Getting Started with The Happy Kitchen PLUS

Workspace Overview #

Navigation Links #

In the left-hand column of your dashboard, you will find navigation links to each of the sub-areas of your kitchen. Most of the kitchen management was designed to be done on the dashboard itself, but you can also jump into a sub-area if you need a larger space to work in:

• Grocery Items
• My Pantry
• Meals / Recipes
• Template Designer
• Meal Planning
• Shopping List
• Tasks

Dashboard #

The dashboard includes views of each of your key areas:

• Meals / Recipes
• Prep Tasks
• Planning
• Pantry
• 1x Only
• Shopping List

Meals / Recipes #

The Meals + Recipes area gives you multiple view options for browsing and selecting meals for meal planning. You can view by meals you haven’t tried yet, meal type (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, etc), rating, recently added, 6 ingredients or less, or Instant Gratification. Or, try loading in the “Surprise Me” view to see random suggestions. Use all of the views to keep meal planning interesting and fun!

Instant Gratification #

The Instant Gratification view will show you any meals or recipes that you can make right now using the ingredients in your pantry! This is a great feature when you don’t have time to grocery shop and just need to know what you can make without any effort.

Prep Tasks #

Create one-time or recurring meal prep tasks. Choose the recurrence frequency for recurring tasks. Setting the “Last Completed” date to today will drop it from the active tasks list. Tasks will be resurfaced on the next due date.

Planning #

The “Planning” area gives you multiple view options for planning meals for the days and weeks ahead. Plan your meals for upcoming days by manually linking meals to the day or link your pre-built templates to save time and clicks (or do a combination of both)! Templates will stack, which means that you can add as many templates as you like to a day. See “Meal Planning” below for more information on how to plan meals for your day.

Grocery Management: #

Pantry #

This is a view of the items that you currently have in your pantry. Uncheck items from your pantry as you run out. If you’ve flagged items as “Always Keep in Stock”, they will automatically be added to your grocery shopping list. 

1x Only #

This is a list of grocery items that you have not designated as “Always keep in stock”. You may occasionally need one-off items from this list. For example, I need hamburger buns for a barbeque that I do not normally buy. Tick the box next to “Hamburger Buns” and it will automatically be added to your grocery list.

After you purchase the 1x item, make sure to de-select the “1x” checkbox or the item will continue to populate your shopping list once you’ve run out.

Shopping List #

This is a view of the groceries that you need to buy.

Getting Started #

Most of the preparations have already been done for you! All that’s left is a little bit of personalization. Click the “Getting Started” button from your dashboard and work down the setup checklist.

Grocery Items #

Clicking the first link will bring you to the “Grocery Items” page. Here you will:

1. Select the items that you always want to keep in stock
2. Indicate the quantity you want to keep in stock (if more than 1)
3. Select the items that you currently have in your pantry
4. Add relationships to other items that may be used as a substitute in recipes 
5. Optionally, add any new grocery items that may not already be in the database

Adding New Grocery Items + Icons #

You can add new grocery items to the database by clicking on “Grocery Items” in the navigation menu.

1. Click the “New” button
2. Select the category for the new item
3. Select the subcategory for the new item
4. Optionally, define a quantity for the item (if more than 1)
5. Optionally, add a visual icon to represent the grocery item

Where do I get the icons?

The icons are sourced from Icons8, and are the IOS Line style.

1. Go to Icons8.com. This link takes you directly to the IOS Line style food icon pack, but you can also search for specific food items using the search box, for example, “pineapple”
2. Once you’ve found an icon to use, right-click the image and select “Copy Image Address”. The copied URL will look like this: https://img.icons8.com/ios/2x/pineapple.png
3. In Notion, click “Add Icon” for the grocery item
4. Select the “Custom” form
5. Paste in the link to the icon

Pro tip: if you change the size of the icon to a larger version it will create a much better-quality image. I recommend changing “2x” in the icon URL to “4x”.

https://img.icons8.com/ios/4x/pineapple.png

Adding New Meals / Recipes #

You can add new recipes to the database by clicking on “Meals / Recipes” in the navigation menu or by scrolling to the “Meal Cards” section of your dashboard.

1. Click the “New” button
2. Populate the details about the recipe:
   Meal Type
   Summary
   Rating
   Tags
   Recipe Link
3. Within the “Ingredients” property, add each required ingredient (grocery item) for the recipe
4. Optionally, add ingredient quantity overrides in the “Ingredient Quantities” property
5. Optionally, enter the serving size, calories, carbohydrate, protein, and fat (per serving)
6. Optionally, upload a photo of the meal to the “Images” property, and drag the new image to the first position for it to display as the preview

Pro tip: Use the Notion web clipper to snip recipes from the web directly to your “Meals / Recipes” database. Just make sure to attach ingredients and macro information to the recipe afterward.

Adding Ingredient Quantity Overrides #

When creating new meals / recipes, define any special quantities for ingredients that are more than 1 in the new “Ingredient Quantities” property. There are two requirements:

1. The ingredient name must match the grocery item name exactly
2. Ingredient quantities must be separated by a comma

Other than that, pretty much anything goes. Here are some examples of how you can define quantity overrides for ingredients in a recipe:

• Chia Seeds [3], Raisins [2], Rolled Oats [2]
• Chia Seeds (3), Raisins (2), Rolled Oats (2)
• Chia Seeds 3, Raisins 2, Rolled Oats 2

Any ingredient quantity overrides for upcoming meals that have ingredients on the shopping list will be tallied in addition to standard ingredient overrides that you’ve already set for your pantry. The script will iterate through up to 30 overrides.

Please note that we can only calculate ingredient quantity overrides for unique meals within the grocery shopping period. Multiplying ingredient quantities for the same meal on repeat is not possible at this time.

Design Plan Templates

To save time and clicks while meal planning, you can design in advance full day or partial day templates that can be applied like a stamp to your meal planning day. Create plan templates by adding meals to the template.

You are able to set a caloric target for the template using the “Table View”, and easily see how many more meals you are able to add to the template before exceeding the caloric target.

Meal Planning #

You can meal plan using three different methods:

1. Manually add meals to the day
2. Apply one or more plan templates to the day
3. Use a combination of manual and plan templates

Plan templates will stack, which means that you can add as many templates as you like to a day! Information from the template will populate instantly onto the day, including calorie and macros amounts.

1. Click to open a day
2. Within the “Meal” property, search or browse for the desired meal OR search for and add templates in the “Plan Template” property
3. Select the meal to add to the day. You can add as many meals or templates to the day as you’d like

Pro tip: When searching for a meal, click the three dots and select additional items that will help your search, for example, “Rating”, “Instant Gratification”, “Summary”, “Tags”, or “Total # of ingredients”

As you plan for meals, ingredients that you do not already have in your pantry will automatically be added to your shopping list. Note: Ingredients for meals will populate your shopping list once the planned date is within the next three days. This prevents you from buying ingredients too early.

Unplanned Meals #

If you ended up eating meals that were not part of your plan, you can add the meal to the “Unplanned” property on the day card. This may be helpful to track if you like to analyze why and when you strayed from your meal plan.

Tracking Hydration #

As part of your health goals, you may wish to track your daily hydration intake. Open the day card and enter the amount in ounces into the “Hydration” property. A visual water drop icon will display on the card front showing the percentage toward the daily target (64 oz).

Tips / Best Practices #

Grouping #

It may be helpful to group your grocery items by subcategory in both your Shopping List and Pantry views. Seeing items beneath the parent group makes finding them easier.

1. On any view that you wish to customize, click the three dots next to the “New” button
2. Select “Group”
3. Choose “Subcategory”
4. Optionally, drag and drop the subcategories into the order that you want them to appear

Reordering the Categories #

It may be helpful to rearrange the order of the categories and subcategories to mirror your grocery store layout. This means that as you are shopping the grocery items on your list will be ordered along your walking pattern through the grocery store. For example, if your grocery places fresh produce near the entrance of the store, move the “Produce” subcategory to the top of the list.

See step 4 above

Grocery Shopping #

Check off items while you grocery shop, and they will be instantly populated into your pantry!

Pro tip: Load the mobile-friendly view on your mobile phone. Go to “Shopping List” and choose the “Shopping List (List)” view.