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Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

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Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#121

Post by tluyben2 »

jader201 wrote: post #95
mustafa_pasi wrote: post #63

For me cooking and eating is very spontaneous. I also believe this is what separates people who can cook from those who cannot. I can cook because I can mix and match my current appetite, with what I have available in the fridge and figure out something out of that. I know the general idea behind many recipes and cooking techniques but I do not aim to reproduce them to the letter. Nor do I have some kind of meal plan…

You sound like you live alone, or at the very least cook your meals just for you. Because this doesn't seem like it would work at all if you're making meals for multiple people.

I enjoy cooking (not more than programming but it's a close second these days) and when shopping we (wife + me) check local markets or neighbours for fresh local fruit / vegetables (that depends enormously on the season), then we go check the local small supermarkets for things on sale (we don't need to do that, but it's more because it gets tossed otherwise) that we like (which can be anything). I know (experience) how to estimate the amount for about a week but have 0 plans what to do with it at the time of buying. I always make sure we have flower & rice enough (bit of cheating I guess, but it's not like it is an actual contest).

About 4 days of the week, I cook only for my wife and me and 3 days/week I cook for friends that we invite; 4-6 per meal from the people that live here. Sometimes it's lazy cooking (nothing microwave or from a package, but a quick asian stir-fry or something), sometimes elaborate; depends on how much time we have (if we have work in the evening).

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#122

Post by kelseyfrog »

I just use email. Let me explain.

My wife and I semi-asynchronously, find 3-4 recipes each and send each other links/(book,title,pg no) in chat. Then one of us drafts and email, referencing each recipe and the list of required ingredients, and finally sends it to both of us.

We then enter an order online for grocery pickup and stock the fridge. When we wish to make dinner, we reference the latest "menu" email and simply pick one of the items from the list.

Sometimes we'll chain menu items like chili -> chili dogs or tritip -> sandwiches, but for the most part it's operates like a grab bag for the week.

It's easy enough to go back and search for any old "menu" email as far back as we want and because everything is referenced by url or citation, we can add it to the next menu by navigating to the url or pulling the cookbook from the shelf.

The reference system work great during cooking too. I can pull up the recipe on my phone in the kitchen and follow the recipe there, or again, pull the cookbook from the shelf.

The flexibility of email is an advantage here. It works as a substrate for a process rather than railroading the process itself. You see, any app that replaced this would have to handle this specific workflow. It's easier to build a robust workflow on a flexible substrate than on a brittle bespoke substrate like an app.

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#123

Post by thebricklayr »

jihadjihad wrote: post #101
thebricklayr wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paprika is great. I’d much rather pay once upfront than for a subscription. However, one thing that makes Paprika a no-go for our family is its inability to make shared collections of recipes, grocery lists, and meal plans. My wife and I want to cook together . We want to tweak our family recipes over time and share a single grocery list and meal plan between us. Paprika can’t do that, and no other app comes close to…

It looks great so far, thanks for building this. I think this will really streamline how my recipes are stored on my phone (iBooks PDFs, screenshots in iCloud, bookmarks, etc.). Recipe sites have really gone downhill with all the ads and life stories...I just want to cook dinner!

Thanks for giving it a try!

> Recipe sites have really gone downhill with all the ads and life stories...I just want to cook dinner!

Couldn’t agree more. I think having a way to import recipes without the fluff is a table stakes feature for any recipe app (and was the very first part of it I built).

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#124

Post by duval »

chrismdp wrote: post #94

For UK people there's Lollipop: https://lollipopai.com (full disclaimer: I'm a co-founder :) It's integrated with Sainsbury's with one-click basket transfer, an option to remove items you already have, and a recipe uploader for your favourites. Early days so feedback really welcome. Happy to answer any questions people have!

Just used your service to order from sainsburys based on this comment. Outstanding process, so simple. Put me in my partners good books! On the sign up I said I found you on hacker news. Thanks for posting here!

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#125

Post by thex10 »

thebricklayr wrote: post #111
IanCal wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My wife and I want to cook together. We want to tweak our family recipes over time and share a single grocery list and meal plan between us. Unless you want fine grained control over this (what to share, what not to share) then paprika supports this just fine. It syncs between multiple devices so you can just add more - that's what I do.

Are you just sharing the same login? I suppose that works, but it’s not ideal, especially for things like sharing a collection of cocktail recipes with my friends (which I’m actually doing now with Umami). I just checked Paprika again. There is no way to share a folder/category of recipes with someone else. Sharing each recipe individually is not really what I want to be doing either.

I'm not the previous poster, but just wanted to chime in that my husband and I just share a login and yeah, it works. Good enough for us! But Paprika definitely doesn't lend itself to sharing multiple recipes with others in any efficient manner.

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#126

Post by thex10 »

lucretian wrote: post #96
alexchro93 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for Paprika It's great. Easily saves most recipes online. Allows you to tag them. You can schedule meals far out in advance from you personal recipe collection. From these scheduled meals you can create a shopping list. I bought both the mobile and desktop (Windows) version. My fiance and I spend about 10 minutes a week discussing what we'd like to eat for the next 5-7 days. From there I schedule the meals in the…

how do you get cookbooks recipes into the app? manual transcription or something easier / more efficient, i hope?

There's an in-app web browser, and you can click "download" on most recipes from most websites and it will automatically parse the recipe (you can edit where needed) and save it to your recipes. It works perfectly without intervention from my part virtually all the time.

They also offer a bookmarklet (anyone remember those?), which I remember working well in Safari.

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#128

Post by umangsh »

Famnom's (https://www.famnom.com) MealPlanner allows meal planning for families optimizing for available foods / recipes in the kitchen, nutrition preferences (customizable) and taste preferences (customizable) (no shopping lists though).

Code's available at https://github.com/umangsh/famnom and https://github.com/umangsh/famnom_flutter if you want to run your own app and server.

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#129

Post by brocket »

showsover wrote: post #10

One app I haven't seen mentioned here yet is Paprika ( https://www.paprikaapp.com/ ). I use it as a general storage for recipes that I tried and like as it's really easy to strip the entire lifestories you find in online recipes. It has a shopping list functionality as well as week planning. The only downside is that it's quite pricey as you have to buy it seperately on each platform (ios, android, mac, pc). Personal…

I understand not supporting Linux but they don't even have a web version which is a deal breaker for me.

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#130

Post by lucretian »

thex10 wrote: post #126
lucretian wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you get cookbooks recipes into the app? manual transcription or something easier / more efficient, i hope?

There's an in-app web browser, and you can click "download" on most recipes from most websites and it will automatically parse the recipe (you can edit where needed) and save it to your recipes. It works perfectly without intervention from my part virtually all the time. They also offer a bookmarklet (anyone remember those?), which I remember working well in Safari.

yeah, i saw that. i'm interested in how to transcribe paper recipes. i have a lot of cookbooks that i under-utilize at time of meal planning b/c they're captured in a "dumb" format, and I don't want to page through 15 books every weekend.
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