Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

My wife and I had the same challenge. So I decided to create an Android app for that. Funny enough I decided to name it Mealy. Guess I have to find a new name now I've seen there is a Mealie already...

I made it a native Android app instead of a web app because I wanted it to function offline with the data on the device. Too often I was in the grocery store and wanted to tick off the shopping list but didn't have any internet connection...

Unfortunately, it's not yet ready to share. It does already have a recipe database, shopping lists (which are not yet filled automatically) and meal planning for breakfast lunch and dinner with all that beeing synced to other devices. But it does still lack user management and does still have too many bugs and glitches.

And life's got too many other challenges at the moment so I do not have much time to develop it at the moment.

Edit: Also thought about implementing automatic generation of shopping lists omitting things which are still in stock but didn't find a good way of tracking what's still in stock without having too much work with keeping that up-to-date.

I used that too, works well and IIRC the creator is on HN sometimes https://www.eatthismuch.com/

I'd also recommend giving Paprika a try. In the grand scheme of things it's "expensive" if you are used to free apps, but a small percentage of a typical grocery cost.

Whilst it has some UI quirks, you can tell its quite well thought out and nicely modelled. The cloud sync also works well between my wife and I (as mentioned by another comment).

Some niceties:

- Grocery list additions automatically get categorised by "Aisle" (e.g if you add "apples" it goes into "produce"). This makes shopping easier, as similar items are grouped.

- Recipes have ingredients, which can be selectively populated into your grocery list. Then, when you're looking down the list it maintains that "link" (ie I'm buying bread crumbs for xyz recipe), which is a +1 over pen and paper. This means if my wife gives me a list, but I cannot find an item, I'll at least know what that item was intended for so I can substitute.

Haven't tried PtE, may give it a go at some point.

But just mentioning Paprika does indeed allow you to populate your shopping list from your meal plan, or from an individual recipe. I use this feature frequently.