QuickBites
QuickBites are grocery bundles — a name plus a flat ingredient list — for the things that aren’t full recipes. Snacks, breakfast staples, pantry restocks, meal-prep items.
Create a QuickBite while searching on the Menu page, or keep your collection tidy on the QuickBites page.
Add a QuickBite
- On the Menu page, tap Add items at the top of the page — or the small + on the category heading you want it under.
- Type the name you want in the search box.
- Tap New QuickBite: “your search”.
- Fill in the dialog and tap Save.
Your search fills the Name field. The creation option stays above the results even when existing items match. The exception is a name one of them already carries — the same spelling, in any capitalization. That item comes first instead, and the creation option drops below every match, so you don’t make a second copy of something you already have.
The QuickBite joins the menu as you save it, as a row in its category’s list, after that category’s recipes, tagged quickbite.
A category’s + fills the Category field in for you. Every category in your kitchen has a heading on the Menu page — even ones with nothing on them — so this works for a category you’ve never used. Add items at the top of the page opens the whole kitchen’s list instead, so the dialog asks: Category starts on Choose a category…, and Save won’t go through until you pick one.
The dialog’s fields:
- Name — what shows on the menu row.
- Category — where the QuickBite lives. Pick a different one to move it to another category. Every category in your kitchen is offered, including ones with nothing on the menu yet.
- Ingredients — one per row. Tap + Add ingredient for another row; reorder or remove a row with its controls. Leave this empty and the item’s own name goes on the grocery list.
- ✓ / ? — the mark beside a row shows which ingredient it was matched to, the same mark the recipe editor shows. Tap it to see the match, pick another ingredient, or choose Keep as written, so Groceries and the Pantry show your own words (“cherry ginger ale”) instead of the matched name. The choice is kept until you change that row’s words.
Manage your QuickBites
- Tap mirepoix in the navigation bar.
- Choose QuickBites, directly below Ingredients.
- Search by name, ingredient, or category to find a QuickBite.
- Tap its title or Edit to open the editor, then tap Save.
The page groups cards under category headings, including QuickBites both on and off the menu. Each card shows its ingredients. Search hides categories with no matching cards.
Tap ＋ Menu on a card to add it to your menu. The plus turns into a check mark, ✓ Menu; tap it again to remove it from the menu without deleting the QuickBite.
Tap New QuickBite to create one here. Enter its name, choose a category, add any ingredients, and tap Save. Creating here saves it for later without adding it to the menu.
To delete one, tap Edit and then Delete in the dialog. Confirm to remove it permanently.
Edit or delete from the Menu
Every QuickBite row on the menu ends in a ⋮. Open it and tap Edit to reopen the dialog with that item loaded. Change the name, ingredients, or category, then tap Save. Tap Delete to remove it for good — you confirm first.
A QuickBite that’s off the menu has no row, and so no ⋮. Edit it from the add list instead: open Add items (or a category’s +), find the QuickBite — its row carries a small QuickBite tag — and tap the ✎ at the right of it. The list closes and the same dialog opens, Delete and all. You never have to put a QuickBite back on the menu to change it.
Renaming a QuickBite keeps its place on the menu.
How they appear on the Menu
Each QuickBite on the menu is a row in its category’s list, after that category’s recipes, in alphabetical order, tagged quickbite.
Under its name, the row describes it in one sentence made from its ingredients, in the order you listed them: “Apples and peanut butter.” A QuickBite with one ingredient reads “Just microwave popcorn.”, and one with none reads “Just” and its name. An ingredient keeps its capitals mid-sentence when it has more than one, as in “Kraft Singles”; otherwise it’s lowercased after the first word.
Each QuickBite row has the same ⋮ menu as a recipe — a Missing / Have ingredient breakdown against your Pantry, plus Edit and Remove from menu when you’ve used it up.
Adding a QuickBite to the menu flows its ingredients into Groceries and Pantry the same way a recipe’s ingredients do. Taking it off the menu drops them again.
Removing a QuickBite from the menu doesn’t delete it. It goes back to the add list, under its category, where Add items finds it again — see Selecting recipes.
The plaintext format
QuickBites travel as plain text. An export writes them to a text file inside the ZIP, and an import merges what it reads back by name. The archive carries an exact copy beside that text file, and the copy is what an import reads — see edit a recipe offline. You never type this format in the app — every QuickBite you add or change goes through the dialog.
QuickBites are grouped under a category heading. Each line is an entry:
## Snacks
- Apples and Honey: Apples, Honey
- Crackers and Cheese: Ritz crackers, Cheddar
## Breakfast
- Cereal and Milk: Rolled oats, Milk
- Toast and Butter: Bread, Butter
The shape is - Title: Ingredient, Ingredient, .... For a single-ingredient bundle, drop the colon — the title doubles as the ingredient:
## Produce
- Bananas
One thing to watch: the dialog takes a comma or a colon anywhere, but this format reads both as punctuation. A colon in a QuickBite’s name splits the name there on the way back in, and a comma in an ingredient splits it into two — unless it sits inside parentheses, so Tomatoes (canned, diced) comes back whole. Those splits only happen where this text is what an import reads — an archive with no exact copy beside it, or a ZIP you assembled yourself. A QuickBite you exported and imported again comes back as you wrote it.
This is not the recipe markdown format — there are no steps, sections, or front matter. QuickBites are intentionally one-line.
See also
Last updated October 15, 2026