Ask HN: Meal Planning App? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#81

Post by daswolle » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:26 PM UTC

I'm actively working on (something) this in my free time!

I'm frustrated by all the freemium apps and want to release something completely free for full recipe/shopping management. To me, that's baseline functionality.

The main difference in your description is that the shopping list can be auto generated by selected recipes planned against a calendar. e.g. I want to cook these 5 recipes this week and my shopping list automatically aggregates to say "3 onions" instead of 3 separate entries for onions. I don't have a "pantry" yet but can very easily see that in the future.

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#82

Post by cnasc » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:28 PM UTC

What a weird coincidence that I just read this comic https://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=05082002 a few minutes ago and started thinking about a practical version of it, then stopped over at HN and found this thread.

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#83

Post by brudgers » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

I think dBase II can do that.

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#84

Post by brentjanderson » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

https://www.mealime.com/ is fantastic. I've been using it for years. It has saved us money and eat better, with plenty of variety in what we choose to eat each week. 10/10

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#85

Post by athenot » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

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…

This has been my experience as well.

What does seem to help is a blank sheet of paper on my fridge with the main things I have in it (meats, fishes, main perishables), and the various days I plan on fixing them. I generally enjoy cooking but sometimes after work my brain is just too fried to think and having a "sane default" helps me go on autopilot. With the sheet being structureles, I can annotate, cross-out, and change on a whim.

This also helps me keep track of freshness when I have things that go bad sooner than others.

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#86

Post by saw-lau » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:46 PM UTC

view wrote: post #22

Sidekick is an app which cuts down on food waste by creating weekly meal plans which use up all the ingredients that you buy. https://sortedfood.com/sidekick/ They also run an awesome YouTube channel that is worth checking out: https://www.youtube.com/c/SORTEDFood

I use this (sometimes) and it's consistently given me good results, and it feels great to use everything up. Each meal plan typically contains three meals and has ingredient quantities for two or four people. As I live on my own, it's pretty easy to either prep and do the 'final' bits of cooking over two days, or for some recipes just freeze the second portion. Recommended.

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#87

Post by orhanerday » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

I need something like this too. Because I've been spending times ordering food for almost half an hour.

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#88

Post by thebricklayr » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:57 PM UTC

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…

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 Paprika in terms of features and payment model.

So, I’ve started building my own: Umami (https://www.umami.recipes).

Currently it’s just being used by my family and friends, but it’s starting to get to the point where I think other people might like to use it, so if you try it out please let me know what you think!

It supports shared collections of recipes and will soon have shared grocery lists and meal plans as well.

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#89

Post by lvturner » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

I can't say enough good things about EatThisMuch.com

Been using it since 2019 to fantastic results, tweaking my diet to both gain and lose weight as appropriate.

Edit: additionally this works internationally reasonably well, though I do find the odd ingredient that seems to be specific to the United States in some of the recipes, but usually easily swapped out and saved as a custom receipe.

Re: Ask HN: Meal Planning App?

#90

Post by wodenokoto » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

Have you considered a spreadsheet?

You can generate your rotation and plot it out 6 month in advance. And then see how long you can be bothered to follow a meal plan.

With regards to shopping lists I’m not sure how you imagine keeping an app up to date on what you already have, so I think that would be just as cumbersome regardless.