
Show HN: MealDays – Meal planner for my wife - jampoole
http://www.mealdays.com
======
frantzmiccoli
Reading the title, I was sure that feminist trolls will be on a hunt. I am not
disappointed ;)

Your project could be useful to others, if you want to push it further my
advice would be: find a graphic designer (it's not bad, but it's a bit too
much), improve the experience (in did a meal / day is not my usual habits).

Maybe you could monetize by connecting with online grocery shops or suggesting
extra items (like wine).

Thanks for sharing!

~~~
shawabawa3
At least now I know how to phrase it if I ever make something for my
partner(s) of non specified gender and sexual orientation with whom I have an
equal relationship

~~~
petercooper
Go with Meal Planner for _Everyone!_

You can't argue with the size of the target market, at least.

~~~
dllthomas
I feel like there's a big difference between "for _my_ wife" versus "for
wives". The former makes no assumption about the roles of other people who use
it (except, presumably, that they're interested in planning meals).

~~~
dllthomas
Too late to edit, but I'd like to add that "for _your_ wife" would be as bad
as "for wives", outside of a context where you are talking to a specific
person and you know they have a wife who would be interested.

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m_t
I'm just adding another voice for the "Open Source it!" I'd love to use that
with my girlfriend (shit, is it sexist to say that?) as we love to plan our
meal in advance but usually fail to do it as much as we could.

Using this would be great, and we could add our own specific functions if we'd
like. And put it on our home server.

~~~
dllthomas
_" I'd love to use that with my girlfriend (shit, is it sexist to say that?)"_

It's not sexist at all to say "I'd love to use that with my girlfriend." It
might be a bit sexist to say "I wish my girlfriend would use that", maybe.
It's at least a little jerky, and possibly a little sexist, to say "shit, is
it sexist to say that?"

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michaelq
The visual documentation is a nice touch
([http://www.mealdays.com/howto/](http://www.mealdays.com/howto/)) and
couldn't have taken too long to create. Just in case my mother-in-law doesn't
know what drag and drop means.

~~~
jampoole
I made this with Jing
([http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html](http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html))
super awesome tool.

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gh0sts
Cool idea. I had a tiny issue where the leaves on the Meal Plan box overlap
the corners of Monday and Sunday, meaning you can't drag in these areas. You
can sort it out with:

    
    
        .leaves-left, .leaves-right { pointer-events: none; }

~~~
jampoole
Great tip thanks. It's added now.

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BaconJuice
I don't understand. Why are you limiting your wife to only one food item
that's not even a meal a day?

~~~
jampoole
It's what she asked for. She uses this to pick her main dinners for the week
and it builds a grocery list for her (work in progress for organizing).

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k3liutZu
The idea is nice. A designer would be of big help though.

It would be great to have more than 1 meal / day.

~~~
stronglikedan
And multi-recipe meals. As it is, I either get dinner or dessert. Seeing that
I have the willpower of a Kennedy, I'd be eating a full tray of brownies for
dinner each night.

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belthasar
I've been using the meal planner that Allrecipes[0] has and I really like it.
I'd love to try this too but having multiple meals or even side dishes per day
is necessary.

[0][http://allrecipes.com/menus/main.aspx?e3=TB_3.0.0_Menu-
Plann...](http://allrecipes.com/menus/main.aspx?e3=TB_3.0.0_Menu-Planner)

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billwilliams
Fun little idea. Tuesday all I eat is hot sauce. Monday I only drink lemonade.
Wednesday I end my fast with the varied loaf.

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emehrkay
Is it possible to have multiple dishes per day? Dinner and a dessert, for
example

~~~
jampoole
My wife wanted something very simple; just needed to track dinner. I had the
same thought, but she's the boss

~~~
emehrkay
Get that MVP out first and iterate. I'm sure she'll want to multi-dish soon
enough. Cool stuff

~~~
jampoole
:) I like your style emehrkay thanks

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mast
I like the idea of meal planning, but most applications don't work for me.
Most meal planners I've come across are similar to this one. You randomly pick
recipes and a grocery list gets generated for you.

I want to work the other way around. Each week we get sales flyers from our
local grocery stores. We look to see what's available, and make our shopping
list. Then we try to plan meals based on our list plus items we may already
have.

Using this workflow, it would be nice if a menu planning tool could be given a
list of ingredients, and then make suggestions for recipes.

~~~
dllthomas
Yeah, meal planners need to be integrated with some kind of pantry management.

~~~
jampoole
Actually, there are apps out there that give you meals based on pantry items.
My sister in-law used one a couple times.

This would be a great feature to add.

~~~
dllthomas
To some degree, although I'd really like a more thorough pantry _management_
system - which tracks expiration dates, estimates quantities, &c, and
integrates with meal planning and shopping.

On a related note, some knowledge of substitutions could be another great
feature.

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ivanche
Looks very nice, kudos for the implementation. Just one question, am I doing
something wrong or you can add just one meal per day?

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avitzurel
This is great. If you have a family and you cook meals every day you know the
struggle of just deciding what you want to cook every day.

Also, if you plan the meals ahead for all week, grocery shopping can be really
efficient.

I would love it if you open source this project, I will definitely develop/use
it.

Kudos! great idea and nice execution.

~~~
jampoole
I really love open source too and may consider it for the future, who knows.

Thanks for your thoughts.

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wehadfun
My wife would love this

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boohoofoodoo
Is it possible to enter your own recipes to add to the drag and drop recipe
list?

~~~
jampoole
This is something I'd like to add

------
jampoole
Wow:) looks like my usage limits for calling recipes exceeded for the day! I
have very limited calls, otherwise I'd have to pay out a lot per month to
increase. Might have to if more people start using it.

Thanks all

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BlakePetersen
Usage limit exceeded? Well there's your first issue.

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speg
Reminds me of [http://www.eatthismuch.com](http://www.eatthismuch.com), which
was also a Show HN IIRC.

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shabinesh
Really love the idea, +1 for multiple meals a day.

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ttrbls
How about adding more than 1 dish to the day?

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eevilspock
What's the relevance of "for my wife"? It gives the impression that you're
stuck in the 1950's.

~~~
jampoole
It's literally for my wife. All her idea:) I promised I would build it to her
spec.

~~~
eevilspock
Fair enough. But then why bother with a Show HN? Why bother with a login and
all the how-to info?

~~~
jonknee
If I had to guess it went something like the OP's wife wanted a tool like
this, the OP built the tool and made it to her needs but also public so that
others could also have the same benefit. He's a HN user hence the Show HN and
since it was an itch he scratched for his wife he put that in the title.

Not that complicated really. It could have been more clear with something like
"A meal planner I made for my wife", but hey.

~~~
jampoole
This is exactly how things went down, thanks.

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jrock08
As good an idea, and decent an implementation. Can we please change the title
from this very sexist and heteronormative language?

~~~
petercooper
"Why hello Gerald, I'd like to introduce you to my wife, Kate."

"How very dare you, Cuthbert. That is a decidedly sexist way to refer to your
_spouse_."

" _My_ spouse? I do not possess zir, Kate is an independent human being
associated _with_ me through our mutual engagement in the social contract of
marriage."

"Oh, that is such a _monogamist_ way to put it.."

~~~
dllthomas
Yeah, the disputing of possession bugs me. Certainly it's _true_ that I do not
possess my wife, but I also don't possess my brother and he's still my brother
and there's nothing weird about that phrasing.

Though it is worth noting that not many _do_ get annoyed at that phrasing, and
overgeneralizing to paint others with it and thinking that has any bearing on
their concerns is poor reasoning.

~~~
dllthomas
@jrock08 (I can't respond directly because your comment is already dead, but I
don't think it was actually non-constructive):

I didn't mean to suggest that you _did_ contest the "my" \- I was just
agreeing that I've seen that before and that it is obnoxious and reading more
into language than is there at any level. My second part was intended to
emphasize, however, that that objection only applies _where it applies_ ,
which as you say is _not_ your comment.

I still think the title is _substantively_ different than your "bros" example;
it is referring to one particular person, and I think that matters a lot. As I
said elsewhere, _" Hackers build things to scratch itches, and then they share
them. The fact that it's a particular other person's itch that got the ball
rolling is interesting and potentially inspirational."_

