Ziplist, a saviour for foodies on the go

(Note: this is not a sponsored review.  I'm just writing about this because it's an app that I use a LOT because I find it really useful.  Maybe you'll find it useful, too!)

For the past several months, I've been using Ziplist to collect recipes from around the web, save them in my personal recipe book, and ease the creation of shopping lists.  It's a fantastic little app.

One of my favourite features is the recipe clipper, which sits in the bookmarks toolbar in your browser.  When you select the bookmark, it scans the page you're on for anything that looks like a recipe.  It then saves the recipe title and ingredients list in your personal recipe box, which is accessible when you log into Ziplist.  You can add tags and categories to optimize searchability.  For example, you may want to add tags with the main ingredients, or identifying the dish as a side, a main or dessert.

I think the feature which makes my life the easiest is that my recipe box is accessible from my smartphone, through the ziplist mobile app.  I can read the ingredients list of any of my recipes wherever I need them.  Or, I can use the app to auto-populate a shopping list for me, based on the recipes I've selected.

I don't use the features relating to stores at all.  There is an option to teach the app to arrange your shopping list according to your local supermarket's layout.  This would be a useful option for someone who goes to big shops, and buys a lot of food, but for a single girl with only one mouth to feed, it's not worth setting up.  There are other couponing and bargain hunting features, which don't seem to apply outside of the USA, so I hunt my own bargains.  (or rather, I let the bargains hunt me)

The only thing I really think is missing from Ziplist is internal share-ability.  You can share your shopping lists with other Ziplist users, but not your recipe box.  I understand why they've chosen to only allow users to share recipes via existing social networks, but I happen to know that most of the people in my social networks don't give a monkey's left nut what I cooked for dinner last night, and I'm not about to bore them with the details.  I would like my friends to opt in to hearing about my foodie adventures, and the easiest (from my perspective) way to accomplish this is to turn ziplist into a social network.  Ziplist, on the other hand, would rather I group my contacts and manage my social networks like everyone else.  I'm still reluctant to do so; I think enough of my time already goes into managing my Facebook page.  Maybe I need to reconsider.

Check Ziplist out for yourself here.