For some time now I've wanted shopping lists automatically generated from recipes. In fact, I suspect there are sites which will perform this action on a single recipe basis, though I don't have the patience to search for them now. From a single recipe it is fairly trivial to generate a shopping list. In fact, one could simply print the recipe - there is normally an ingredients list included. Working this way however, one would need to go shopping every single time they wanted to cook something, or one would need to print a number of recipes and reconcile overlap in the list manually.
Consider then an application which would take n recipes and aggregate the ingredients into a shopping list. Conceptually this is of value in situations where one is disciplined enough to plan their meals for the whole week. In a family setting I imagine the value is increased as you can plan meals for the whole family for a period of time and make sure you are minimizing the trips to the grocery store.
There is a question of how the application would receive information about the recipes for which it is generating a list however. This is where open linked data comes in. If recipe providers (Food Network, All Chefs, etc) were to expose their recipe data as linked data, it could be collected into a single system and generally reasoned upon presuming it followed or was coerced into a somewhat standard ontology (or set thereof). A user would enter a URL for a recipe into the application, indicating when they planned to prepare the dish. After entering a number of recipes, the user would elect to generate a shopping list encompassing a certain time period and the system would generate the list based on all of the recipes at once.
One can imagine a number of optimizations to the results, but one which comes to mind, and is most often made manifest in my personal life, is a reconciliation of the shopping list with the contents of the pantry. Last weekend, I was preparing beef stew. Knowing that I would need Worcestershire sauce, I picked up a bottle, not remembering if I already had some. When I arrived at home I found that I had an already unopened bottle sitting in my cupboard. Had I known this while I was at the store, I could have avoided the expenditure. Similarly, if the system, which I am endeavoring to contrive with this post, had access to exposed data concerning the users larder, it could adjust the list making sure it included only items which the user would need to buy to supplement their current stock.
Considering the concept in complete reverse, the system could also suggest recipes based on what you currently have "in stock." This feature may be more useful than those previously described depending on your lifestyle.
DnL8Tar
Consider then an application which would take n recipes and aggregate the ingredients into a shopping list. Conceptually this is of value in situations where one is disciplined enough to plan their meals for the whole week. In a family setting I imagine the value is increased as you can plan meals for the whole family for a period of time and make sure you are minimizing the trips to the grocery store.
There is a question of how the application would receive information about the recipes for which it is generating a list however. This is where open linked data comes in. If recipe providers (Food Network, All Chefs, etc) were to expose their recipe data as linked data, it could be collected into a single system and generally reasoned upon presuming it followed or was coerced into a somewhat standard ontology (or set thereof). A user would enter a URL for a recipe into the application, indicating when they planned to prepare the dish. After entering a number of recipes, the user would elect to generate a shopping list encompassing a certain time period and the system would generate the list based on all of the recipes at once.
One can imagine a number of optimizations to the results, but one which comes to mind, and is most often made manifest in my personal life, is a reconciliation of the shopping list with the contents of the pantry. Last weekend, I was preparing beef stew. Knowing that I would need Worcestershire sauce, I picked up a bottle, not remembering if I already had some. When I arrived at home I found that I had an already unopened bottle sitting in my cupboard. Had I known this while I was at the store, I could have avoided the expenditure. Similarly, if the system, which I am endeavoring to contrive with this post, had access to exposed data concerning the users larder, it could adjust the list making sure it included only items which the user would need to buy to supplement their current stock.
Considering the concept in complete reverse, the system could also suggest recipes based on what you currently have "in stock." This feature may be more useful than those previously described depending on your lifestyle.
DnL8Tar
-PCM
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