The Kitchen Pad

THE KITCHEN PAD — Plan the week. Tear off the list.

A pad is a different animal from a planner, and the difference is the whole point of this one.

A planner is a book. It lives on a shelf, or in a bag, and to use it you have to go and get it.

A pad lives on the counter. Open. Where you can write on it while the kettle boils.

HOW IT WORKS

Every sheet is one week. And down the middle of every sheet, there is a tear line.

← LEFT of the tear line: the week's dinners. This half stays on the counter, where the rest of the household can see what's happening on Thursday.

RIGHT of the tear line → the shopping list they add up to. This half tears off and goes to the shop with you.

That's it. That is the entire idea, and no other planner does it.

WHAT'S INSIDE — 72 hyperlinked pages

THE SET-UP (three pages, filled in once)

• Your Ten Meals — everything you can already cook without looking it up
• The Staples — half of what people buy, they already own
• Allergies & Needs

THE PAD

• 52 tear-off sheets. One per week — a year, if you use it every week, and it doesn't mind at all if you don't.
• Every sheet is hyperlinked from a single contents grid: tap any number and go straight there.
• Every sheet taps through to your staples check before you shop.

THE KITCHEN

• 6 recipe cards for the keepers
• THE WORLD KITCHEN — three complete recipes, written out in full:

★ BÚN CHẢ (Vietnam) — Hanoi's lunch. Charred pork patties dropped straight into warm dipping sauce, with cold noodles and a small shrub's worth of herbs. Char the patties properly; a pale one is a wasted one. ★ MOUSSAKA (Greece) — the cinnamon is what makes it taste Greek rather than merely like a mince. Let it stand 30 minutes before cutting, or it will slump onto the plate. ★ KOSHARI (Egypt) — rice, lentils and pasta in one bowl under a sharp tomato sauce and a mountain of fried onions. Costs almost nothing. Possibly the best food anyone has ever built out of leftovers.

Metric and imperial throughout.

HONESTLY, ABOUT THE TEARING

On a tablet you obviously can't tear anything. So on a tablet you crop or screenshot the right-hand strip instead — which is exactly as useful and considerably less messy. Page 2 says all this plainly.

And if you print it, you can tear it for real, which is the version I'd recommend if you have a kitchen wall.

UNDATED — Sheet One is simply the first one you use. Skip weeks freely. Nothing expires.

WORKS WITH — GoodNotes, Notability, Noteshelf, Xodo, Samsung Notes and any PDF annotation app. Prints beautifully.

INSTANT DIGITAL DOWNLOAD — 3 PDF files. No physical item. Personal use only.

The list goes to the shop. The plan stays on the counter.

— Arwign Planners