
Show HN: EatHow – Figure out what to make with the food you already have - abraham_o
https://www.eathow.com/
======
Tehnix
Very cool project! I often hear people talk about this as an idea, but never
really getting further than that :)

Some suggestions/notes:

\- Looking at a recipe (e.g.
[https://www.eathow.com/recipes/219](https://www.eathow.com/recipes/219)) I
think you forgot to use a cursor: pointer; on the "Directions" and
"Ingredients", to indicate that they are clickable

\- Someone else mentioned, but you don't have to be so apologetic about
wanting money for this :) My personal recommendation would be to mark "The
money thing" in it's own section, after your self-intro, and then display very
clearly as the first item the two different plans (monthly and yearly),
perhaps in some more traditional style boxes as you often see (familiarity is
oft helpful).

\- I completely understand your reasoning behind 14 days of trial, but you
might want to consider your long term game more, by extending the trial so
that users will get hooked/dependent on it. Take for example the difference in
Apple Music and Spotify trial plans, with Apple Music offering 3 months and
Spotify only one month. Now I'm not saying that's the only reason, but Apple
Music recently overtook Spotify in monthly unique users[0], which will
presumeably convert to paying users later on.

[0] [https://www.macrumors.com/2017/03/29/apple-music-monthly-
uni...](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/03/29/apple-music-monthly-unique-
users/)

~~~
abraham_o
Thank you :) I'll definitely be rethinking pricing and trials after this.

~~~
gregpilling
"90 days before we ask for a credit card, then less than $40 per year after
that. Try us for 3 months let us show you how to save time, money and hassle
for less than the cost of a family meal per year"

Just a thought to throw out there.

------
xanderstrike
This is awesome! I've long thought of making something like this.

One caveat though, I would never pay $5/mo for it. If you're writing the
recipes, consider advertising and product placement as a revenue stream.

~~~
supercoder
Yep same, was interested to check it out, but stopped when I saw 'Start your
free trial'

At least let me get hooked on some value before trying to make me sign up /
pay.

~~~
abraham_o
No credit card or email required to try it. I should make that clear in the
page.

~~~
cardamomo
That might help, but providing some example searches and recipes before
requiring an account would also be helpful. Personally, I'm only comfortable
signing up for something if I feel I can reasonably judge its quality first,
even if it's free.

~~~
nickpsecurity
That's a good suggestion. Same here. Signs it works are one of first things I
look for on a product/service site.

------
scandox
I like this idea but current execution doesn't work for me.

I currently achieve this goal by typing the main ingredients I have into
google and adding the word vegetarian. I get something worthwhile in the first
two pages.

I can see benefits to your system in terms of granularity and accuracy. But
these will only accrue over time and at first use I found this approach
cumbersome. Free text entry of main stuff I had would have been so much
quicker. I took almost everything off your initial list.

I think this has great potential but there is a high bar.

~~~
nathancahill
Yep, I do exactly the same thing. Works really well. Another thing that helps
use stuff in the fridge is following recipes as suggestions instead of strict
ingredient lists. Swapping out different root vegetables for example.

------
acobster
This looks great. I will be trying this out later.

Minor grammar nitpick: "Less grocery store trips" should be " _Fewer_ grocery
store trips."

~~~
lacampbell
_Minor grammar nitpick: "Less grocery store trips" should be "Fewer grocery
store trips."_

At this point I'd consider the former correct. It's just too commonly used in
too many contexts. When more natives speakers than not don't know about a
rule, I dunno if it's valid anymore.

~~~
OJFord
Except the ignorant just accept both, whereas those who appreciate the
distinction will be jarred.

~~~
lacampbell
I think the battle is lost here already. I'm an educated native English
speaker and I could literally care less if someone says "less" when,
traditionally, "fewer" would have been used.

It still annoys me that people describe things as "lite" instead of "light",
but I realise the battle is lost as well.

~~~
tmnvix
I'm guessing you are from the US.

I am from Australasia and the fewer/less distinction is largely respected in
my experience. I find the example jarring.

Regarding light/lite, I am doubtful that this is a problem outside of the US.

Don't give in so easily!

~~~
lacampbell
[https://shop.countdown.co.nz/Shop/SearchProducts?search=cott...](https://shop.countdown.co.nz/Shop/SearchProducts?search=cottage+cheese#url=/Shop/ProductDetails%3Fstockcode%3D753001%26name%3Danchor-
cottage-cheese-lite%26searchString%3Dcottage%2Bcheese)

I think I have some of this in my fridge right now. "Lite" is used here a lot.

I hear native English speakers in NZ make grammar mistakes here all the time.
I'm really curious that you hear the less/fewer distinction adhered to.

------
kbart
How is it better than free supercook[0], that has basically the same
functionality and tons of recipes?

0\. [http://www.supercook.com/#/recipes](http://www.supercook.com/#/recipes)

~~~
coolg54321
I was about to say the same, I often lookup supercook

------
doomtop
I found it annoying to be forced into a pedantic onboarding tutorial. I
decided not to finish it.

Can't you wait until I try to do things, like view recipes or build grocery
lists, before forcing me into them? I just want to check out the app my own
way. The tips could appear when contextually appropriate, and be dismissible.

------
fiatjaf
I wrote something like this as my first programming project. I had serious
trouble with an algorithm to search and filter recipes, however.

The best point of my site was that it gathered its recipes from food blogs and
linked directly to them. I had to tweak a scraper for about a hundred
different food blogs, it was a hell of work, but the scraping results were
good.

Differently from SuperCook, which uses food portals, my recipes were all
personal and of higher quality.

~~~
madamelic
Do you still have the scraper? I'd love to see it.

~~~
fiatjaf
No, I didn't even know version control or how to properly save code to disk at
the time. It was 2011. I kept all my code in Dropbox and life was a mess.

There was a site with recipe search at
[http://receitrom.com.br/](http://receitrom.com.br/). Wayback Machine had it,
but it seems to have a new search feature now that doesn't find anything
anymore.

Anyway, it was scraping recipes in Brazilian blogs, so it would probably be
useless for you.

------
meej
This is cool, something I've long wanted. A big missing feature is the ability
to filter out food allergie/sensitivities/preferences in recipes and the
grocery list, though. I was pretty disappointed, after winnowing down the list
of things I have on hand, to receive lots of recipe suggestions containing
foods I can't eat without making me ill.

------
kevinrpope
Congrats on shipping! Quick question, maybe I missed it on your homepage: How
do you track what ingredients a user has on hand? Does the user enter each one
by hand, by barcode, etc?

~~~
abraham_o
Thanks :) and for now by hand. Working on a much quicker way to do this.

~~~
kevinrpope
Cool, good luck! Also, not sure if this is by design or not, but the header
bar (with the about and pricing links) doesn't show up until I've scrolled
down past the main splash image. I'm on IE11 and Win10.

~~~
abraham_o
It's by design. Thanks for the look out though.

------
dan1234
Looks great, but one thing I’d love to see would be if the system could
calculate the nutritional information for a recipe.

This would make meal planning a balanced diet that much easier.

------
linkmotif
I've always wanted something like this that works backwards from what you
already have. 14 days free is too short to onboard me, though. I want a longer
trial to get hooked.

Congrats!

~~~
bigiain
I've considered this a few times, and things are getting closer to where it's
practical to make an app you can point in your fridge and cupboards and have
it work out you've got tomatoes, mushrooms, rice, pasta, whatever, and show
you recipes you can make with what you've got, or a list of groceries to grab
on the way home to make a longer list of possible recipes... I suspect I'll
see this app within a few years - given the current capabilities of OpenCV and
other optical recognition software...

~~~
linkmotif
Yeah that's the holy grail of any app like this that requires keeping an
updated inventory of something. Maybe will be built into a fridge someday.

Or we'll all be eating nothing but Soylent in the future anyway ;)

------
dlubarov
I like the idea. I wrote a cocktail recipes app around a similar concept -
[https://github.com/dlubarov/Mixologist](https://github.com/dlubarov/Mixologist)

I haven't monetized it, but figured it could be monetized with referrals to
stores or delivery services. If nothing else, Amazon has a lot of non-
perishable ingredients. I wonder if you considered that rather than a
subscription model?

~~~
toomanybeersies
I was looking at doing something similar recently, but I ran into the problem
of finding a good database of cocktail recipes, especially one that I didn't
need to pay for.

What I think would be even better is an app that makes up recipes based on
what you have, sort of like Chef Watson (www.ibmchefwatson.com) for cocktails.

~~~
dlubarov
I don't know of any, but if you don't mind doing some manual work, Wikipedia
has

\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IBA_official_cocktails](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IBA_official_cocktails)

\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cocktails](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cocktails)

Or did you want something more comprehensive, not just the most famous
cocktails?

~~~
toomanybeersies
I was looking to make one as comprehensive as possible. I guess a good way to
go would be to start with the famous ones and let users add their own.

------
sb23
Using this from Australia - would love a checkbox to turn all measurements to
metric!

------
Jach
Hope it works out, I've wanted something like this too (but not enough to pay
for it). An issue I wish could be resolved is too much reliance on any
particular recipe. My two-minutes-with-this observations are that it's nice
that some recipes seem to have 'one of these' so it can work with substitutes
but how about outright removals? Do I really need that dash of nutmeg, and if
I don't have the nutmeg, will that recipe just not show up? Seems like this
interface could almost get there with another category besides 'on hand' and
'all' called 'almost'. It would fit in well with the add-to-shopping-cart
feature too.

Also wish more places used the recipe format that Cooking For Engineers
uses... e.g. [http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/170/Chinese-
Almond...](http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/170/Chinese-Almond-
Cookies)

~~~
abraham_o
I try to keep a balance between few ingredients and taste. So you won't find
recipes with nutmeg for example unless it's absolutely necessary.

I love that format by the way. Will definitely look more into it.

------
funkaster
Congrats on shipping! I tried chef Watson [1] a while back and it was very
good. I liked that the suggestions were not exactly something out of a menu.
I'll give this a try to see how it compares.

[1]:
[https://www.ibmchefwatson.com/community](https://www.ibmchefwatson.com/community)

------
lighttower
Sent this to my wife who happily input everything we have in the fridge:

eggs, cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, capers, canned beans, balsamic vinegar,
banana, cashews, lemon juice, paprika, spaghetti, garlic.

And all it came back with was breakfast of scrambled eggs. Nothing for dinner
or lunch.

Not good! She was turned off immediately.

~~~
abraham_o
There are 80 recipes now and I add more every month (going for 20/month) It
only gets better with time :)

~~~
maxerickson
I think even if you have a recipe for banana caper bean salad people will
still be turned off.

~~~
cowpewter
Well yeah, but with that list you could easily have just a caper bean salad
without the banana, or maybe spaghetti with the sundried tomato, capers, and
garlic.

Maybe part of the problem is a lot of people aren't going to think of putting
in basics? Maybe it should also show recipes that just need a basic you might
have forgotten to list. Like, maybe it did have a spaghetti with sundried
tomato and garlic recipe but it requires olive oil or butter.

That makes the logic a lot more complicated though. Maybe if you could define
a list of basics you always have in the house, like olive oil, butter, basic
dried seasonings, etc. It would have to be customizable though, because some
people might always have milk in the house and others might never (same with
olive oil or any other thing).

------
zappo2938
Google search had for any recipe an ingredient filter on the side which they
removed a while back.

I think a blog idea to help the site with more useful information and SEO is
how to manage a home kitchen. For example, how to store food so it doesn't get
thrown out. This can go hand in hand with the recipe search.

I was a private yacht chef for 6 years and I ran what is a home kitchen like a
professional kitchen. I had to deal with looking at what was about to go bad
or needed to be used first because I could only go shopping every two weeks
sometimes and figure out what recipes I could make from them. Although I only
cooked for a couple and 4 crew, I ran it like a two star Michelin kitchen.

------
thro1111111
I love how clear it's the headline. I see too many apps unable to explain what
they do, instead you tell the user immediately. Even the rest of the copy on
the home page it's really well-written. Nice work.

------
lacampbell
Solid idea. But for me it really depends on how big a recipes database you
have. Eg, is it suitable for a household where a lot of the meals we already
make are from a smallish geographic area?

~~~
abraham_o
Currently at 80 recipes, with 20+ added every month.

------
ClassyJacket
At first I thought you were crazy for naming it so close to EatNow, but turns
out that's just an Australian thing. Did confuse me for a second tho.

Cool to see someone implement this often-suggested idea!

Having a subscription does sound hard to get off the ground tho. Maybe it'd be
better monetised thru advertising deals? Can't find any good recipes with what
you have? Blue Apron would be _happy_ to cover you for next time...

------
scotch_drinker
This looks really awesome but google does this for me. It will be interesting
to see how EatHow differentiates themselves from google results.

~~~
virgil_disgr4ce
Google keeps track of your current on-hand ingredients and then constrains
recipes by that inventory? Can you direct me to this functionality? I'd love
to use it.

~~~
scotch_drinker
No but if I type "beets yellow squash" it gives me a bunch of recipes. It's
far easier to do that than keep a running inventory of ingredients in my
fridge updated in an app.

I can see that this might be useful for people who really don't know anything
about cooking but would like to start somewhere.

Now if this app has a receipt OCR scanner that automatically adds ingredients
and amounts to the inventory, I could see paying for it. I started a project
like that in the past but gave up with the OCR technology wasn't very
accurate.

------
theunamedguy
This looks great! I spotted a typo with the word "neccesary" a bit down the
page, however.

~~~
abraham_o
Thanks for the heads up :)

------
humbleMouse
I like it, but "the money thing" and the content in that section is tacky.

~~~
losteric
I agree with this sentiment. This is America, never apologize for capitalism.
Hype the app, show us why it's worth more than your price, convince us to
subscribe. _Close the sale_.

The personal blurb before "The Money Thing" is great, definitely keep that.
But the money thing... rework it into the sales pitch. "I want to make EatHow
much better. That means more delicious recipes and improvements that make
things easier for you" \- start with this, justify the $5, then delete the
rest.

------
meesterdude
I like the landing page! Its pretty clear.

But I myself would not spend $5/mo for this. I don't know that it solves that
much of a problem for me? So, maybe just not in target audience.

------
rralian
Looked pretty cool but I wasn't able to get past the "add ingredients" step in
the tutorial. The button didn't work for me. Testing on iPhone.

------
dyeje
The way the tour widget toggles is super unintuitive. I kept toggling it back
and forth being confused about why it wasn't progressing in the tour.

------
overint
There is a fairly large australian food delivery startup with the same name.
Just might make it hard to rank your site, have you considered this?

~~~
mmahemoff
EatNow != EatHow

~~~
overint
Oops, my bad. I feel dumb now, apologies.

------
wmichelin
Your site is pretty broken. Pricing link doesn't work.

------
rootsudo
I always had a thought like this!

I was always lazy to think how to do it.

I'm so happy!

------
sblawrie
"necessary" is spelled "neccesary" on the homepage

------
cercatrova
Something like IBM's chef Watson?

