Before becoming a father three years ago, Jonathan Meal planning When it comes to cooking for himself and his wife, Farah, he has perfected the skills.
“I actually had a lot of time to do it pretty meticulously and effectively, but once I had kids; I don’t have time And it just became chaos,” the Melbourne father of two children, aged three and seven months, told Kidspot.
“My meal plans have been totally thrown off and I no longer have time to meal prep.”
Earlier this year, Jonathan and Farah, who both work full-time, decided to simplify their weekly chore list by ordering fruit and veg boxes delivered to their home from a company that sources produce that supermarkets would reject as defective.
So far, they have chosen Farmer’s Pick $50 [$33 USD] The couple box is 10kg [22 lbs] I chose fruits and vegetables but will be choosing $69 soon. [$45 USD] 15kg Family Box [33 lbs] All produce is selected by suppliers, not customers.
This shift has led the 39-year-old father to find an entirely new way to provide for his family using artificial intelligence AI, specifically ChatGPT.
“We started getting boxes with ingredients that I’m not very familiar with cooking, like kale and bok choy. Since I’d used GPT-4.0 for other dishes, I thought I’d try using it to suggest dishes using ingredients I had available that week,” he says.
Having an AI help me prepare dinner was a game changer
It may seem like a scary, technical task to do every week, but Jonathan, who has used AI for everything from supplementing his job as a high school science teacher to designing new crafts for young children, says the technology is incredibly easy to use.
“You just input the ingredients you want to use and the quantities, including what’s in your veggie box, and tell it which pantry staples and proteins you want to use, and it will give you some pretty good suggestions for dinners for the week,” he says.
“You can be as specific or vague as you want, but through trial and error, I’ve found that the more information you put in, the better the results.”
ChatGPT also offers egg- and nut-free meal suggestions to accommodate Jonathan’s oldest son’s allergies.
“We just add in those requests and things that we don’t like to eat, so we’re really catering to the needs and preferences of our customers,” he explains.
“When one meal had shrimp, I just said, ‘I don’t like Monday meals, just change it to something without shrimp.’ It worked really well. It always gives me ideas I’d never thought of before.”
The best part, he says, is that the entire process of creating a meal plan for a week’s worth of dinners takes just a few minutes and saves families money because there’s no waste.
“Previously I had to enter the vegetables manually, but now there’s a new feature that allows me to take a photo of the vegetables and it will create a dish based on them, which saves me even more time,” he praises.
“And that dinner is really worth it because Farrah and I often bring leftovers to work the next day.”
All chat history is saved (or can be deleted) so Jonathan can revert to a previous recipe if his family decides to eat something other than what ChatGPT suggested that day.
There’s no turning back
It’s safe to say Jonathan won’t be going back to a traditional eating plan anytime soon.
“It’s worked great for us and we’re going to continue to use it,” he says.
“It takes the mental strain out of coming home from work and thinking about what I’m going to make that night, and it doesn’t feel like a recipe with random ingredients thrown together. It feels like I’m cooking from a cookbook. It all works together. I don’t buy stuff I don’t need, and my ingredients last longer than if I bought them at the supermarket. It saves me time, too.”
