Meet Tiffany King, whose goal to put dinner on the table every day for her family and avoid the temptation to grab drive-thru food, inspired her to create Eat at Home. Full of quick, easy recipes, menus and grocery lists, and even a printable menu planner, Eat at Home, is the place to find “Everyday Food for Busy People”. As a mother of four, Tiffany keeps busy homeschooling three of her children, and also offers many tips, menus and recipes in her book Feast in 15 Speed cooking Weeknight Dinners.

What food is your guilty pleasure?
Coffee ice cream with hot fudge. Perfect combination for me.

How to you plan your weekly meals?

Each week on my blog, I offer free menu plans with a complete grocery list and printable recipes.  I rotate some of the meals, but not more often than every 10 weeks.  That gives me a starting place.  I add in new recipes each week as well.  I try to include a meatless and/or fish recipe, pasta, and at least one slow cooker meal.  I also go by seasons, so summer sees more grilling and fresh fruits and winter has more soups and stews.  I love the emails I get from people who are grateful to have the planning done for them and to be able to have access to over 2 years of menus for free.

Do you have a cooking disaster story you’d like to share?
When I first got married (24 years ago!) I didn’t know how to cook. Someone told me I could make meatloaf in the microwave. It turned out so hard, it could have been used to build houses! It was completely inedible.

What are your favorite meals to cook?
Pasta. I can create really tasty pasta dishes pretty quickly. It’s hard to go wrong with pasta and when you add creamy cheese and fresh basil, it’s sure to be a winner.

How did you choose the name of your food blog?
Soccer season was in full swing when I started the blog and it was tempting to grab dinner out at a fast food place. I knew others faced that temptation due to lack of time as well. I wanted to encourage people (myself included) to eat at home. I like to eat out, but I hate spending money on unplanned drive-thru runs just because I failed to do a little planning.

What cooking skill do you lack?
I’m a terrible cake decorator. I’m just terrible at icing and frosting anything. I can make a truly ugly cake! It tastes good, but it’s not much to look at.

What passions or hobbies to you have besides food blogging?
Running, singing, reading, and travel. And I love watching NFL football (Chargers) and baseball (Red Sox).

What passions or hobbies to you have besides food blogging?
I like to read and knit. I also like writing fiction, but that’s taken a back seat lately.

Aside from her blog, Eat at Home can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

1. Add a new recipe, or edit an existing recipe, with Zipist’s Recipe Plugin and scroll down to either your “Ingredients” or “Instructions” block. To add linked text, include both the word or phrase to be linked and the URL within brackets with a divider in between.

Example, [ZipList|http://www.ziplist.com]

Take a look at a few examples from some of our food blogger partners that have added links within their recipe card using the plugin.

• http://www.fatgirltrappedinaskinnybody.com/2012/05/ultimate-smore-bar/
• http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/2012/05/09/spinach-alfredo-pizza-with-or-without-onions-and-anchovies/
• http://asouthernfairytale.com/2012/05/07/loaded-baked-potato-grilled-cheese-sandwich/
• http://www.deepsouthdish.com/2012/05/southern-style-lady-cream-peas.html

Download ZipList’s WordPress Recipe Plugin instruction document to learn about more tips and tricks for using the WordPress plugin.

• Asian Quinoa Salad (Cooking Quinoa)
• Black Bean and Sweet Corn Quinoa Salad (Mel’s Kitchen Café)
• Buffalo Chicken Salad (Add a Pinch)
• Chicken Caesar Salad with Homemade Croutons (Love & Olive Oil)
• Chickpea and Tomato Salad with Fresh Basil (GreenLiteBites)

We love salad recipes. There’s so versatile. They can be a side to a larger entrée, or they can be a meal all by themselves!

• Chipotle-Roasted Vegetable Layered Salad (The Sweets Life)
• Cucumber Salad with Balsamic Dressing (Kalyn’s Kitchen)
• Ham and Cheese Tortellini Pasta Salad (Mommy Hates Cooking)
• Marinated Mozzarella Salad (CopyKat Recipes)
• Mexican Three Bean Salad (Simply Recipes)
• Pina Colada Salad (Taste and Tell)
• Roasted Sweet Potato and Feta Salad (Leite’s Culinaria)
• Roasted Vegetable Orzo Salad (She Wears Many Hats)
• Rotisserie Chicken Apple Pecan Salad (Unsophisticook)
• Sesame Chicken Noodle Salad (Macheesmo)
• Spinach Salad with Chicken, Avocado and Goat Cheese (RecipeGirl)
• Sushi Salad (Two Peas & Their Pod)
• Sweet Corn Salad (What Megan’s Making)
• Thai Grilled Chicken Satay Salad (Closet Cooking)
• Zesty Lime Shrimp & Avocado Salad (Skinnytaste)

Do you have any favorite salads that you like to prepare during the spring and summer months? Let us know in the comments section below.

This is how to export your meal plan to Google.

1. Visit your Meal Planner page, either on ZipList.com or your favorite partner’s website, and find the calendar banner in the left margin. Right click on the “Get Your Meal Plan Feed” link and select the “Copy Link Address” option.

2.  Go to Google Calendar and scroll down to the “Other Calendars” option. By clicking on the down arrow a number of options appear in an expanded menu. Select “Add by URL”.

3.  When the pop-up box appears, simply paste the URL that you copied from your Meal Planner into the empty field. Press “Add Calendar” and wait for Google to import the calendar URL.

4.  Once the URL has been imported and synced (remember that it could take a couple hours for Google to first import data), then simply look for your new addition under “My Calendars” and for each meal to be visible on it’s scheduled date.

Be sure to let us know at support@ziplist.com if you have any additional questions!

When we started to create our meal planner it was very important for us to meet the needs of seasoned meal planners, while  making it easy enough for the everyday cook to solve the “what’s for dinner” dilemma.

Just click the “Plan” button on any recipe you find within ZipList to add that recipe directly to your meal queue (think of it like your Netflix movie queue). You can continue to build your meal queue list by adding more recipes, then rearranging meals within the queue, and adding all or individual recipes to your shopping list.

If full calendar meal plans are more your speed, then simply use your meal queue as a staging area before assigning recipes to certain dates. Find a recipe within your meal queue, click on the calendar icon and select which date you would like to make the meal. Your meal will move into the scheduled area of the meal planner where you can see all of your other scheduled recipes for the selected week. Use the calendar at the top of the page to scroll farther ahead in your scheduled recipes, or to scroll back to see the meals you made weeks before.

ZipList’s meal planner has all the features you need to make weekly meal planning a breeze, helping to plan a week’s worth of meals in a few easy steps:

• Enjoy easy access to recipes in your weekly meal queue. See the week’s recipes at-a-glance rather than search your entire recipe box for what’s going on the dinner table each night of the week.
• Assign dates to different meals during the week whether a quick dinner before soccer practice or dishes for a more elaborate weekend get-together.
• Tap into easy-to-use “add to shopping list” integration to add ingredients for all meals in your meal queue to your weekly shopping list in seconds.
• Copy or move to future dates recipes added to your meal queue to space out your favorite recipes over several weeks.
• Integrate your weekly meal plan with your online calendar (both iCal, and webmail – like Gmail) so meals each day go along with the rest of the plans for each day.

We look forward to sharing more tips and tricks to help you meal plan with ZipList. Stay tuned!

• Avocado Pita Pizza with Cilantro Sauce (Two Peas & Their Pod)
• Black Bean Chili Dip (Macheesmo)
• Chipotle Mexican Grill Guacamole (CopyKat Recipes)
• Chocolate Tamale Cupcakes (Cupcake Project)
• Fried Ice Cream (Pennies on a Platter)

• Mango Margarita (Drink of the Week)
• Mexican Churros (What’s Cookin’ Chicago?)
• Mojito Grilled Fish Tacos with Strawberry Salsa (Closet Cooking)
• Nacho Mama’s Cheese Nachos (The Novice Chef)
• Quinoa Quesadillas with Guacamole (Cooking Quinoa)

• Salsa Fresca (RecipeGirl)
• Shrimp Enchilada Casserole (LaaLoosh)
• Skinny Buffalo Burger Quesadilla (Skinnytaste)
• Taco Burger (Plain Chicken)
• Zesty Cinco de Mayo Vegan Fajita Burgers (Once a Month Mom)

Looking for more tasty Cinco de Mayo recipes? Check out our Cinco de Mayo board on Pinterest for some yummy Cinco de Mayo inspiration.

Lori Lange, creator of RecipeGirl, has such a loyal following and devoted reader base, that we wanted to learn more about her and the amazing outreach she has made into the foodie world. Her blog has over 2500 delicious and easy-to-make recipes, with beautiful step-by-step instructions, for the novice or experienced cook.

In addition to writing for her blog, she has created pieces for brands, websites and publications, such as Pepperidge Farm, Kraft, Sam’s Club, Betty Crocker, Tabasco. Lori is always a favorite speaker at conferences like BlogHerFood and TechMunch Boston, and has also had the unique opportunity to judge in the Real Women of Philadelphia Cream Cheese Cook Off alongside Paula Deen! Mark your calendars – the highly anticipated The Recipe Girl Cookbook, will be published by Wiley in Spring 2013.

We hope you enjoy learning more about Lori as much as we did!

What food is your guilty pleasure?
Can I have three guilty pleasures? I’ll admit to loving red rope licorice, Nutella and must-be-homemade ice cream.

Do you have a favorite kitchen tool?
Yes! I’m pretty sure I go through more rubber spatulas in one week than anyone else I know. They’re good for everything… cooking scrambled eggs, scraping out batter, getting the last bits of peanut butter or mayonnaise out of the jar, and sneaking a good swipe of Nutella.

Do you have a cooking disaster story you’d like to share?
Early in my marriage I was once making a rather expensive (lobster) quiche on Mother’s Day with my in-laws in attendance. The custard of the quiche was prepared in a blender. I was having a tough time getting it all mixed up, so I stuck my wooden spoon in the (working) blender to get things going. The wood was immediately scraped up by the blade and disintegrated into bits. There were splinters in my quiche custard! We had to go without quiche that Mother’s Day, but thankfully I had an assortment of other goodies to serve.

If you could invite 3 people to dinner (living, dead, or animated) who would they be and why?
I’d invite funny people. They’d be the most fun to have around for dinner, right?

• Steve Carell – I love his dry humor, and I’m pretty sure he might have me rolling on the floor.
• Jimmy Fallon – Everything he does just totally cracks me up (but he’d have to bring his guitar and sing a little bit).
• George Clooney – I’m pretty sure he’s funny too, but it would also be nice to have someone rather dreamy to look at all night.

If you could travel anywhere in the world for a meal, where would you go, and why?
St. Jean de la Porte, France. My husband and I once stayed in a friend’s 10 bedroom renovated chateau, a former monastery built in 1000AD. We picked up simple things to eat at the local boulangerie (bread), fromagerie (cheese), wine from a tiny local winery, and an assortment of fruits and olives. We have the most amazing memories of eating on the balcony of that chateau and taking in the ambience of such beautiful scenery. The local restaurants were memorable as well, serving us several courses without a word of English spoken.

What cooking skill do you lack?
Try as I might, I just cannot make an excellent pie crust. I’m pie-crust challenged in the most awful way.

What passions or hobbies to you have besides food blogging?
Running, singing, reading, and travel. And I love watching NFL football (Chargers) and baseball (Red Sox).

What are your favorite food blog sites?
My favorite website right now is RecipeBoy.com. It is my 10 year old’s blog and it is so fun to watch him progress in this crazy world of food blogging. These are a couple other favorites.

• Picky Palate and Two Peas and Their Pod- Both Jenny and Maria are dear friends, and I love both of their blogs since we have such similar taste in food.
• How Sweet it Is: Jessica has a crazy, creative food mind. Her food just makes me drool, plain and simple.
• FoodieCrush: I love how Heidi has designed the theme of her blog. She shares her own delicious recipes, but she regularly highlights other bloggers and their recipes too.
• Roost and Chasing Delicious: Both are new favorites of mine that I visit when I need some beautiful inspiration.

Aside from her blog, RecipeGirl can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Explore some of these 15 perfect bacon recipes from our partners and favorite publishers, and don’t forget that you can any or all of these recipes to your ZipList Recipe Box. Yum.

1. Bacon & Corn Griddle Cakes (RecipeGirl)
2. Bacon & Rosemary Chicken (Back to the Cutting Board)
3. Bacon Wrapped Cocktail Weenies (Pennies on a Platter)
4. BBQ Pepper Jack Bacon Burgers (The Happy Housewife)
5. Blueberry Bacon Breakfast Cake (How Sweet It Is)
6. Brown Sugar Bacon Stuffed Waffles (Mrs. Happy Homemaker)
7. Cheddar, Bacon & Spinach Egg Casserole (The Sweets Life)
8. Cheesy Bacon Ranch Bread (The Country Cook)
9. Creamy Avocado Pasta with Shrimp & Bacon (Life’s Ambrosia)
10. Denny’s Bacon Maple Sundae (CopyKat Recipes)
11. Goat Cheese Bacon Balls (Buns in My Oven)
12. Loaded Bacon Deviled Eggs (What’s Cookin’ Chicago?)
13. Potato Bacon Pizza (Leite’s Culinaria)
14. Skinny Spinach & Bacon Stuffed Mushrooms (Skinnytaste)
15. Spinach Salad with Bacon & Feta (Kalyn’s Kitchen)

So, what’s your take on bacon? Do you have any favorite bacon recipes? Please share in the comments below. We do love bacon here at ZipList!

With all this recipe pinning we wondered how ZipList could make it easier for readers to actually cook each recipe they find on Pinterest. The answer was pretty simple! Use ZipList’s Web Recipe Clipper to save the original recipe from Pinterest to your ZipList Recipe Box or Shopping List. One click and all the recipe’s ingredients, with a link to full instructions, are waiting for you later.

Follow these quick steps to save a recipe from Pinterest to your ZipList Recipe Box.

1. Make sure you have added ZipList’s Web Recipe Clipper to your browser’s bookmark bar. Our clipper works with over 10,000 recipe websites and blogs. If you find a favorite that is not “clippable” then simply send us a note.

2.  Find a great recipe on Pinterest and visit that pin’s page by clicking on the thumbnail image.

3. Once on the pin’s page, simply click ZipList’s Web Recipe Clipper in your bookmark bar and wait for the title and ingredients to populate. Save the recipe to your ZipList Recipe Box or Shopping List.

  4. Visit your ZipList Recipe Box to find the recipe’s full ingredients and link to original instructions so you can make it over, and over again!

  Don’t forget to add ZipList’s Web Recipe Clipper to your browser’s bookmark bar!  

Condé Nast will keep us as a separate company, and we’ll continue to focus our efforts on becoming the universal shopping list and recipe box that’s available everywhere you are.  ZipList’s technologies will be integrated with Epicurious’ award-winning site and mobile apps, just like 1000’s of bloggers, publishers, celebrity chefs and mobile apps have already done – further extending our reach and increasing the value to you. The great people at Condé Nast share our vision for growing our relationships with our users and our partners, and with the resources of Condé Nast behind us, we’re in a wonderful place to fully execute on our vision.

We plan on accelerating development of our products, so you should be able to do even more with ZipList, and find us on more and more of the food related sites you love. For users of ZipList.com and our mobile apps, be on the look out for new capabilities to save money on your groceries and further make your food and shopping lives easier.

We’d like to offer thanks to all of our users, especially those who have been with ZipList since day one. We look forward to the future and all the exciting things to come!

Sincerely,

Geoff Allen
CEO & Founder