What's Cooking?

Inspiration As young adults, we often find ourselves staring into a fridge full of ingredients with little idea beyond boiled noodles. We wanted to create a tool that could spark culinary creativity and reduce food waste, turning those random ingredients into delicious meals. The image provided, with its organized containers and ready-to-go snacks, sparked the desire to create an "Ultimate Fridge Organisation Set" concept, and inspired us to build a web app that could help people like us find recipes based on what they already have.

What it does Our web application allows users to upload images of their fridge contents or individual ingredients. Using Google Cloud Vision API, the app identifies the items in the images. Then, leveraging TheMealDB API, it provides a selection of recipes that can be made using those ingredients. The goal is to simplify meal planning and turn those seemingly disparate ingredients into culinary creations.

How we built it We built the application using a combination of frontend and backend technologies. The frontend is built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, providing a user-friendly interface for image uploads and recipe display. The backend utilizes the Google Cloud Vision API for image analysis and TheMealDB API for recipe retrieval. We implemented asynchronous JavaScript to handle API calls and update the user interface dynamically. This was a team effort, with each member taking on distinct tasks to ensure a rapid development process.

Challenges we ran into One of the biggest challenges we faced was finding the right API for generating recipes. Many highly accurate APIs came with a cost, which wasn't feasible for our project. We ultimately chose TheMealDB, a free resource, despite its limitations in accuracy. The accuracy of the ingredient detection was also a challenge, as the Google Vision API doesn't always perfectly identify every item, leading to potential discrepancies in recipe suggestions. Another challenge was coordinating our team's efforts and merging our code effectively.

Accomplishments that we're proud of We're proud of creating a functional web application that simplifies meal planning and encourages creativity in the kitchen. We successfully integrated two powerful APIs to provide a seamless user experience. We're also proud of the teamwork and collaboration that allowed us to overcome the challenges we faced.

What we learned We learned valuable lessons about API integration, asynchronous programming, and the importance of effective teamwork. We also gained a deeper understanding of the challenges involved in image recognition and recipe generation. We discovered the importance of choosing the right tools for the job and adapting to the limitations of those tools.

What's next for What's Cooking? We plan to improve the accuracy of ingredient detection by exploring additional AI/ML models. We aim to refine the recipe filtering and sorting options to provide more relevant suggestions. We also intend to enhance the user interface to make it more intuitive and visually appealing. Finally, we'd like to explore the possibility of expanding the application to include features like meal planning and grocery list generation.