info/index.md


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What is this!?
==============

Mat is a small recipe management, food planning & lunch box inventory system.
It is likely of very low interest to others than me, given that it is merely
hacked up to meet my personal needs. No attempts at all have been made at
making it useful to anyone else but me. Yet, for the truely curious souls, the
source code can be found at
[http://git.netizen.se/mat/](http://git.netizen.se/mat/).

How do I use it?
----------------

### Planning
At the core of it all is a recipe database with ingredient lists, references to
full cooking descriptions and a growing list of cooking comments. Of course
more recipes make their way into the database over time and as the documented
knowledge and experience increases, the data becomes more useful. Keeping this
information at one place have made it easier for me to plan my meals, while at
the same time raising the quality of them and making eating more interesting.
Illustrated by an example, execution of a typical command looks like the
screenshot below:

![searchrecipes](searchrecipes.png)

A meal preparation plan in its simplest possible meaningful form contains only
one recipe. Illustrated by the picture below.

![cooking queue](cooking_queue.png)

### Shopping
Generating shopping lists is a trivial, but quite useful, functionality to use
after having planned what to cook. Occasionally I look at these lists in my
phone while grocery shopping, but most times I print them to be able to easily
make additions and conveniently tick items off it while at the store.

![shopping list on screen](shopping_list_screen.png)
![shopping list on paper](shopping_list_paper.png)

### Cooking
Lacking a futuristic humanoid kitchen robot, cooking is unfortunately mainly a
manual process. I believe having access to recipe information with my comments
from previous attempts at the dish, has at least prevented me from making a few
errors.

![ingredients ready](ingredients_ready.png)
![ingredients chopped](ingredients_chopped.png)
![soup making](soup_making.png)

### Measuring
"Messen ist Wissen."

![semi manual](semi-manual.png)

### Storing
The prepared food is frozed in meal sized portions. Every lunch box is labeled
with essential information in human readable form, as well as a machine
readable code to make it possible to track it and to keep an inventory.

![prepped lunchboxes](prepped_lunchboxes.png)