Smart Fridge and Active Recipes
I have a very hard time dealing with handling my own dining. I can handle cooking, and while I have a difficult time getting to the shops I do manage to keep food around.
My biggest problem is figuring out what in the world to eat. Cook or not.
Breakfast is the easiest meal. I like eggs, I like bacon, I like english muffins. I could eat this for breakfast every day (until my doctor advises against it), but the simple fact is I don't have time to deal with breakfast during the week.
Lunch is fairly easy as well. Near work is a variety of options, and if I did better at grocery shopping I could even bring in sandwiches.
Dinner on the other hand is a great strain in brain power. There are a few take-out options that I enjoy with my girlfriend, mainly sushi and Indian. Fridays and Saturdays it is easy to end up with friends going out to eat. But the majority of the week is trying to find the answer to the question of What-Do-I-Eat.
I can ask myself, "If I could have anything in the world, what would I have?" and be overwhelmed with options that don't actually make it into my conscious thoughts. It's a good way of drawing a total blank.
A basic solution is to have cookbooks and flip through them. Having my own menu like that is very difficult though. I haven't found good cookbooks/recipes to build up in such a fashion.
Computers don't do a good job of solving human problems like this, but they could help.
Online Recipes
Have you ever tried to find recipes online? It's horrid. The sites out there are difficult to use and loaded with junk. It's hard to organise recipes in a way that makes sense, and I think a big part of it is the inability to generate revenue from giving away recipes.
I think it was in Popular Science decades ago and re-printed around the year 2000 perhaps, with the basic idea that your fridge keeps track of what you have. Who really wants to scan bar codes of food as they bring it home though?
If only the supermarkets could be more helpful. They are gathering my shopping habits anyway. Why can't my supermarket receipt data get into my fridge? Why can't my fridge track what I make for dinner, and allow me to rate my meals so it can also suggest what to eat? If the whole system was linked in full circle, I should be able to get my shopping list generated for me containing not only what I normally stock up on and need, but with suggestions for things that I might like to buy to make new dishes.
Stop&Shop, SuperValu, Kroger, A&P, etc etc etc..... this might be a good way for them to leverage the mountain of data they're collecting and relate that data across chains and other services.... If it makes getting food in my belly easier each night, I am fine with making their data more valid.