Okay, before we jump in today, just a quick word about our supporter, SafeServer.
If you're thinking about hosting for projects, maybe like the one we're discussing,
or need
some help with digital transformation stuff, SafeServer is worth checking out.
They can actually help host this kind of software we're about to get into.
Find out more at www.safeserver.de.
Their support really helps us do these deep dives.
So welcome everyone to the deep dive.
Today we're looking at something that popped up in the sources you sent us.
It's all about bringing some order to, let's face it, what can be a pretty chaotic
place
sometimes.
Yeah.
The kitchen.
Specifically managing your recipes and planning your meals.
We're diving into a project called Melee.
That's right.
Yeah, the info we've been digging through for this comes straight from the source,
the
official GitHub repository for Melee, which is where all the code lives and the
community
hangs out, and also their official website, Melee.io.
It lays out pretty clearly what Melee is all about.
Okay, so our mission today really is to unpack Melee.
Let's figure out what it actually is, look at its main features, and importantly,
understand
why you might find it useful.
And we're trying to approach this especially for beginners, right?
Maybe you're someone who loves cooking, but you've got recipes saved everywhere.
Bookmarks, printouts, sticky notes.
Happens to the best of us.
Or maybe you're just starting to think, hey, I want more control over my digital
stuff,
looking beyond just cloud services.
We want to break Mealy down so it feels easy to grasp.
All right.
Let's start at the very beginning then.
For someone who's never heard of Mealy, maybe never even considered a digital
recipe thing,
what is it in simple terms?
Okay.
At its heart, Mealy is basically your personal digital recipe box and a kitchen
helper too.
But the key thing, the thing that makes it different from a lot of apps you might
just
download is that you keep it and you control it.
Ah, okay.
And that's the self-hosted bit you mentioned.
Yeah.
That sounded a bit technical.
How can we explain self-hosted without making it sound super complicated for
someone new
to this?
Good question.
Yes, self-hosted just means instead of your recipes living on some big company
server
somewhere out there, you know, like Google's or Apple's or whoever made the recipe
app,
you run the Mealy software yourself on your own computer or maybe a small server.
My own computer, like my laptop.
Yeah.
Or something else.
It could be.
It could be a desktop computer you have.
People often use small, cheap computers like a Raspberry Pi or maybe a mini PC.
Or you could rent a virtual server from a provider like our supporter, Safe Server
actually.
The main idea is you decide where it runs and where your recipes and data are
stored.
You're in charge.
Okay.
Got it.
So it's about control.
Keeping my recipes close, digitally speaking.
So once I have it running, what's its main job?
What's it designed to do?
Well, the sources make it clear its main purpose is managing your whole recipe
collection.
It doesn't matter if they're from websites, cookbooks, or your grandma's handwritten
notes.
And then helping you use that collection to plan your meals more easily.
It's meant to be your central kitchen hub.
Right.
A private digital cookbook I control.
Okay.
Racticalities.
The sources say it offers a pleasant user experience for the whole family and it's
intuitive
and easy to use.
What features actually make that happen?
What does it do that makes life easier in the kitchen?
Yeah.
That's where you see the design focus.
They've clearly thought about common frustrations.
One of the absolute biggest things they highlight is recipe imports.
Oh, like grabbing recipes straight from websites because typing those out manually
is, yes,
the worst.
Exactly.
The sources say you can easily add recipes into your database by providing the URL.
Mealy has this built-in tech like a scraper that understands how to read recipe
websites.
It just pulls out the important stuff automatically, ingredients, steps, serving
size, maybe even
the pictures.
Right.
So you can potentially add, like they say, thousands of recipes from around the web
super
quickly.
Find a recipe online, paste the link into Mealy, and bam, it's saved, formatted in
your library.
No more copy-pasting hell.
Okay.
That alone is huge.
Not having to retype everything.
Amazing.
But what about the really personal ones?
The recipe card from Aunt Carol or something from a physical cookbook?
Yep.
They thought of that too.
The sources say you can add a family recipe with the UI editor.
And it's not just like a plain text box.
It's structured.
Fields for ingredients, instructions, description, nutrition facts, all that stuff.
So you can make your own recipes look just as neat and organized as the imported
ones.
Everything's consistent.
Nice.
Okay.
So I've got my recipes in there, web ones, my own ones.
It's my digital cookbook.
What's next?
Meal planning, I guess.
Does Mealy help with that?
It does.
Yeah.
That's the logical next step, right?
Got the recipes.
Now what to cook.
Mealy has a specific meal planner feature.
You can basically drag and drop your recipes onto a calendar, plan out your week or
month,
whatever works for you.
It gives you that visual overview.
Okay.
And please tell me this connects to a shopping list somehow.
That's always the pain point.
It absolutely does.
That's one of the biggest practical wins.
You pick the meals you planned or just some recipes you want to make, and Mealy
will put
the necessary ingredients on your shopping list.
But here's the really cool part.
The sources mentioned in the list can be organized into sections of your local
supermarket.
Wait, what?
Organized by section?
Like all the dairy stuff together?
All the produce?
Exactly.
Think about how you shop.
You go down aisles, right?
A random list makes you zigzag all over.
Mealy grouping items by section produce, dairy, pantry, whatever section you set up
means
you can just walk through the store more efficiently.
No more getting to the checkout and realizing you forgot the flour way back on
aisle three.
It makes shopping way less stressful.
Okay.
That is brilliant.
Seriously, that solves a real problem.
Beyond recipes and planning and shopping, any other ways to organize things?
Yeah.
It uses a familiar idea.
You can group recipes into cookbooks.
So you can make collections like quick dinners, holiday baking, stuff the kids like,
whatever
categories make sense to you.
Just another way to keep things tidy.
And if my family wants in, like can my partner see the meal plan or add recipes?
Yep.
Built for that too.
The sources talk about adding users and creating groups so you can give everyone in
the family
their own login, let them see the recipes, check the meal plan, maybe add their own
favorites.
Makes it easy to share your recipes with the whole family, as they put it.
Or maybe share a specific cookbook with friends.
And when I open it up, what does it look like?
Just a big list.
Doesn't sound like it.
The sources mention beautiful recipe feeds when you log in.
Sounds like it shows you maybe your newest recipes or featured ones in a nice
visual
way.
Makes it more inviting.
Helps you decide what to cook.
Okay, so we talked about running this yourself, this self-hosting.
And the sources say it's user-friendly, but, you know, setting up server stuff can
sometimes
be tricky.
How does Melee make that setup part easier for someone who's not, like, a tech
wizard?
Right.
Do I need to be a systems administrator?
Not necessarily.
And they point to one key thing here.
Easy Docker deployment.
Let's try to explain Docker simply.
Think of software like a recipe, right?
It needs ingredients, code, libraries, and instructions configuration.
Installing it normally is like putting those ingredients directly on your kitchen
counter.
Sometimes they mix badly with other stuff already there.
Docker is like putting everything Melee needs, the code, the libraries, the
settings into
a standardized box, a container.
Like a Tupperware for software?
Kind of, yeah.
Self-contained unit.
You install Docker itself once, which is usually pretty straightforward.
Then you just tell Docker, hey, run this Melee container.
Because everything Melee needs is inside that container.
It runs reliably without messing with or being messed up by other software on your
system.
It hugely simplifies the setup.
Okay, the container idea helps.
It packages it all up neatly.
Are there other smart things happening behind the scenes that actually help me as
the user?
Yes, and this is where it feels quite modern.
They mention using machine learning technology.
Don't let that term scare you off.
For you, the user, it just means Melee is smart about understanding your recipes.
Machine learning for recipes, how does that help me make dinner?
It leads to some really practical stuff.
The ML is used to process and parse recipe ingredients.
So Melee doesn't just see one cup flour as text, it tries to understand.
Ingredient flour, amount one, unit cup.
Or 500 gram chicken breast, ingredient chicken breast, amount 500, unit is G.
This understanding helps you stay organized because the software knows more about
what's
in your recipes.
And that understanding powers those useful features we talked about, like recipe
scaling.
If Melee knows the amounts in units, it can help you adjust if you want to make
more or
less.
Recipe says two cloves garlic for four people, scale it to eight, and Melee might
suggest
four cloves garlic.
Ah.
Okay, so it's not just text, it actually understands the recipe structure a bit.
Exactly.
And that also makes the shopping list consolidation way better.
Because Melee gets that one pound chicken in one recipe and 500 gram chicken in
another
are both chicken, it can group them on your shopping list.
And out of two separate lines for chicken, it might put them together under meat
and
show you the total amount you need.
Maybe even converting units saves you scanning the list multiple times.
That is smart.
Scaling recipes, consolidating the shopping list intelligently, that feels like a
real
upgrade.
Okay, so I've got all my precious family recipes in there.
What about keeping it safe?
Backups.
Yep.
Crucial point for self-hosting.
The sources mention automatic backups to keep your data safe.
So even though you're running it, there are built-in ways to make sure you don't
accidentally
lose everything.
And I saw things like REST API backend and OpenAPI listed too.
Is that something a beginner needs to worry about?
No.
Not unless you want to get geeky.
The sources frame those for power users or third-party applications.
Just means the data isn't totally locked in.
If you were tech savvy, you could write scripts or connect other apps to Melee.
But just for using Melee day-to-day through the web interface, you never need to
touch
the API.
It's optional extra power.
Got it.
Good to know it's there, but not essential.
The sources also mention community and contribution stuff, common for open source
projects.
Right.
Melee is open source software AGPL license, specifically.
Means the code is public.
Anyone can see it, use it, change it.
People in the self-hosting world often like that transparency.
You're not relying on a company that might disappear or change direction.
And yeah, they mention a decent sized community, 183 contributors helping out.
183?
Wow.
That's quite a few people working on it.
What if someone wants to help but isn't a coder?
Can they still pitch in?
Totally.
The sources highlight translations as a big way.
They use a platform called Crowdin, and Melee already has translations for 35 plus
languages.
So if you speak another language, helping translate the interface is a super
valuable
contribution.
No coding needed.
And they also give a nod to sponsors who help fund the project's development.
That's great.
Good point about translating.
It really does sound community-driven.
Okay, let's pull this all together for the listener.
We've talked features, tech, community.
But why should you, listening right now, actually care about Melee?
What's the real relevance?
I think it boils down to bringing order and control to your kitchen life, really.
Think about how recipes get scattered, bookmarks, photos, notes.
Melee gives you one place for all of it.
Organized, searchable, it saves serious time with that web import feature.
It makes meal planning less of a chore with the calendar.
And that shopping list, organized by section, genuinely makes grocery trips easier.
Plus, there's that data control aspect.
Your recipes, your meal plans, they stay with you.
On hardware you control, it's not just floating around on some company server.
Right.
It's yours.
And despite the techie sound of self-hosted, the goal seems to be that user-friendly
interface
they keep mentioning.
Familiar, easy to use.
Exactly.
The tech stuff, the docker, the machine learning, it's all there to enable that
smooth, powerful
private experience in the kitchen.
Powerful underneath, but hopefully simple on the surface.
So it's about simplifying cooking and eating, really, while giving you ownership,
taking
the chaos and making it organized.
Yeah.
It's a tool for taking back control of that part of your digital life.
Okay.
So that was our deep dive into Mealy, the self-hosted recipe manager and meal
planner.
We saw how it helps grab recipes easily, keep them organized, plan meals, make
smarter shopping
lists, share with family, and importantly, keep it all under your control.
Powered by some neat tech-like ingredient parsing, made easier to set up with
things
like Docker.
Yeah.
It's a really interesting example of community-driven software tackling everyday
problems effectively.
And thinking about Mealy leads to a final thought for you to chew on.
We live in a world where so much personal stuff, our history, our habits, ends up
on
servers we don't own.
What are the real advantages, practical and maybe philosophical, of keeping
something
as personal and honestly culturally important as your family's recipes?
Your food heritage truly under your own digital roof?
It kind of pushes back against the idea that everything has to be in the cloud,
doesn't
it?
Well, thank you for joining us for this deep dive today.
We hope this gave you a clear idea about Mealy and if it might be right for you.
And maybe spark some ideas about organizing your own digital kitchen.
This deep dive was made possible with support from SafeServer.
For hosting solutions and digital transformation help, check out www.safeserver.de.
They can help make exploring self-hosted tools like Mealy a bit easier.
Until next time, keep exploring.