I Let AI Decide What I'd Eat for 24 hours (YIKES)
October 2, 2024
I used Claude by Anthropic on my phone to design and tweak a soup recipe from photos of my fridge. Here’s how it works, what I learned, and practical tips to run this yourself.
Setup and what you need#
- A mobile device (iPhone or Android) for quick photo capture
- Claude by Anthropic (CLA) app
- A new chat thread for each fridge/coup combo you want to test
How it works (step-by-step)#
- Open CLA on your phone and start a new thread.
- Tap the camera icon and snap photos of your fridge, counters, and whatever you want to include.
- Ask for a recipe (e.g., “Come up with a hearty soup recipe based on these ingredients.”).
- CLA returns a recipe with ingredients, step-by-step instructions, and reasoning for substitutions.
- If you want changes, you can iterate: swap ingredients, adjust quantities, or add items, and CLA adapts.
- Ask for flavor tweaks (e.g., boosting umami, brightness) and CLA suggests specific steps.
- You can request a final version in Markdown so you can copy-paste or share easily.
Real-time customization examples#
- Substitutions
- Swap butterbeans for another legume
- Replace white onion with red onion if you have more of one
- Add broccoli if you want more veg or to use up produce
- Add beef for extra protein
- Flavor and texture tweaks
- Suggestions to brighten the dish
- Umami boosters and other enhancements
- When to add dairy (e.g., cream) for texture and flavor
- Iterative refinement
- You can re-run the recipe with new ingredients in mind
- CLA explains its reasoning for substitutions and adjustments
- Final output
- You can get a complete final recipe and instructions in Markdown for easy sharing
Output and sharing#
- The final recipe can be provided as Markdown text, ready to copy-paste to a friend or document
- Save the recipe for future use or share directly from the app
Other use cases beyond recipes#
- Learn how to use the CLA camera and app effectively
- Troubleshoot or analyze plants by photographing them and asking questions
- Use CLA for ongoing projects around the house or quick questions about what you can do next
Practical tips for getting the best results#
- Lighting matters: take clear, well-lit photos of ingredients and quantities
- Be explicit in prompts: “based on these ingredients, give me a soup recipe with X substitutions”
- Use iterative prompts: start with a basic recipe, then ask for substitutions and tweaks
- Capture a complete shot set: fridge items, pantry items, and any perishables you want included
- Export and share: take advantage of the Markdown output to quickly share with friends
Takeaways#
- Fast generation: from fridge photos to a full, customizable recipe without hunting through long articles
- Highly adaptable: you can swap ingredients on the fly and get updated guidance
- Portable workflow: work from mobile, save results, and share easily
- Beyond recipes: useful for learning camera use, diagnosing in-progress projects, and quick questions around the house
Limitations and caveats#
- Results depend on photo quality and the items CLA can recognize
- Substitutions and flavor tweaks are AI-guided—verify nutrition and taste expectations
- Not a replacement for comprehensive recipes or dietary constraints without double-checking
Links#
- Claude by Anthropic — official page: Claude setup and access
- Claude mobile app (iPhone/Android) — use to snap photos and build recipes from your fridge
If you found this approach useful, check out more of my technical and non-technical videos on the channel. Like and subscribe for more practical AI and productivity tips.
Transcript
[Music] what if I told you you never had to sift through a bunch of long recipe articles that are optimized for a robot to read them where they're telling you a story about their grandmother and these meatballs and all this stuff that you don't care about you only care about what's in your fridge what can you make tonight and you want it fast that's exactly what this video is about so stick to the end takes a couple minutes and you'll end up saving a whole lot of time and eat delicious food so we're here on my iPhone you can do this on Android as well or the desktop but since we're snapping photos you're going to want to do it on a phone and you'll download cla by anthropic and it's even on the front page and so all you're doing after that is you open up the app and you just can start chatting with it and so I would open this up and I'd click on this little camera icon and start snapping photos of my fridge and all the things that I have on the counter and I want to just walk you through what I did so I have this thread so this is everything about the recipe that I made and so you can see that I just came in and I said come up with a soup recipe and it's just literally photos of my fridge and it's not super detailed but I was kind of Blown Away CU it says Hey based on this I suggest a hearty bean and vegetable soup and it gives me this recipe of all the things based on what it saw as well as all the ingredients step by step and there's no ads there's nothing then I realized hey can I actually Swap this for butterbeans it says yes and here's some reasoning why gives you really all this information that actually just kind kind of cool to be able to know and talk about and then I said all right well yeah give me it again with that in mind with the new ingredients in mind and as I went along I realized actually can I substitute white onion for red cuz I had more of those and can I add broccoli cuz I had some broccoli that I wanted to get rid of and it just did it again and it's really really helpful even to the point where I said all right well can I actually add beef to this cuz I want some protein said sure and then added that and then I said is there anything else that I can to make it taste better and that was cuz honestly I was a little sketched out I wasn't sure if it was going to taste good or not and sure enough it adds all these things it says this is how you can brighten it here's what you could do to you know boost it with Umami I don't even know what that meant and then remember you don't have to add all these yada yada y I said it needs some more flavor cuz I was just skeptical but by the end of it it had given me all this awesome stuff and I asked could I add cream I ended up telling what I did and then saying hey can you actually give me the final recipe and the instructions as markdown so that's like text so I can copy and paste it to a friend and then sure enough it gave me that and now I have this that I can save for future use or I could send it off to a friend by just tapping there so 4:00 hits and you decide I need to make something really good but I'm not sure what yet so you just open up your claw eye you literally fling the fridge Open start snapping photos in a new thread same thing with your cupboard open that up take a couple photos that's it it's pretty amazing how easy it is and you can also think of a bunch of different things that cloud could be helpful for I just obviously went through the use case of recipes but I've also used this to learn how to use this camera also used it to learn what's going wrong with these plants you can literally take photos of a project that's going on in your house and ask questions so the limitations are pretty endless and if you found this video helpful I have a whole bunch of other ones on my channel for both Technical and non-technical folks make sure you check them out and if this was helpful then make sure you like the video it helps me out and subscribe for future videos thanks