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Laura's avatar

I use ChatGPT to meal plan as we’re a family of five with 3 teens: 1 a protein chomping rugby player, another a vegetarian and the third just plain fussy. Just type in ‘meal plan for X days for X people with 2 pasta meals, 1 fish and vegetarian options plus x grams of protein per day and easy packed lunches. With a shopping list also’. And bam! 2 minutes later out it comes. It’s life changing.

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Rachael Ringenberg's avatar

Fascinating mix of pro & anti AI on here! And, an incredible amount of other useful apps mentioned that I have never heard of! This could lead to a great round up…

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Leslie's avatar

Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I like making grocery lists: it helps me get to know a new recipe and reminds me what staples I have or need.

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Loryne Andawey-Adam's avatar

AI is going to be ubiquitous in the next few years. As much as I am wary of it, I find it useful generating ideas, generating quick pictures, and personal travel plans. Does that mean I take AI at its word? Absolutely not. AI hallucinate often, which requires us to double check whatever it spits out. And even if the programmers make AI less susceptible to hallucinations it will still be our responsibility to check, tweak and decide. If we want AI to work for our benefit, we need to start engaging with it in a mindful way. Why am I using AI? What time am I saving using this tool? How will it benefit both me and my audience. For example, I am working on making a daily newsletter about the food I eat, but I also know a picture is worth a thousand words. If I can't easily photograph it (like a hardworking dog eating spaghetti in front of a computer) should I spend time going through Google? Should I draw the concept myself? Or use AI? I decided to use AI, which gave me more time to craft my accompanying article - which AI did not touch - and attributed the image to AI. AI can be used responsibility but only if you are willing to engage with it. Fearing AI will only result in AI controlling you.

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Dr. Martha Cravens's avatar

I've used ChatGPT to give menu suggestions for a vegan dinner party, generate a list, and a timeline. It was helpful to kickstart my thinking and I was able to assemble some quinoa stuffed acorn squash the day before and then socialize with my guests. Also helpful in organizing my pantry . . .

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Ginger Boden's avatar

Hi Jenny, completely off topic, but do you by chance have a weight for a cup of flour? I’m going to make the mud cake and I much prefer weights for baking (more consistent results, fewer dishes to wash…). Google isn’t very helpful. I’ll probably go with 125 grams, but if you see this and know, I’d appreciate your input. The cake looks so delicious. Thank you!

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Rachael Ringenberg's avatar

King Arthur has a crazy amount of ingredients by weight on their website. Very useful. I have the 120 grams/cup scrawled in permanent marker on the cap of my flour container.

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Ginger Boden's avatar

Yes, it could be 120 g or 125 g. King Arthur measures at 120 g, Bob’s Red Mill is 136 g. So there can be significant differences in how it will turn out depending on the weight. Also, is it being scooped vs spooned because that affects the weight. This is why I prefer to bake in grams as my 100 g is the same as your 100 g. I usually default to 125 and test the recipe.

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BB's avatar

I asked ChatGPT: 120 grams/4.25 oz

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Christy's avatar

Jenny, I am so excited to read your post about using GPT for recipes. First, let me say I own all of your cookbooks. I adopted your dinner strategies when my oldest was a toddler and I felt your journey as your kids have gotten older. I still talk about the venn diagram of eating ALL THE TIME.

You are the reason I started a dinner diary and planned out all of my meals every single day for the past 12 years. You are also a big reason why I use AI to do it now. That's not to say I don't still cook your recipes. I do, and I love them!

I think that's what people often get wrong about AI. We don't want AI to completely replace our love of amazing people like you, or other chefs, bloggers, or creators. But we want it to help make parts of our lives easier so we can enjoy the things we love more.

That's why I co-founded Ollie.ai. It's an AI app that plans your meals and groceries for you. Just like you said with GPT, only it does it automatically without prompting, and you have an easily shoppable list. I hope you check it out.

While AI generates the recipes based on your preferences and what you like, you can also upload your own favorite recipes in there, and you better believe I have a ton of my favorite DALS recipes saved. :)

Thank you for always being such an inspiration.

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Lori Selke's avatar

I don't use AI for anything in the kitchen or anywhere else because, aside from any other issue with its use, it lies (see Elle's comment, below).

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Elle's avatar

On AI, I’d just encourage folks to proofread/verify the output. I tried this to make a master shopping list for Christmas cookies and the sugar quantities that AI generated were way off. Light brown, dark brown, castor, and powdered were all aggregated but not consistently. (Intentionally putting aside all the myriad other thoughts I have on using AI to focus on this one use case.)

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Bill Lennon's avatar

I’ve had the same experience. It’s not great at making accurate grocery lists

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Kim Winkleman's avatar

I use the app and website "Plan to Eat" for collecting and organizing recipes. Then I use it to plan meals for the week and it creates my shopping list organized by store section. My partner has the app on his phone and either of us can add to the shopping list throughout the week.

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Sarah Young's avatar

Same here! Love this app. Worth every penny.

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Amy W's avatar

Thank you for the ChatGPT tip. As a public reference librarian, I am always looking for practical, easy to implement ways to use AI agents. I am aware of the environmental issues, but as a Californian, I am affected by the water and energy issues and also the employment opportunities for people in my area. I am not prepared to throw the AI out with the reservoir. We will have to work through the environmental, security, and societal issues. There’s really no putting this particular genie back in the bottle. AI is already everywhere and replacing jobs. I’d rather be rigorously informed, about the utility and dangers, than passively watch everything sweep by.

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em_glass's avatar

In lieu of using AI, I highly recommend the AnyList app. You can import saved recipes and create new ones, and then simply tap the ingredients you need to add to your shopping list. You can cross off items as you shop for them. You can meal plan and create lists beyond shopping lists (like packing lists, etc.) and you can link accounts with family so that you both have access to the shopping list. It has truly been a game changer for my family!

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Laura's avatar

We also love AnyList, I've used it for years, and now that we have multiple shoppers in our family, I've just added them to the app. It's even more useful because of this sharing feature. It ensures we don't end up with duplicates (or nothing!).

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andi's avatar

Agree! I've used this app for years now and love it! I also use it for making other lists (e.g. one just for TJ, Target, etc.).

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Laura D.'s avatar

I mostly store my recipes in Anylist, and it can let you add ingredients directly to your shopping list. One thing I struggle with when cooking a more complicated dinner is what order to do things and how long things will take so they’re all done at the same time. I told ChatGPT what I was making, and it gave me a game plan for when to start things and a basic order of tasks, which I found helpful.

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Liza McArdle's avatar

I loved seeing “Royal Salmon” (isn’t that what it’s called in DALS?) on your list of five easy dinners. I used to make it almost weekly. Now I have a hankering to go back to it! Re: ChatGPT, you can also put in your ingredients and ask it to create a recipe for you. I’m older than you so reluctant to share me amazement (and terror) as well.

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Jenny Rosenstrach's avatar

I had to do a little search on the blog to verify the Royal Salmon, but you are correct! That is very impressive. A version of the recipe is also in my first book, Dinner: A Love Story, ca. 2012.

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mindy isser's avatar

LOVE your content but chatgpt and AI use soooo much energy and water, it's not worth it, please don't use it!

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Leigh's avatar

Yes, but commenting on social media uses a similar amount of energy and water. Also, if we don't figure out how to use AI, it will use us. It's not going away.

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BB's avatar

🤣

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Traci Brown's avatar

This was my first thought. The energy it uses!!

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Abi Baker's avatar

I like the idea of getting a clear consolidated list of organised ingredients, but AI is so energy-intensive that I just can't justify using it for this. One metric I've seen is that it uses approx. a bottle of water per question on ChatGPT. A lot of people I've spoken to don't realise this so am doing what I can to spread the word!

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Erica's avatar

To offer a much more environmentally friendly alternative: I use an app called Paprika to organize my recipes, and it can create organized shopping lists from individual recipes or menus. (It also automatically pulls recipes from websites, allowing me to edit and annotate them. And it does fun things like highlight times within recipes so you can set timers as you cook with just a tap.)

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Lucy Remitz's avatar

Literally same came on here to be like - sounds like you need Paprika!!! I slowly bought the app for every device - iPhone, laptop, iPad because it's been so nice to have it all for every stage of the grocery/cooking process! LOVE the shopping list feature (it even sorts it into aisle at the grocery store) and also the scale, easily 1/2 or 2x a recipe!

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Laura Zug's avatar

That app has saved my life!! We’ve been using it since 2011, and it’s always one of my top 3 recommended apps.

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BB's avatar

Referencing the use of ChatGPT is going to be the 2025 version of *linking to Amazon* - provoking cries of despair from the vocal minority and causing these poor writers to link to bookshop and now, apparently, having to add a disclaimer about the water usage and ChatGPT. Please can we just stop already.

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Jenny Rosenstrach's avatar

I am embarrassed to say I had no idea -- do you think you could link to a story that explains this in more depth?

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Abi Baker's avatar

Every day is a school day! Lindsey's posted some great links, here's one that springs to mind from the Washington Post with the one bottle metric. I was slightly off in my first comment, it's 1 bottle of water per 100 word email

https://css.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/18/energy-ai-use-electricity-water-data-centers/

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Emily Sutton's avatar

Thank you for posting these links! I consider myself pretty “up” on technology, but somehow did not know about the energy piece.

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Paolo Peralta's avatar

Insightful

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Jenny Rosenstrach's avatar

Thank you, Lindsey!

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