AI Cooking Assistant

Ingredient Selection
Additional Filters
Generate Recipe

Inspiration

Jake asked ChatGPT to formulate a recipe recently given a set of ingredients he had wanted to use. He thought about how this feature could be used to make a recipe/cooking assistant that can tailor to a wide number of parameters and also highlight underrepresented communities and their cuisines, which made him think this would be wonderful for this hackathon, and the team agreed.

What it does

Chef's F.A.R.T.S. (Fantastic and Ready to Serve) is a cooking assistant ready to help you make delicious, homemade meals from hundreds of different cultures! Using a selection of ingredients, choice of cuisine, and maximum meal cost; Chef's can formulate multiple meals with cooking directions and recipe steps that can help you create a tasteful meal for any occasion.

Chef's allows for many parameters for you to use to help create a meal tailored for you and your family. Chef's can take the following parameters below:

Ingredients
Cuisine (ex. Jamaican, Indian, Chinese, Ethiopian)
Allergy (ex. Dairy, Gluten, Seafood)
Meal Cost
Serving Size
Meal Type (ex. Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner)

Ingredients

Chef's allows you to select ingredients you would like to use for a dish, such as chicken or blueberries. Ingredients can be selected as presented in the categories shown, such as one would find in their local grocery store. Additionally, users can type ingredients they would like to use in their recipe in the text box.

Cuisine

Chef's allows users to describe a type of cuisine desired. Popular cuisines such as Italian, and underrated ethnic cuisines like Burmese and Ethiopian can all be described to Chef's in order to help create an ethnically based cuisine exploring all types of cuisines you may not find close to home.

Allergy

Given allergy or dietary restrictions such as gluten, dairy, or vegan, Chef's can take into consideration these restrictions, allowing you to receive a meal that fits within you and your families/guests food guidelines.

Meal Cost

Given today's economy, many look for affordable, healthy meals that are delicious and provide great value. Chef's allows users to define a maximum meal cost; so whether you have budget for beef wellington or a cheeseburger, Chef's can create a meal within your budget.

Serving Size

Chef's can take into consideration a desired serving size for your meal. This allows users to have larger-sized meals prioritized for a family gathering, or smaller-sized meals prioritized for a solo dinner.

Meal Type

Different meal types, such as breakfast, dinner, or dessert, call for different meals themselves. Given a desired meal type, chef's can create an appropriate meal for the occasion.

How we built it

We built the frontend using Flask, HTML, CSS and JavaScript and used Ollama to get inputs from the frontend to help generate and store recipes. We also used Python and VectorDB, a lightweight Python package for storing and retrieving text using chunking, embedding, and vector search techniques allowing for a database search approach and a AI-based search approach.

Challenges we ran into

Incorporating the AI model into our database to provide recipes was the most challenging part. Additionally, creating a VectorDB was difficult to do within the time constraint. However, defining our scope of feasibility helped us create an MVP by our hackathon deadline.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of creating scalable tool that can be used in-real life by people of all ages and culinary skill levels to help create affordable, healthy, homemade meals that highlight ethnic cuisines from underrepresented communities.

What we learned

We learned about the vast number of parameters that can effect what one decides to cook and/or eat. Brainstorming these parameters helped set our tool apart from others and made it much more personal. Additionally, we learned how to use an AI model with a given database to effectively produce a response.

What's next for Chef's F.A.R.T.S.

Dynamic Pricing with Local Grocery Stores
Using local grocery stores data, dynamic pricing can be implemented on ingredients needed for a recipe by providing a price reference to a store close to you, or provide a external link to their website for more information on the product, and where to find it within their store.
Ingredient ID from Photo
Users can soon even more efficiently have Chef's create recipes for them! By providing or capturing a picture of ingredients users have, Chef's can create meals from ingredients identified in the photo.
Recipe Book Log
A log of recipes users have cooked, would like to cook, or favorite recipes previously generated. Users can also share these recipes with friends, allowing for more people to indulge in unique and new cuisines!