing!
Jen says
Hi Camille, I am glad you are familiar with how awesome automated shopping lists are because Real Plans generates a shopping list like ZipList but does so much more! I am so excited for you to check it out and start using it!
Lindsey says
Jen! I am beyond excited about this! I am such a bad meal planner but I know it would save me so much time and stress! Thank you for sharing this, I am checking it out right now!
Jen says
Awesome Lindsey! I am so excited you are excited because I think you will fall in love with Real Plans! Let me know how it goes!
Laura says
Thank you for the info! I’m just curious, are the 200 recipes different from the ones on your site or the same, just a collection of them? I really love your recipes!
Jen says
Hi Laura, the 200 is a collection of my recipes plus you have access to 1400 recipes from their database – hope that helps!
Eva says
This looks great. Thank you.
Jen says
You are so welcome Eva! Can’t wait to hear what you think!
Kristen says
Jen–Congrats on this partnership!! I know this will help SO many people out (plus they will be eating tons of delicious food!!)
Jen says
Thank you so much Kristen, I am so excited about it and much people will love it!
Lynne says
Can I add my own recipes as well?
Jen says
YES! You can add all your own recipes or import from any site so your meal plan and shopping list can include them!
Autumn says
I discovered your website through Real Plans. I’ve been with them almost a year now and added you on to my plan. Your recipes look amazing. Can’t wait to try them! Will you be adding more to their database as time goes on? I’m curious.
Jen says
Hi Autumn! I am so happy you added my recipes to your plan! Isn’t Real Plans amazing?! Yes, they will be adding more of my recipes as time goes on. Hope you enjoy them!
Tawnia says
I’m looking into real plans right now! I have loved every carlsbadcravings recipe I have ever made! The creamy bacon pea salad is requested at every potluck I go to now!
Jen says
Thanks Tawnia!
Carol says
Am interested in Weight Watchers type meal plan, do you offer anything like that?
Jen says
Hi Carol! Real Plans has nutritional information for each recipe on the recipe card but currently doesn’t have a filter for recipes based on caloric intake, sorry about that! They do have filters though for ingredients, cook times, cook methods, etc – basically everything else!
Marion says
Man if you just pick my meals for me. I luv all the meals in the photos. That would just make my week lol
Jen says
haha! Thank you for your flattery 🙂 If you sign up you can click on the option to only see Carlsbad Cravings recipes and then it will pick just them for you!
lindsay says
hi! i really like the idea of this! is the $7 for one months worth of meal plans? can i ask specifically for some recipes to be made in a dutch oven–i really love mine, but am looking for more recipes.
Jen says
Hi Lindsay! Yes, that is the price per month. Real Plans doesn’t currently have a filter for Dutch ovens but they do have a filter for pressure cookers and slow cookers and every ingredient imaginable as well as cook times. Hope that helps!
mari says
Is it worth it for just crockpot recipes? That’s all I want to have.
Jen says
Hi Mari, I checked and they don’t yet have a section just for crockpot recipes, so probalby not. You can click on my recipe index and look at all the crockpot recipes to start 🙂
Jennifer says
I think I’ve just stumbled across the best thing sense sliced bread! I’m very busy and have a somewhat picky and totally indecisive family lol! I’ve made several of your recipes and they’ve been a big hit! I’m definitely looking forward to trying Real Plans!
Jen says
YAY! It’s a brilliant system, you are going to love it! I have a friend who uses Real Plans to plan her menu then orders all her groceries online at Walmart once a week – love that idea! Thank you also for your kind words! I am so happy you are enjoying my recipes! Happy planning, cooking and EATING!
Amie says
Hi Jen, are your recipes on Real Plans new recipes? I use your website so often I feel like I should pay you directly, but the thought of new recipes and the organization tools of Real Plans sound really tempting! Thanks for sharing your ideas on your site for everyone to use!
Jen says
Hi Amie, thanks for faithfully following along! Unfortunately my new recipes are not on Real Plans but it still has a couple hundred I believe – it definitely is a great tool!
Amy says
Hi there, I just went to sign up at RealPlans and I wanted to let you know that it’s now $14+$1, not $6. Just in case your readers are confused, like I was.
Jen says
Thanks for letting me know, I’ll update it!
Judy Daw says
Jen,
I have loved every recipe from your website that I have tried. On your recommendation I signed up for real plans and made the $15.00 payment. Unfortunately Real Plans has not sent an email to me so that I can use their product. I can’t find a way to contact without logging into my account which can’t be set up without their email. Is there anyway you could help me contact them or cancel my payment?
Thank you so much.
Judy
Jen says
Thank you Judy, I’m o happy you’r enjoying my recipes! As far as Real Plans, have you double checked your spam/junk folder? Here is a link to their contact page: https://realplans.com/contact/
Lisa says
Are we able to choose a budget category? I’ve tried other meal planning sites and salmon, steak, shrimp, pine nuts, etc are simply not in our budget but they kept giving me recipes with expensive ingredients.
Jen says
Hi Lisa, when searching for recipes you can specify what ingredients you want included or not.