Most of you by now know that Kitchen Monki isn’t just your run-of-the-mill recipe site. We allow our users to take their recipes and really do SOMETHING other than just cook from them. Whether it’s dragging them onto a cooking calender, creating an aisle-by-asile shopping list that can be sent to your (or anyone’s) mobile phone from them, embedding them like YouTube videos into blogs, or cataloguing them in iTunes-like fasion in a Recipe Explorer, Kitchen Monki has done it’s best make your food life a lot easier and fun at the same time.

Now, we’ve decided to take Kitchen Monki technology and spread the fun around to others with Kitchen Monki White Label. As our Top Banana, Sam Kinney said:

“There are so many sites with great recipes, but many of them are either too small or too focused on other content to invest much in recipe functionality. Kitchen Monki White Label makes it easy for them to embed a whole food community on their website.”

That being said, we are very happy to have partnered up with Seattle’s NBC affiliate, King5.com, to build their food community for the New Day Northwest TV show. All the power tools such as Bookmarking, Add to Queue, Add to List, and mobile shopping are now available on the show’s site because of Kitchen Monki’s embedded White Label.

Here’s Sam talking about it on the show:

Kitchen Monki is partnering with others to build more recipe communities. If you’re interested or know someone who might like the White Label for their website or blog, feel free to contact us!

I wanted to announce an exciting new development at Kitchen Monki. Those users who’ve been with us a while know that we’re unique in providing the tools cooks and families can use to manage their whole cooking life. Wouldn’t life be better if all recipes, everywhere would work with our automated tools?

Well, we can’t offer you all recipes everywhere, but we’re doing the next best thing. Now, other websites that publish recipes can use the Kitchen Monki White Label toolkit to offer the same power tools on their site that you’re accustomed to using on ours. There are so many sites with great recipes, but many of them are either too small or too focused on other content to invest much in recipe functionality. Kitchen Monki White Label makes it easy for them to embed a whole food community on their website. We look forward to signing up newspapers, television stations, bloggers and more as Kitchen Monki White Label partner sites.

Best of all, your personal content will be available when you sign into ANY partner account, meaning your recipes, queue, calendar, bookmarks, and grocery list are all right there, and all partner site recipes can be used just like recipes on our own site.

If you know a blogger, newspaper, or other possible White Label partner, let us know!

Sam Kinney
CEO & Top Monki

Apart from loving the tools on the website, Kitchen Monki members often tell me how much they enjoy the Mobile Monki grocery app. I couldn’t agree more. Even if I’m making a run for a couple of random things, I’m sending a list to my phone because I’m a “Get In and Get Out” kind of shopper. The less time I can spend roaming the aisles, the more time I can spend elsewhere… like in the kitchen (I’m the cook in our house).

Well, the Monki brain-trust has gotten together and decided that it’s about high time that we gave the mobile site a fresh new coat of paint so-to-speak. However, not only are we improving the look, feel, and usabilty, but are also adding some exciting new functionality to the mix not seen in the current rendition.

Here’s a sneak peek at what’s coming your way soon:

I can’t wait to try it out for myself. Thanks to everyone for their comments and feedback and stay tuned for it’s rollout!

1. 5 Biggest Thanksgiving Turkey Mistakes and How to Avoid them (via Huffpost)
2. 5 Ways to End Emotional Eating (via Care2)
3. 5 Rules for Dining Out with a Baby (via The Stir)
4. Make This for Thanksgiving: Impossible Pumpkin Pie Recipe
5. Very cute and delicious looking…. Pizza Pops (via the decorated cookie blog)

As many of you have discovered by know, the Kitchen Monki Recipe Explorer is the fastest and most innovative tool that exists for recipe search on the web.  And if you couple it with the Meal Planner tool, you’ve got your days, weeks, or months meals set and ready to go.  But I’m here to talk about the little cousin to Explorer and Planner that is equally as powerful:   The Quick Meal Planner.

Kitchen Monki’s Quick Meal Planner helps you select your Entree, Salad, Side Dish, and Dessert in no time at all.   Its a fun tool for those adventurous types who want recipe suggestions fast but aren’t too picky.   To start off, it asks you 3 questions: “What Meal?”, “For How Many?”, and “Time Limit”.   And if you want to the search to be a little more specific, type a Keyword into the Box.

Instantly, you’ll see a list of Entree dishes appear, along with the Kitchen Monki member who posted it, and the Banana rating. If nothing looks appealing, simply click the ‘Shuffle’ button for a brand new list!

From there you can choose to Select the dish or Preview it (this will take you to the full recipe card). If you Select the dish, the Meal Menu box will show up at the top with your selected recipe (click on the recipe once again to view the recipe card). You will notice that the Quick Meal Planner search will have then brought up a list of Salad options for you.  Select one and move onto a Side Dish.  If you’re not feelin’ in the mood for a side tonight, Skip It! Follow the same steps for the dessert course until your meal menu is complete.

Once you’ve made up the menu, you’ll be prompted to Print out the entire menu’s recipes and an aggregated grocery list. However, if you’ve changed your mind and wants something different, you have the option of clearing the menu and starting again.

It doesn’t get much easier than that. Give it a try and tell us what you think!

It has been alot of fun and honestly a lot of work when it’s come to having a box of vegetables come to you directly from the farm each week. I’m a big believer in Community Supported Agriculture and feel fortunate that I was able to discover this way of obtaining produce of an unbelievably high standard.

However, it has been a constant battle of “what do I do with this?” The first 5 weeks were much easier it seems. Luckily, Angelic Organics was kind enough to send us a copy of Farmer John’s Cook Book. It’s such a super book because it gives you the background story about how John started the farm and what his vision was. Along with recipes, it houses an dictionary with pictures. It’s been a necessity when trying to identify the different herbs that come every week.

The quality has been outstanding and the freshness comes out in the taste of the vegetables. For instance, the carrots we started getting were packed with so much flavor, it was almost too strong to eat on its own! Talk about the benefits of organic farming, eh? Now, after eating organically grown vegetables for the past 10 weeks, I believe I’m hooked on getting my produce from the farm.   Next year, I’m going to sign up for fruit as well!

Check out these Veggies! (Click pics for a closer view of freshness)

Week 6

What’s in the Box: Carrots, Cilantro, Basil, Sweet Onions, Garlic, Lettuce, Cucumber, Sweet Corn, Eggplant, and Chard.

Week 7

What’s in the Box: Beets, Carrots, Mizuna/Baby Chard salad mix, Sweet Onions, Garlic, Cucumbers, Zucchini/Summer Squash, Sweet Corn, Parsley, Dill, and Cilantro.

Week 8

What’s in the Box: Leeks, Summer Savory, Anise Hyssop, Chard, Arugula, Lettuce, Peppers, Hot Peppers (Jalapeno and Hot Banana), Cucumbers, Eggplant, Sweet Corn, Tomatoes, Watermelon.

Week 9

What’s in the Box: Basil, Onions, Kale, Bok Choy, Cucumbers, Zucchini/Summer Squash, Tomatoes, Sweet Peppers, Sweet Corn, and Melon.

Week 10

What’s in the Box: Onions, Lemon Balm, Carrots, Lettuce, Sweet Peppers, Tomatoes, Muskmelons, Hot Peppers, Sweet Corn, Celery.

If you are interested in getting a box of organically grown vegetables each week, find your local CSA at LocalHarvest.org

Hi everyone!  As you know, Kitchen Monki is all about making your food lives easier and I think we upped the ante on this one.  We are really excited to unveil Kitchen Monki’s new and improved Recipe Explorer today!  We like to call it ‘iTunes for Recipes’ and when you try it out, you’ll know why.  Along with a new look and feel, we’ve powered up the speed of the search and ease of access to recipe categories, tags, and filters.  They are now located conveniently along the left hand side of the explorer and are super easy to use.  We’ve also included a new “Shuffle” feature which will allow Kitchen Monki mix things up abit and randomly select a variety of different dishes in a given search.  Can it get any better?  

Check it out and see for yourself! Give it a try right HERE!

1. Top 10 Foods for your Brain (via askmen)
2. Jamie Oliver takes on Junk Food Defenders (video) (via Huffpost)
3. 101 Vintage Lunch Boxes (via Design Crave)
4. Very cool multi-tasking vegetable peeler (via the food section)
5. Eat This: Tomato White Bean Bacon Soup Recipe

1. 15 Ways to practice Water Conservation at home (via planet green)
2. 40 Thai foods we can’t live without (via cnn)
3. The Best Foods for your Mental Health (via Chicago Now)
4. Make This: Japanese Chicken Scallion Rice Bowl Recipe
5. Can Cannabis Treat Cancer? (via Huffpost)

Monki Bread is excited to have Amy from Super Healthy Kids as our guest blogger today! Her blog is a fantastic resource to learn about healthy and fun family living, from nutritious recipes to kid friendly meal plans. Welcome Amy!

You’ve heard the hype: Meal planning helps save money, helps you eat better, and will put hair on your chest. The truth is, meal planning really can be beneficial for so many reasons (maybe not the hair on your chest, but others), so you should be planning meals the right way, to maximize benefits.

We all know a good balanced meal includes fruits and vegetables. When planning your dinner’s for the week, do you write, “Hamburgers on Monday, Spaghetti on Tuesday?” Are you forgetting that the primary focus for every meal should be fruits and vegetables? So, why do we forget to add that to our meal plan? When we fail to plan to eat fruits and vegetables, oftentimes they don’t get eaten, or a bag of frozen peas are taken from the freezer to compliment the meal.
No matter your dietary preferences (low fat, low carb, gluten free, etc), almost everyone can agree on one thing, Fruits and vegetables have tremendous health benefits. These include

· Lowering blood pressure

· Reducing risk for cancer

· Improving digestion

· Supplying essential vitamins, nutrients, phytochemicals, and antioxidants.


So, plan to get fruits and vegetables in every meal!

· Stock your fridge with seasonal produce.

· Check what you have and plan meals around those. If you have tons of lettuce, plan what kind of salad you want, and then whatever entrée you like that compliments your salad. Or if you have an eggplant that needs to get eaten, plan to add it to your lasagna for that week.

· Prepare your produce by chopping and washing when you bring it home.

· Always use your produce! Don’t let it get bad. EAT IT UP!

If you can add fruits and vegetables to your meals every single day, your kids will get accustomed to eating this way and everyone will be healthier and happier!

Amy Roskelley

www.superhealthykids.com
www.twitter.com/healthykids
www.facebook.com/superhealthykids

For more great recipes from Amy, check out her blog and Kitchen Monki Blogger Profile