Plenty - What Can I Cook

Start from a food you already have, or what's in your kitchen, and Plenty suggests what to add to make it more satisfying. Nothing to count.

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👋 Overview

Plenty is an iPhone app that makes everyday meals more satisfying, with nothing to count. Start from a meal or snack you already have, or from what's in your kitchen, and Plenty suggests what to add or what to cook.

Plenty helps you make your meal satisfying: at least two of protein, fiber and healthy fat, three is ideal, and Plenty won't judge you

New to Plenty? Start with the short guide How to make the snack you already have more satisfying, then What is Plenty?, or browse every guide on the Plenty blog. More at getplentyapp.com.

💡 Inspiration

It started with my lola's cooking

I miss my lola's (grandmother's) cooking. She made meals from whatever we had in the fridge. Leftover rice became the next day's fried rice, mixed with whatever meat or protein we had left. It kept us full and satisfied through my school days. Her resourcefulness is what I admire most about her. It was as if she could make something new from the very little she had.

Years later, I was the one at the fridge

I still find myself standing at my own fridge, wondering what to cook. The food is there. What I'm missing is her way of looking at what I have and seeing a meal.

So I built Plenty

You tell it what you have, and it suggests meals you can make right now.

Why the name Plenty

Two reasons. First, plenty of options from the little you have: a few ingredients or last night's leftovers are enough to start a meal. Second, plenty feels like abundance. Plenty never tells you what you're not allowed to eat. It only adds, so food feels generous, not limited.

What I want Plenty to become

My goal is to keep growing Plenty's recipe library with dishes from different food cultures. I'll start with the Filipino home cooking I grew up with, and work with home cooks and chefs around the world to bring in their cuisines.

📱 What it does

Three simple ideas: satisfying, tends to keep you full longer, easy to make

🍽️ Three things shape every meal

First, food that's satisfying
Recipes adapted from USDA MyPlate Kitchen and public sector collections, curated with published nutrient data, plus simpler meals from everyday ingredients.

Second, meals that tend to keep you full longer
Every meal has at least two of protein, fiber and healthy fat. All three is ideal, so if you have the third on hand, add it. Nothing to count or track.

Third, recipes that are easy to make
Snap or tap what you have right now, or cook from scratch with the step-by-step guide.

💬 Plenty Cravings

Cravings Translator: at home or on the go, tell Plenty what you are craving

Your craving translator, for when a craving hits. Tap a feeling, name a food or say it in your own words. Apple Intelligence reads it on your phone, and every suggestion comes from Plenty's own library.

On the go
Snack ideas for travel days and busy afternoons: what to order at a restaurant or coffee shop, what to pick up at the airport or a store, what to grab at your desk at 3pm, or something with no cooking at home.

🫶 Hunger Check-ins & Patterns

Hunger Patterns: check in after a meal, in words, never numbers

Check in on a meal in one tap and see which ones kept you full and which didn't. Plenty asks after you cook, or later with a reminder, and shows your pattern back in plain words, never numbers. Home shows the meals that kept you full lately.

📸 Plenty Scan (Pro)

Find satisfying meals from what you're having right now, or snap your fridge or cupboard to see what you can cook. AI adds the foods it sees for you to check first, and the photo is never stored.

Make Fewer Decisions: allergies set once, plan the week, Home Screen widgets, ask Siri

🗓️ Plenty Meal Plan

Not a diet plan. Plan a week in one tap, or pick a few meals yourself, and get one shopping list sized for your table and grouped by aisle. Every meal still has at least two of protein, fiber and healthy fat. Days are optional and nothing is ever marked as missed, so deciding once means less food noise every night.

🍳 Plenty Kitchen

Your meal builder. Tap what you have and Plenty mixes it into meals you can cook right now. Cook mode walks you through one step per page, with timers where you need them. Short on ingredients? Plenty suggests the one that opens up more meals.

🥜 Allergies and dietary filters

Tell Plenty your allergies, sensitivities and how you eat, and it hides meals that don't fit, everywhere in the app. It reads ingredient names only, so it reminds you to check the label.

📲 Home screen widgets

Your next meal, your week and your month of plates, with no streaks or calories.

🎙️ Siri

Plenty works with Siri, so it's there when your hands are busy in the kitchen. Its actions are listed under Plenty in the Shortcuts app.

Also

  • 📶 Works offline, reminders included, and picks up new recipes when you're online.
  • 🔒 Private by design: no account, data on your phone or your own iCloud, anonymous usage data you can turn off, no ads and no tracking.
  • 🏆 A paywall that feels like part of the app, on the RevenueCat SDK, with a handwritten welcome letter. No pressure, but after winning RevenueCat's 2025 World Paywall Championship, this one had to look good.

🏆 RevenueCat Categories

Plenty's three categories: Nutrition & Healthy Eating, Design Award, Peace Prize

🥗 Influencer Award: Nutrition & Healthy Eating

The brief asks one question: what can we add to make this meal more satisfying? It wants an approach that is evidence-based, flexible, compassionate and practical for real life, without calorie counting, macro tracking or restrictive meal plans. Plenty is for busy women worn out by years of food rules, who want less food noise and fewer chaotic cravings. Here's how Plenty fits.

What the brief asks How Plenty does it
Make your meals more satisfying Start from a meal or snack you already have, and Plenty suggests what goes with it, never what to cut. Plain yogurt gets blueberries and a handful of walnuts. A muffin gets Greek yogurt and berries on the side. An apple gets peanut butter. Leftover rice gets an egg and vegetables for fried rice.
Meal builder Plenty Kitchen and Scan turn what you have into meals with at least two of protein, fiber and healthy fat.
Craving translator Tap a feeling or say it in your own words, and get a more satisfying version from Plenty's own recipes.
Snacks, eating out and real life On the go ideas for restaurants, coffee shops, airports and your desk, and quick meals on tired weeknights, even offline.
Hunger patterns A check-in after a meal shows which meals kept you full, in words, never numbers.
Helps you make fewer choices Less food noise: decide the week once, never a diet plan. Allergies set once, widgets and Siri.
Evidence-based Curated from thousands of recipes from public health bodies, keeping only the satisfying ones, checked against published nutrient data. See How I built it below.
Easy to make Most meals take minutes, with a step-by-step guide and timers.
Still no calorie counting No calories, logs, streaks or days to fall behind on.
No judging, ever No good or bad foods, no scores, and nothing marked as missed.

🎨 RevenueCat Design Award

I wanted Plenty to feel like a warm kitchen, not a clinical tracker.

Design goal How Plenty does it
Warmth Rounded type and hand-cut ingredient pictures make Plenty feel homemade. Each meal gets its own soft pastel, carried from its page into cook mode.
Calm In the app, bold type goes on only a few words. One ink color at different strengths instead of grays, and no red or green, so nothing reads as pass or fail.
Useful You tap instead of typing. Cook mode gives each step its own full page, easy to follow while you cook.
For everyone VoiceOver, Larger Text, Reduce Motion and dark mode were part of the design from the start.

🕊️ RevenueCat Peace Prize

Plenty makes a home-cooked meal the easy choice again, for people worn out by counting food, anyone at a full fridge with no idea what to cook, and anyone cooking on a budget.

Benefit How Plenty does it
Uses what you have Meals come from food already in your kitchen, so what you bought gets eaten. Households throw away more food than restaurants and shops combined, about 60% of all food wasted worldwide (UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024).
Cooking stays free Every recipe and cooking guide is free. The paywall never blocks cooking.
Respects allergies Allergy and dietary filters hide meals that don't fit, everywhere in the app, with a reminder to check labels.
Easy to reach Works offline, needs no account, and supports VoiceOver, Larger Text and Reduce Motion.

💸 How it makes money

Free: the whole meal library and every cooking guide, with limits on meal ideas (three sets a day), week plans (two a month) and Cravings chats (two a week).

Plenty Pro: $3.99 a month, or $19.99 a year with a 3-day free trial. It removes those limits and adds Plenty Scan, your own ingredients, photo stickers and iCloud sync.

Cooking is never behind the paywall. For more information, visit getplentyapp.com/pro.

🔨 How I built it

Recipes you can trust
We went through thousands of open, public recipes from public health bodies and kept only the ones that make a satisfying meal: at least two of protein, fiber and healthy fat on the plate. We checked each one against published nutrient data from the Canadian Nutrient File and USDA, and FDA and EU guidelines, so we are not the ones deciding what counts. That left the hundreds of recipes in Plenty.

Food safety in every meal
Cooking steps follow USDA FSIS and UK Food Standards Agency guidance. Cook mode ends each meal on how to tell it's ready, then adds the right doneness check for what's actually in the pan: no pink in meat, fish that flakes, egg whites set, leftovers piping hot.

Our own evals
Every meal is scored against a fixed rubric before it ships: grounded in its own steps, a real sign of doneness, clear enough to cook without guessing, and in line with food safety guidance. Anything below the bar is rewritten and reviewed again. Plenty never suggests a made-up meal: every suggestion has to come from the reviewed library, and our evals test that on every change. AI-made food art is checked against real photos of the dish, so the plate on screen looks closer to what you'll cook.

AI where it helps
On-device first. Cravings runs on Apple Intelligence on your phone. Heavier work, like reading a photo of your shelves in Scan, runs in the cloud with Gemini, and the photo is never stored.

Payments
The RevenueCat SDK powers subscriptions and the paywall. I set up the products, entitlement and offering with the RevenueCat MCP.

Native iOS
SwiftUI, SwiftData with CloudKit, WidgetKit, App Intents for Siri and Shortcuts, and Vision. Works fully offline, then syncs through your own private iCloud when you are back online (Pro). Share cards let you send a meal to a friend.

🥵 Challenges I ran into

Positioning
The brief is short, so I studied the category judge's public videos and the research behind the approach, and built from there.

Compliance
The judge's name appears nowhere in the app, listing or website, and every claim is careful: Plenty isn't a diet app, and its allergy filter reads ingredient names only.

Accessibility
Plenty is full of cut-outs, color and motion. Making that fast, and right in both themes and with VoiceOver, Dynamic Type and Reduce Motion, took more work than the look itself.

✨ Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Telling the story first
I tell Plenty's core idea, that meals with protein, fiber and healthy fat tend to be more satisfying, as a short story before any setup. It's what helped friends and early users understand how Plenty is different.

Going further, staying true to the category
I started from what the category asks for and grew Plenty into a full app, without losing its three pillars: satisfying, tends to keep you full longer, and easy to make.

📝 What I learned

Building with AI tools does help productivity, but it can't replace knowing the domain. For Plenty, that meant teaching myself: reading the nutrition research behind the approach, learning about food safety and allergies, and being careful with every claim. My years in a heavily regulated industry helped here. Last, getting the word out has taken just as much learning.

📣 Getting the word out

  • Plenty Blog: short guides that help new people get started and help Plenty be found through search.
  • Friends and family first, watching where they get stuck.
  • Public from October as @tryplentyapp on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Threads and Facebook.

🚀 What's next for Plenty

Plenty Marketplace, coming soon: registered dietitians, chefs and food lovers sharing recipes

  • UGC and marketing: working with food creators on short videos of real meals made with Plenty, and growing @tryplentyapp.
  • Plenty Marketplace: a place where registered dietitians, chefs, food creators and home cooks share recipes from around the world.

Recipes are adapted from USDA MyPlate Kitchen, which is in the public domain, and from recipes that contain public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Ingredient information comes from the Canadian Nutrient File, Health Canada, and USDA FoodData Central. Plenty is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the USDA, Health Canada, any public body or Abbey's Kitchen. Plenty offers meal ideas and is not medical advice.

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