
Cooking the Books: Optimizing Purchase and Use of Ingredients - mhb
https://jasmcole.com/2018/01/16/cooking-the-books/
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webjames
This is fantastic -

In the UK there has been a rise in 'cookery boxes' companies who send boxes of
ingredients which you can use to cook a few different recipes.

However there is not many options in the market for a service where you can
simply subscribe to the recipes (and generated shopping list) and then cook
yourself. This could be based from an index of already available recipes
online. Minimising the necessary ingredients (and therefore potential waste,
and shop complexity), whilst maximising recipe variety is hard to do without a
lot of planning. Combining this with the ability to favour and remove certain
ingredients for example for preference, or intolerance would be really
something indeed!

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msrpotus
I've felt that way about Blue Apron. I'm perfectly capable of going to the
grocery store but I liked having new recipes to try. If I could get just
recipes (maybe optimized to limit crazy ingredients and waste), that would be
something I might subscribe to.

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cmg
Try Meallime. (Not affiliated, but I've been using the free version for a long
time.) It doesn't exactly optimize ingredients, but can put together a weekly
meal plan for various dietary restrictions and groups ingredients together so
you can do one shopping trip for your week.

[https://www.mealime.com](https://www.mealime.com)

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lbotos
One of my 2018 goals was "build a shopping list that helps me optimize recipe
variety while minimizing shopping complexity." Looks like this cookbook is a
good start, and this dataset is awesome. Are others doing/thinking this way?

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webjames
The closest thing I have found are the Sainsbury's meal plans which are weekly
[1]. However as far as I can tell there is no optimisation to limit waste and
the number of ingredients.

[1] [https://recipes.sainsburys.co.uk/meal-plans/weeknight-
meal-p...](https://recipes.sainsburys.co.uk/meal-plans/weeknight-meal-plan)

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omgwtfbyobbq
I'd love to see something that included the lifespan of food too, ideally in
terms of when it tastes good, tastes passable, doesn't taste the best but is
usable, and needs to be tossed.

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krosaen
Perhaps I'm not reading carefully enough but doesn't he start by showing that
choosing in order of most popular is not optimal,

> At first sight this might look fine, but a closer look reveals that it is
> not a great ordering – it is impossible to make any recipes at all until
> you’ve purchased nearly 30 ingredients!

but then he uses this ordering as the ideal to optimize towards? I'm not
seeing how to find a better ordering; like shouldn't there be a way to choose
8 ingredients that let's you cook 5 recipes etc.

I enjoyed the post nonetheless!

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DrStavros
No, he's not trying to minimise the area between the test curve and the
'popularity' curve; rather, he's trying to _maximise_ this area (which will be
negative if the test curve is mostly below the 'popularity' curve).

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rabboRubble
The boyfriend and I found that the bulk section in our local Winco is a
godsend. They sell herbs and spices by the bulk! We buy as much or as little
as we want for a specific recipe. Really has cut down on bottles of this-and-
that sitting unused in the spice cupboard long past expiry date.

Next up slow cooked black beans for tortilla wraps!

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ram_rar
For people like myself, who absolutely hate cooking and constantly eat
outside. I have totally moved to meal replacement powders, which have decent
amount of protein and all the nutrients that body requires. I mix the powder
with almond milk and I'm done.

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Mountain_Skies
I make meal replacement shakes a couple of times a week. Almost all of the
recipes for the "nutritionally complete" shakes include a multivitamin, which
feels like a hack at best and a nutritional failure at worst. I don't know if
the premixed meal shakes are the same way but I suspect they're as complete as
Frosted Sugar Bomb kid's cereal with sprayed on vitamins and minerals.

~~~
ram_rar
There are many meal replacement shakes like organic raw meal, which barely
have any sugar and pretty low on calories. I mainly have it for breakfast.

