Meal Planner

Self-hosted meal planning system that integrates with Lucky California grocery store, sends weekly meal proposals via email to family members, generates shopping lists, and learns from feedback.

Background

This project was born out of frustration with meal kit services (Blue Apron → EveryPlate → HungryRoot → Sunbasket) that:

• Escalate costs to 3x ingredient markup
• Fall into repetitive meal rhythms
• Force users to log into apps to manage selections
• Don't integrate with home pantry items

Features

• Grocery Integration: Scrapes Lucky California weekly ads and sales
• Family Approval Workflow: Email proposals with approve/deny; one denial swaps the meal
• Shopping List Generation: Weekly list grouped by store aisles, highlighting sales, with interactive checkboxes to track purchased items
• Pantry Integration: Specify home items to incorporate into suggestions
• Web UI: Modern interface for the whole family
• Learning: Feedback-based meal recommendations, with weekly discovery staged for human review
• Recipe Catalog: Auditable Wikibooks text imports with provenance, validation, approval, and quarantine
• Recipe Images: AI generation is available for active recipes; imported Wikibooks images are not copied
• Unit Conversion: Converts recipe quantities (cups, tbsp, lb) to grocery units for accurate cost estimates

Architecture

• Backend: Python/FastAPI
• Database: PostgreSQL
• Frontend: React + Tailwind CSS
• Email: SendGrid
• Hosting: Docker Compose with nginx reverse proxy

Documentation

• Project Specification
• Architecture
• Database Schema
• Implementation Plan
• Running Guide
• Recipe Catalog Operations

Quick Start

# Clone and start
docker-compose up -d

# View logs
docker-compose logs -f

# Stop
docker-compose down

Family Profile

Household: 2 adults, 2 children

• One adult likes mushrooms, one child OK with them
• Three family members do NOT like mushrooms
• No allergies
• Calorie, budget, and health conscious eating

Approval Workflow

1. System generates three dinners (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) based on calories, recency, sales, dietary constraints, budget, and variety
2. Email sent to both adults with meal previews
3. One denial = meal swapped; no denials = auto-approved
4. Shopping list generated after approval

Tech Stack

Component	Technology
Backend	Python 3.11, FastAPI
Database	PostgreSQL 15
Frontend	React 18, TypeScript, Tailwind
Scraping	Playwright, BeautifulSoup
Email	SendGrid
Hosting	Docker Compose, nginx