What would make Mealime better for you? šŸš€

Some way to make notes on recipes and/or your shopping list would be good. I think that would address several of the suggestions made here. If you changed something in the recipes or wanted to substitute something in the recipe, make a note on your shopping list or recipe so that you can remember :smiley: Another benefit to a field for recipe notes is possible feedback on how people are using the recipes. Iā€™ve seen this sort of thing used really well on other recipe sites to kind of ā€œcrowd sourceā€ ways to improve or clarify recipes.

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Iā€™m honestly seeing the majority of the recipes I pick (vegetarian) to be above 700 calories. I also think an option to get servings in odd numbers (3 instead of 4 for example) would be great because then I could divide the recipe in 4 anyway and reduce calories that way.

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Being able to customize the shopping list would be great. For example, if I need to buy 4 red onions but I already have two, I canā€™t edit that. I have to check it as done and then add a new item that says 2 red onions

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Oh, that could be pretty awesome. Mealime could look at the recipes in your meal plan and look for some ā€œbatchedā€ prep steps you could do like this. At the same time, we could provide storage tips, as @rtoyen suggested. We could even have the meal plan builder try to look for recipes where there are more opportunities to do this kind of batching.

@rtoyen Do you find that you can do this kind of prep work on many of your Mealime meal plans? Personally, I havenā€™t noticed much repetition of prep in my meal plans, but maybe Iā€™m just not being observant. Are you looking at all the recipes before-hand and planning out the prep work you can do for the week?

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This would be cool! My wife suggested this a few months ago.

We would probably need to have a way for you to ā€œopt-inā€ to this feature, because some folks (meā€¦) arenā€™t able to think that far in advance. Weā€™d also need to make it really clear when youā€™re looking at a recipe that it needs to be prepared in the morning.

Thanks for sharing this idea @Krissyd29!

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Changing the items on your grocery list is near the top of our todo list @Jgal . Iā€™ll work harder so that you can have it sooner :smile:

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Interesting! I havenā€™t considered editing the recipes. Iā€™m probably a much less confident cook than you :wink: .

We are planning on letting you add your own notes to recipes, but it may be even better to be able to modify the recipe itself (changing quantities, substituting or removing ingredientsā€¦). While that is a lot harder to implement, it may also provide more value, like being able to see accurate nutritional info. @jeff are there other reasons youā€™d want to add notes to recipes, or is the main reason to modify the instructions?

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Me too! Iā€™ll be working on building that for us soon! :sunglasses:

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@mitch I have done this a few times. For example, this week, two of my recipes used chicken. For one I was to stir fry it, and for the other I was to poach it in the soup first. However, i decided just to bake both of them at the same time, and then use them in the recipes as needed.

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Hi!

I absolutely love this app! It has changed my life.

One thing I noticed as I was cooking dinner tonight is the app screen doesnā€™t flip when I turned my tablet upside down. I needed to charge my tablet at the same time while cooking dinner. It would have been nice to set the tablet in the stand upside down so the tablet wasnā€™t pinching the cord/resting on the charger input.

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Modifying the instructions is definitely a main reason. Maybe the main reason. Iā€™ll definitely give this more thought. Off the top of my head, I could also see notes being useful for:

  • Overall impressions of the recipe
  • Ideas for pairings (drinks, appetizerā€™s, sides, etc)
  • What a partner or family member(s) thought of the dish / specific substitutions for others
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Hi Leigh - thanks so much! Itā€™s so nice to hear that Mealime has been working well for you :slight_smile:

Yup, we donā€™t actually have landscape mode support in the app right now. Sorry about that! I appreciate you reminding us of this, though - itā€™s good to keep top of mind. What you had to do to make this work is certainly not ideal.

If you have any other feedback, please donā€™t hesitate to let us know! Thanks again Leigh.

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It sounds like recipe customization would be useful for you (in order to hit the nutritional values youā€™re looking for). Another solution, however, could be to have some kind of filter where you let us know the calories / macros you want, and we only show you recipes that fit this criteria. Would this satisfy your needs better @Jgal?

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Yes. Either of those would be great

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There are already a lot of replies, so I hope this isnā€™t too repetitive. But I would love if Mealime expanded to include every aspect of food prep for the week. Like if there were somehow to input the number of people per meal, number of meals to cook at home, how much time you had each night, and if Mealime could calculate how to best do that with the least food waste. It would also have to be relatively quick to put it all in to!

I know thatā€™s already a lot to ask, but if you wanted to take it further, if there was a way that when you click ā€œI cooked it!ā€ you could say how the portion size was for you and that way in the future recipes could be made smaller or larger depending on your individual preferences. Maybe in a machine learning way?

These are just suggestions that I think would make Mealime even better, but itā€™s already my favorite app and you guys are doing an awesome job, so thank you!

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Hi Sophie! Thanks so much for your feedback and kind words about the app :slight_smile:

In general, it looks like you want customization on a more granular level (which is definitely something weā€™re committed to improving upon). May I ask, does the number of people you cook for and the time you have available to cook vary drastically throughout the week? Consequently, do you find yourself having to change your Settings often?

Your second suggestion is very cool - I could see this being super valuable. As a first step in this direction, weā€™re working on a Notes feature right now which will allow you to record your thoughts about the recipes you cook (for ex., modifications, cook times, etc). Itā€™s not smart like what you suggested, but itā€™s something! Iā€™m sure weā€™ll build more functionality into this in the future.

Thanks again Sophie!

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I recently started using this app over the weekend once I got fed up with spending hours trying to find recipes that fit within a particular diet. So far I have absolutely no complaints and thoroughly enjoy the ease of cooking with Mealime.

The only suggestion I have as far as making the app better for me personally, would have to be an overall meal planning feature. Such as being able to input what I had for breakfast, lunch, dinner that day and getting an overall calorie consumption as well as a breakdown for nutrition. Pretty much something like MyFitness Pal. Something that would probably be even better than adding a tracking feature like mentioned above would be integration with the MyFitness app itself.

Aside from that, Iā€™m perfectly content with everything else. I definitely appreciate a simple and easy to use app that is well designed. Kudos!

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Hi Jeff,

I might be strange, but on average I cook for myself 4 nights a week, for myself and one other person 2 nights a week, and for a group of 4-5 1 night a week, and I try to shop once a week but at most 2 times a week because I really just donā€™t have the time to go more often. This can vary week to week though. Usually, I set it for the 2-person plan for 5 or 6 nights, then I come up with my own plan for when I am feeding more people. This isnā€™t a huge gripe and probably something pretty specific to my situation though. Mealime has definitely simplified most of my week in dinner and lunch planning.

Also, one thing that would be nice is if the ingredients needed were slightly more seasonal based. For instance, today I wanted to do the pork chops with peach salsa (it sounds so good) but no chance of finding peaches in my local grocery store, and Iā€™m even spoiled being from the Bay Area. :slight_smile:

Iā€™m sure you have thought of this, but just in case, for modifications, you might want to be careful to take them with a grain of salt because of the differences in ovens, altitudes, etc. that can effect the cook times. Although that would be a super cool thing to incorporate if you moved into machine learning. Also, the second part is more of an idea for building in the future, I know itā€™s a tall order so I hope you didnā€™t take it as a critique!

Best,
Sophie

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Another thought, would be to be able to see the nutritional info for each part of food that Iā€™m cooking. Like I made shrimp coconut curry with rice tonight, it would be nice to see what the nutritional facts were for the shrimp curry and then the carrot rice. Or like when I made the stew that had a side of bread that I omitted, it would have been easier for me to get the correct nutritional information if I knew how much was added for the bread. So we could see the total and then the breakdown of it. Like approximately this many calories and protein, etc. are in the soup, and this is how many we estimated for the side of crusty bread. Just for times when there are separate itemsā€¦ in case I decide I donā€™t want part or if I get home and see someone ate part of my grocery list. (;
Might make the nutritional info page much longerā€¦ but could also be helpful for getting more accurate nutritional info.

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I have seen some requests for lower calorie options. I would love a lower calorie option - say between 400-500 calories per meal and in conjunction with that and maybe more importantly would really benefit from a ā€œHeart Healthyā€ meal preference.

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