These days there are a lot of questions about food. How far away was the farm that grew your food? What kind of soil was it grown in? Were the worms that composted the soil exposed to preservatives? Did the cart that carried it to the market stop at red lights?

Okay, maybe that’s taking things a bit too far.  But it can be hard to keep track of all that’s going on in food philosophy lately… Fortunately, losing track of your grocery list is never a problem, thanks to Grocery List Generator, or “GLG”.

Once you install GLG, you’ll see a hot pink shopping cart on a black background in the upper right of your browser window. Give that a click and, when you’re first starting out, you’ll be asked to designate a location for the GLG folder to save your files. I haven’t seen that before with an add-on, but it was easy enough to create a folder on my desktop and keep going.

The main point of the GLG add-on is to make it easier to keep track of the groceries you need and easier to generate a printable list when you’re ready to go shopping.

To generate your grocery list, click the GLG browser button, and you’ll see the main GLG window:

Click the third pink icon at the top. You’ll get a long list of fields to fill in with the groceries you need. You select categories for each of the foods:

When you’re finished, click “OK” and then click the first pink icon on the original window to get your grocery list:

Print it out, take it to the market, and life is simple. But wait, there’s more! Notice the italics under “ham steak”, “pineapple”, “green pepper”  and a few other items? “Grilled Ham & Bell Pepper Skewers…” is the title of a recipe I stored in GLG.

Going back to that first main window, you’ll see “Get more recipes…” in pink, at the bottom. Click that link and you go to the GLG site, where there is a myriad of recipes to explore and add to your personal GLG:

See the pink shopping cart above the food image? Click that and the recipe goes right to your GLG.

And when you are viewing any website that contains a recipe that the GLG can read, the pink shopping cart button will become appear on your Firefox statusbar. Using this button you can add recipes to your own GLG to use whenever you want – with one click. (This feature currently only works on allrecipes.com and foodnetwork.com, according to the GLG Help page)

Both the site and the add-on are worth exploring if you like to cook, eat, or ever find yourself going to the grocery store. Have fun with Grocery List Generator.

Post from Elise Allen, who loves getting organized before she goes grocery shopping. See all posts by Elise Allen.