Welcome to The Deep Dive, the show where we plunge into a stack of sources to
really pull
out the knowledge nuggets that matter, helping you cut through all the noise.
Before we get going, a massive thank you to our supporter, Safe Server.
They handle hosting for software, like the kind we'll be talking about today, and
they're
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OK, let's dive in. Today we are tackling something, well, I think pretty universal
for anyone
who likes cooking.
Or even just eating, really.
It's managing that constantly growing pile of digital recipes.
Oh yeah, we've all got them, haven't we?
Saved links that vanish, screenshots buried somewhere, notes you can't quite
decipher.
It really is a digital recipe jungle out there, bookmarks leading to nowhere, PDFs
lost in
some random folder.
I definitely have that ingredient swap, I wrote on a napkin somewhere, it can be
total
chaos.
Exactly.
And to try and make some sense of it all, we've been digging into the sources
around
this application called Tandor Recipes.
We've looked at its GitHub repository that gives you a look under the hood, you
know,
the tech and the community side.
And we've also looked at the official website, which is sort of how they present it
to the
world.
Yeah, and our mission for this deep dive really is to unpack these sources and give
you a
clear kind of beginner-friendly picture.
Like what is Tandor Recipes?
Why would you use it?
And probably most importantly, what can it actually do for someone who feels like
they're
drowning in recipe links?
Okay, let's start right at the beginning then.
When you first look at Tandor Recipes, what did the sources tell us it's
fundamentally
designed to be?
Well, based on everything we've seen, Tandor Recipes is, at its heart, an
application specifically
built for managing your recipes.
Its core purpose, like what the developers in the documentation really hammer home,
is
giving you a single, structured place to store, organize, and importantly, actually
use all
those digital recipes you've saved or even created yourself.
Right, like building your own personal, perfectly organized digital cookbook.
Exactly that.
Okay, so it's a central spot.
Makes sense.
But why bother, right?
I mean, what specific problems are the sources saying Tandor is really trying to
solve for
people like us in the kitchen?
Ah, yeah, this is where the sources really hit on those common frustrations.
They talk about digging through old handwritten notes or maybe hefty physical cookbooks
or,
and this is a big one, scrolling endlessly through those websites just packed with
ads.
The ad-packed blogs.
You spend five minutes just trying to find the actual recipe text sometimes.
Tell me about it.
Or, you know, losing the links to recipes you really liked or maybe you have a
digital
collection but it's such a mess you can't actually search it properly.
Yeah, that sounds familiar.
So the sources basically position Tandor as the solution to that digital mess.
The website Copy actually says its goal is to revolutionize how you keep recipes,
moving
you away from that scattered, unreliable approach we all fall into.
Okay, revolutionizing sounds good.
So for someone who just wants to get organized, maybe isn't super technical, what
are the
key sort of basic features that help them do that?
What do the sources highlight first?
Right, so the sources lay out some really foundational features for everyday users.
First up, obviously, you need somewhere to put the recipes, that's recipe
management.
Tandor gives you a structured way to store them online.
It uses a pretty powerful editor, so it's not just dumping text in.
You can properly add ingredients, steps, cooking times, that sort of thing.
So you're building a real database, not just a text file.
Exactly.
Building a proper database.
Got it.
So you're building in one place, structured, okay, but once it's in there, the next
big
hurdle is finding it again, right?
Yeah.
Especially if you have a lot.
Definitely.
And that's the second core feature they talk about, finding recipes.
Tandor lets you search your whole collection easily.
And what the sources really emphasize here, as a key benefit, is searching not just
by
the recipe name, but also by the ingredients you already have on hand.
Oh, okay, that's interesting.
The classic, what can I make with this random assortment of things in my fridge
right now?
Question, that feels like a really practical thing for the sources to highlight.
It's huge, right?
It basically turns your pantry into like a search filter.
Yeah.
And they also make it clear that this works wherever you are and on every device.
So desktop, phone in the kitchen, wherever.
Okay, finding recipes based on what I have.
Very cool.
But then you need to turn recipes into actual food.
That usually means shopping lists and maybe some planning.
Does it help there?
Yep.
The sources cover that too.
There's solid features for shopping lists and meal planning.
For shopping lists, you can automatically create one from a recipe or even for
multiple
recipes if you've planned out some meals.
Plus you can add your own random items too.
Okay.
Standard shopping list stuff.
Well, yeah.
But what really jumped out from the sources is that the lists can be automatically
sorted.
And they specifically mentioned sorting based on like your typical supermarket
layout, which
is actually quite clever for making the shopping trip faster.
Wait, sorted by supermarket aisle?
Okay.
So if you want to get a meal from the sources, that's genuinely useful.
That's practical convenience and meal planning.
What about that?
Yeah.
Meal planning.
It lets you schedule out your meals, days, weeks, whatever you need.
You can drag and drop recipes onto a calendar view manually, or the sources
mentioned there
are even automatic ways to help fill it out.
Okay.
And just like with the recipes, you can generate a shopping list directly from your
meal plan
or even export the whole plan to your regular calendar app.
So it helps you go from recipe chaos to like a planned week with an automatically
sorted
shopping list.
That's tackling several pain points at once.
Exactly.
And you know, for a lot of people, cooking isn't just something you do alone.
So the sources also really emphasize sharing and collaboration.
You can share specific recipes with friends or, and this seems quite unique, you
can actually
invite people into your personal cookbook space.
Oh, interesting.
Like a shared family cookbook.
Kind of.
Yeah.
So you can control who sees what.
You can even mark some recipes a secret.
Just for you.
The philosophy behind it, according to the sources, seems to be that cooking and
managing
recipes can and maybe should be more cooperative.
Bringing the whole team into the digital kitchen, huh?
Okay, those essentials already sound like a huge step up from, you know, sticky
notes
and broken links.
But the sources also talked about more advanced stuff, right?
Others for maybe power users or people who just want more fine-grained control.
They definitely do.
The sources list quite a few extra capabilities that add real depth.
A big one is importing.
They specifically call out having a URL importer that can apparently grab recipes
from thousands
of websites.
Oh, so you don't always have to type everything out again.
Right.
That saves a ton of time.
And they also mention importing from many other recipe managers.
That's pretty key if you're migrating, say, from another app you've been using.
The supported formats are apparently listed in their documentation.
Okay.
So getting recipes in, whether from a website or another tool, sounds like it's
pretty
well covered.
You mentioned search earlier.
Does it get fancier than just searching my ingredients?
It does.
Yeah.
The sources describe the search as being powerful and customizable.
It does full text search, obviously, but it also mentions more advanced things like
trigram
similarity, which basically helps find stuff even if you have typos or slight
variations
in names.
So it's smart search, essentially.
Yeah.
The takeaway is it's built to be really good at digging out exactly what you need,
even
as your collection grows.
That's good to know for when you have hundreds or thousands of recipes and keeping
all that
consistent ingredients spelled slightly differently, things like that.
Any tools for tidying up?
Yes.
The sources detail various organization tools.
You can use tags a lot and even assign them in badges using filters, which is handy.
And crucially, they mention tools to quickly merge or rename things like
ingredients, tags,
or units if you end up with duplicates or inconsistencies.
Like if you accidentally added tomato and tomatoes as separate things.
Exactly that.
It helps keep your data clean, which is important for things like calculations.
Right.
Calculations.
You mentioned that.
What kind of calculations can it do?
Does it help with nutrition or cost?
This is another really powerful feature the source has mentioned, calculations.
Tandor apparently has the capability built in to automatically calculate things
based
on the ingredients in a recipe.
The examples given are things like nutritional values, prices, diet points, or
anything else.
You need to input the base data for your ingredients obviously, but the engine is
there to do the
number crunching for you once it's set up.
Automatic nutritional info.
Okay, that shows some serious depth.
What about just basic recipe stuff like fractions, you know, half a cup, quarter
teaspoon?
Yep.
Sources explicitly say it supports fractions or decimals, which is pretty essential,
right,
for recipes to display properly and scale correctly.
Absolutely.
Good.
The details are covered.
And for folks who like their own backups or using things like Dropbox, any file syncing?
Yes.
The sources note file sync support with services like Dropbox and Nextcloud, so you
can integrate
it with your existing file storage setup.
And can you make it look nice?
Optimize the appearance?
Uh-huh.
Theming is mentioned.
So you can tweak the interface to match your style.
And beyond those specifics, the sources also list a bunch of other things that just
make
it feel like a polished app, you know.
It's optimized for mobile, supports multiple languages through community localization.
It can scale recipes up or down for different serving sizes.
It compresses images to save space and load faster.
And it has clean printing views.
Okay.
Wow.
It really sounds like they've tried to think of, well, pretty much everything from
simple
organization to advanced data stuff and just making it easy to use.
So someone listening is probably thinking, okay, this sounds pretty good.
How do I actually get it?
The sources explain that, right?
They do.
And there are basically two main paths laid out.
The first one is self-hosting.
This is the more technical route where you take the software and run it yourself on
your
own server, maybe a home server or a cloud instance you control.
Okay.
And the sources really emphasize this point.
The core Tandor software is completely open source and always will be.
Right.
So self-hosting is for the tinkers, people comfortable with managing software who
want
total control over their data and setup.
What kind of setups do they mention?
They list several common ones, Docker, Unraid, Synology, Kubernetes.
So standard deployment options for people in that space.
It gives you the maximum flexibility and ownership basically.
Got it.
So people who here manage your own server and immediately think, nope, not for me,
what's
the other option?
That's the hosted version.
This is offered directly by the Tandor developers themselves.
It's much simpler basically, a ready-to-go service.
They handle all the technical stuff.
You just sign up and use it.
Okay.
Like a sauce model.
And they have different levels.
Yeah.
They offer a free plan, which seems designed just for trying it out, no strings
attached.
It supports one user and up to 10 recipes.
And they have paid plans, basic, standard, and premium.
And what's the main difference between those paid plans, according to the sources?
The big things are unlimited recipes on all paid plans, but the number of members
or users
increases one on basic, three on standard, ten on premium.
And the standard and premium plans also come with storage space for uploading
recipe-related
files like maybe a PDF cookbook or photos, which the free and basic plans don't
have.
How much storage?
The sources say two GB on standard and five GB on premium.
Okay.
And did the sources mention anything about special pricing for those hosted plans?
Yes, actually.
Their website lists specific pricing, and they mention it's permanently discounted.
So it seems like if you decide the host route is easier and you need more than the
free
plan offers, the paid options are presented as an accessible way to get those extra
features
and support the project.
Right.
Makes sense.
So whether you're techie and want control, or just want a service that works.
Now the sources also mention supporting the project because it is open source,
developed
by volunteers mostly.
How does that work?
Yeah, the sources explain it's mainly volunteers working in their free time because
they're
passionate about it, but they also want to make it sustainable.
So one way is supporting developers directly through GitHub sponsors.
Okay.
They also have hosting referral links.
They specifically mentioned Hetzner.
If you sign up through their link, you get some starting credit and the project
gets
a small kickback.
And importantly, using the paid hosted version is presented as a direct way to fund
development.
The profits from that service go back into improving the open source software for
everyone.
That's a really interesting loop, isn't it?
Paying for the convenience of the hosted service directly helps fund the
development of the
free self-hosted version.
What about getting involved in the community beyond money?
The sources point to a few things there.
There's a public Discord server.
Apparently, the developers hang out there.
You can chat with other users.
They have a Twitter account for news.
And naturally, being open source, they welcome code contributions, although they
ask people
to read their contribution guidelines first, which is standard.
And you can also give feedback through a Google survey that's linked on their site.
So it definitely sounds like an open project with lots of ways to connect.
Let's touch briefly on the licensing.
The sources mentioned it.
It sounds potentially complicated, but how do they explain their approach and
philosophy
behind it?
Simply.
Okay.
So they state that as of a specific version, 0.1, 0.0, the software uses the GNU AGPL
v3
license, but with something called a common clause selling exception.
Now, the why behind this, as the sources explain it, is really key.
They say this software and all its features are and will always be free for
everyone to
use and enjoy.
Always be free.
That's a pretty strong commitment.
So the hosted version, the paid one, fits in because of that selling exception
clause.
Exactly.
The sources clarify that this exception is what allows them to offer the hosted
version
as a commercial service.
And the money they made from that service then lets the core developers spend more
time
actually improving the software for everyone, including all the people who self-host
the
free version.
It's basically their model for keeping the open source side alive and kicking.
Okay.
So it's about sustainability for the free version.
Precisely.
They do acknowledge, according to the sources, that there are some ongoing legal
discussions
around this specific licensing approach.
They actually point people to a specific GitHub issue, issue 238, if you really
want to dive
into the nitty gritty details and their reasoning.
Okay.
Good to know there's a place for the deep dive on the legal side if people are
interested.
But the core philosophy seems clear.
Make the software free and open, use an optional PED service to fund that
development.
It's a model you see more and more in open source.
Yeah.
And what feels quite transparent here, based on the sources, is how explicitly they
connect
the success of that paid service back to their promise of keeping the software
itself free
and available for the community.
Okay.
Well, we have covered a ton of ground today, from just the basic idea of managing
recipes
all the way through Tandor's features, how you get it, how you can support it, and
the
sort of thinking behind it all.
Yeah, I mean, based on these sources, Tandor Recipes really positions itself as a,
well,
a very comprehensive and flexible answer to that digital recipe mess we talked
about.
Whether you're just starting out and want something simple, or you're looking for
really
advanced features and total control.
And you know, this whole deep dive into organizing our digital recipes, it kind of
mirrors that
bigger challenge so many of us face, right?
It's just organizing all the information flying at us these days.
Just like Tandoor aims to help structure your cooking knowledge, hopefully this
deep dive
helps structure your understanding of Tandoor itself based on these different
sources.
It really does raise an interesting final thought, drawing from these sources.
In this world, just saturated with digital stuff, what do you actually value most
when
it comes to managing your own personal knowledge?
Is it the speed of quick access?
Is it the ability to go deep into structured detail?
Or is it maybe the power to share and collaborate with others on that knowledge?
Hmm, definitely something to chew on as you navigate your own information streams.
And once again, a big thank you to SafeServer for supporting this deep dive.
They help with software hosting and navigating your digital transformation.
You can find out more at www.safeserver.de.
Until the next deep dive.