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I haven't looked at your app yet, so I'm assuming it doesn't have this feature described below (I haven't seen it yet in any recipe app yet - if yours has it I'

I haven't looked at your app yet, so I'm assuming it doesn't have this feature described below (I haven't seen it yet in any recipe app yet - if yours has it I'm buying it immediately! :) ). Basically, whenever I want to cook something new, I look for a recipe in an app/online and find something that looks really good. Then I look at the recipe list, realize I'm missing like 3 or 4 things on the list, get disappointed since I don't have the time to go to the grocery store, and then go and cook something else. A feature I'm DYING to have is this: 1) Let me list every food item I have in my kitchen (e.g. select them (fruits/veggies), scanning bar-codes would be really nice but not 100% necessary). 2) Let me list what cooking equipment I have. 3) The app returns "ONLY" recipe's I can make given what I have in my kitchen. Currently the recipe apps I've tried (Epicurious, Whole Foods's app) don't do this. Epicurious "kind-of" lets you select main ingredients, but you damn well have the kitchen of a chef, stocked up nicely with basil leaves and minced thyme to cook much of anything. Don't have a pressure cooker? Out of luck yet again... Whole Food's app felt like a giant advertisement just to buy the most expensive ingredients at their store. ;) For a single someone like me whose not a foodie, wants some variety in meals, and is rushed for time on occasion, a recipe app that listed only what I can make "right now" would be really really nice to have. -------------------- Taking that idea a bit further, it would also be nice to have suggestions of food/equipment to buy in the near future, which would increase the number of recipe's one could prepare. For example; "If you buy a rice steamer, you'll increase the number of "right now" recipe's by 25%, and you'll be able to cook things such as steamed asparagus and steamed salmon." Etc... General advice for someone as ignorant as myself as to what to "always have" in the kitchen.

stevenwei 16y ago
That's a really interesting idea, and we've had a few requests for something similar. My question to you is: are you really going to be willing to keep your iPad updated with every single ingredient you have in your fridge, and every single spice in your pantry, especially as things get used up, thrown out, and replaced?
- dgallagher 16y ago
  Great question. Generally, I tend to have certain ingredients always-on-hand. There are others which I buy occasionally but don't always have. And of course things do run out as the week progresses. In a nutshell, having to re-enter everything every time would be tedious. But imagine this... The app keeps a history of food you've entered into it already. When you load it up it displays foods as icons. There's a picture of your kitchen (fridge/shelf) with food icons sitting in it. This is what you have now, and you can drag/drop food into your kitchen. There's also a side-bar shelf, your "food history". This is stuff that you ran out of. Drag/drop food to/from here into your kitchen, and suddenly you have a visual inventory management system that isn't just some giant cumbersome UITableView. Ideally you could add/remove stuff from your food history. It would end up being a general list of all the food you "usually" buy. Initially populating that list would be time-consuming, but afterwords it would be fairly easy to keep things updated. You could also mark an ingredient as "rare", and tell the app not to save if for later in your history. This wouldn't work so well for someone who has a high-turnover of ingredients, and buys a fairly large variety of different stuff. But my hunch is that most people likely buy the same stuff over the course of a month or two. I'm not sure if that's true of everyone, but if it is, an easy-to-use inventory management system like/similar to what I described might work out good. I'd definitely use it; the benefit from shuffling around a virtual inventory for a few minutes would pay for the experience to eat something different/new, rather than settling for the same-old.
  - stevenwei 16y ago
    Great thoughts. I'm not quite sure if it's the same app as Paprika, but there are aspects of it I would love to incorporate.
  - christonog 16y ago
    I could see this being a sort of shopping list companion for the iphone as well. You make a set list of recipes that you want to make for a week per say. You use the iphone to find the ingredients at the grocery store, and as you check them off on the ipad while making your dishes, the app is smart enough to keep track of what you have left, and what recipes you can still make. I bet food companies would love to have sponsored recipes with their branded food items as ingredients, and know how much of an ingredient a user has at a certain time for upselling through coupons.
prawn 16y ago
Perhaps a list of potential substitutes for ingredients you don't have with a confidence-level that shows the impact on the dish.
- bnycum 16y ago
  This is a great idea. My wife does (healthier) ingredient substitutions all the time, or if she is accidentally out of something. One thing she uses is apple sauce instead of butter/oil in cakes or brownies, you don't even notice it at all.
  - prawn 16y ago
    If I'm short of an ingredient, I hate driving to the shops for just 1-2 things so the idea of substitutes is always there and could be useful. Might also be a few things which are best included in the recipe, but which you could get away with excluding. e.g., white vinegar in David Thompson's Pad Thai recipe.
awolf 16y ago
You want: http://www.supercook.com/ http://www.supercook.com/

stevenwei 16y ago

That's a really interesting idea, and we've had a few requests for something similar. My question to you is: are you really going to be willing to keep your iPad updated with every single ingredient you have in your fridge, and every single spice in your pantry, especially as things get used up, thrown out, and replaced?

dgallagher 16y ago
Great question. Generally, I tend to have certain ingredients always-on-hand. There are others which I buy occasionally but don't always have. And of course things do run out as the week progresses. In a nutshell, having to re-enter everything every time would be tedious. But imagine this... The app keeps a history of food you've entered into it already. When you load it up it displays foods as icons. There's a picture of your kitchen (fridge/shelf) with food icons sitting in it. This is what you have now, and you can drag/drop food into your kitchen. There's also a side-bar shelf, your "food history". This is stuff that you ran out of. Drag/drop food to/from here into your kitchen, and suddenly you have a visual inventory management system that isn't just some giant cumbersome UITableView. Ideally you could add/remove stuff from your food history. It would end up being a general list of all the food you "usually" buy. Initially populating that list would be time-consuming, but afterwords it would be fairly easy to keep things updated. You could also mark an ingredient as "rare", and tell the app not to save if for later in your history. This wouldn't work so well for someone who has a high-turnover of ingredients, and buys a fairly large variety of different stuff. But my hunch is that most people likely buy the same stuff over the course of a month or two. I'm not sure if that's true of everyone, but if it is, an easy-to-use inventory management system like/similar to what I described might work out good. I'd definitely use it; the benefit from shuffling around a virtual inventory for a few minutes would pay for the experience to eat something different/new, rather than settling for the same-old.
- stevenwei 16y ago
  Great thoughts. I'm not quite sure if it's the same app as Paprika, but there are aspects of it I would love to incorporate.
- christonog 16y ago
  I could see this being a sort of shopping list companion for the iphone as well. You make a set list of recipes that you want to make for a week per say. You use the iphone to find the ingredients at the grocery store, and as you check them off on the ipad while making your dishes, the app is smart enough to keep track of what you have left, and what recipes you can still make. I bet food companies would love to have sponsored recipes with their branded food items as ingredients, and know how much of an ingredient a user has at a certain time for upselling through coupons.

prawn 16y ago

Perhaps a list of potential substitutes for ingredients you don't have with a confidence-level that shows the impact on the dish.

bnycum 16y ago
This is a great idea. My wife does (healthier) ingredient substitutions all the time, or if she is accidentally out of something. One thing she uses is apple sauce instead of butter/oil in cakes or brownies, you don't even notice it at all.
- prawn 16y ago
  If I'm short of an ingredient, I hate driving to the shops for just 1-2 things so the idea of substitutes is always there and could be useful. Might also be a few things which are best included in the recipe, but which you could get away with excluding. e.g., white vinegar in David Thompson's Pad Thai recipe.

awolf 16y ago

You want: http://www.supercook.com/ http://www.supercook.com/