Now You're Cooking! Tip - January-April 2016

January-April 2016

Create a Shopping List By Aisle With Generic Aisle Names

NYC’s Shopping List By Aisle is used to easily locate shopping list items in the grocery store during your shopping trip. The Shopping List By Aisle integrates various NYC components (menu, shopping list, shopping list by aisle, store aisle names, prices/aisles list). Steps 1-3 below illustrate how to set up a “generic store” that uses only generic aisle names. Steps 4-5 show how to generate a shopping list by aisle with generic aisle names that work in most any grocery store (e.g., “produce”, “dairy”, “meats”, etc). Although NYC can be customized in more detail for each individual store, the “generic” store with generic aisle names is useful at any typical grocery store.

Step 1 – Create a “generic” store

--Select Shopping… Stores…

--In the Stores popup window, type “Generic” in the store name text box and press the Save button.

--Close the Stores window.

Step 2 – Edit your Generic Aisle Names list (optional)

--To edit the Generic Store Aisles list, use Shopping… Droplists… Aislenames…

--Add to or delete aisle names from the droplist.

--Save the aisle names droplist.

Note that this list should include sections commonly found in most major grocery stores (“produce”, “dairy”, “meats”, etc).

Step 3 – In your prices/aisles list, specify aisles where you can find items in a typical grocery store

--Select Shopping… Aisles… (or press the “Edit store aisles” toolbar button on the small toolbar).

--You will now see the “Generic” store listed (drag the right edge of the Aisles window as needed to see the “Generic” store).

--In the Generic Aisle Names droplist, select “produce”.

--In the column of items under the “Generic” store, click items that you would find in the produce aisle (lettuce, onions, potatoes, apples, etc). As you click, the word “produce” will be inserted into the cell for that item.

--In the Generic Aisle Names droplist, select “dairy”.

--In the column of items under the “Generic” store, click items that you would find in the dairy aisle (milk, yogurt, cheese, eggs). As you click, the word “dairy” will be inserted into the cell for that item.

--Repeat the above 2 steps for each generic aisle you want to include in your shopping lists by aisle.

Aside: The prices/aisles list of items is updated with new ingredients whenever you save a recipe. You can turn off this feature using Tools… Options… Editing… “add items to droplists, price list”. Because of this updating, you may have, for example, entries like “onion”, “onions”, and “sliced onions” in your prices/aisles list. These are a consequence of how the items appear in the ingredient descriptions in your recipes, so it is good practice to be consistent across recipes with ingredient descriptions. You can use NYC’s Find and Replace feature to help make your recipes consistent in ingredient descriptions (see Tools… Data Management… Find and Replace button and Text to Replace button). NYC can convert between most units of measure to combine like-named items in a shopping list.

Now you are set up to view a shopping list by aisle for any shopping list. If you don’t have a shopping list yet, you will need to create a menu and save it (saving a menu creates the shopping list for that menu).

Step 4 – Create a menu and shopping list

Create a menu (meal plan):

--Select Menu… Plan…

--Select File… New Menu…

--Highlight a meal (i.e., click it) then click a recipe to add that recipe to that meal of the menu

--Repeat the above action until you have created your menu.

Create a shopping list for the menu:

--To create the shopping list for your menu, press the Save Menu button.

--View the resulting shopping list, select Shopping… List… (or press the big “S” on the large toolbar)

This shopping list contains a complete list of all the ingredients in all the recipes in the associated menu. You may note that some ingredients are listed more than once due to the way your recipe describes the ingredients. For example, one recipe uses “onions” and another recipe uses “sliced onions” – in such cases, you will see both items in the shopping list. If both recipes use “onions” (exact same ingredient description), then NYC will combine the quantities and units of these ingredients if NYC can find the proper conversion factor for the units. To see what recipe generated an item in the shopping list, right click the item and select “View Source…” in the popup menu.

You can have multiple shopping lists, add new ones, delete old ones, and merge shopping lists (see the File… menu options for shopping lists whenever a shopping list is open). There is flexibility for many ways to use the shopping lists.

Step 5 – View the shopping list by aisle

--Press the Shopping List By Aisle button on the large toolbar.

--In the Store droplist on this page, select “Generic”.

The shopping list by aisle takes your last opened shopping list and looks for matching items in the aisle list, noting the aisle for each for the store selected. The first column shows the aisle designation for the items in your shopping list, sorted by aisle. You can re-sort the List By Aisle by clicking the column header that you want to sort by.

To see what recipe generated an item in the Shopping List By Aisle, right click the item and select “View Source…” in the popup menu.

Back to Now You're Cooking! Recipe Software