About Us

Welcome to RecipeShare!

As a self-taught home cook myself, I always thought the recipe apps that are currently available online and in mobile apps are often limited, clunky and often difficult to use. So I set out to create and design RecipeShare app based on what I need.

Along with cooking, I also love coding. But I was not born a coder. After so many grueling and oftentimes frustrating hours of learning to code, watching YouTube tutorials and reading StackOverflow message boards, finally I was able to launch this site.

This site is a result of my passion for cooking and sharing my love of food to everyone.

I wanted to create a site that is free, easy to use, and that lets everyone share their love of cooking.

My Frustrations with Cooking

I can still remember the times when I was trying to figure out if I should start saving recipes online, using an app or on a physical notebook.

My first attempt at collecting recipes was to buy books. However, books were expensive and take up a lot of space. I still have a vast collection of recipe books which I occasionally refer to for some inspiration, but what I always found frustrating was trying to remember which page that interesting recipe I saw the other day. How I wish books had a search functionality, not just the index or table of contents.

I still continue to buy and own lots of recipe books, but someday, I want to be able to store all of these recipes in this app for everyone to enjoy.

Why I Did Not Like Using Evernote for Recipes

And so I tried to look for electronic solutions to store my recipes. I tried to fiddle around with EverNote. They were free for a couple of years, and then when they started asking for money from me, I got disheartened and stopped using it. They had a search functionality, but it was not perfect. The user interface was not really designed for recipes.

Replacing Apple's Notes App with RecipeShare

As an iPhone user, I also tried to use the native Notes App. I still have several recipes saved on my phone for easy access. The problem is, my recipes get easily mixed with the other non-recipe related notes I have. Saving images was also not optimal as it would usually save the original image size which would take up so much space in my iCloud account. As with EverNote, Apple's notes app was not really made for collecting recipes.

Replacing Apple's Reminders App with RecipeShare

Aside from collecting recipes, I also use a groceries app to keep track of what ingredients I should be buying from the supermarket. Currently, I use the reminders app from Apple on my iPhone to keep track of this. I shared this list with my partner so both can just consolidate our lists and make it accessible to each other. This solution works, but it's just a bit too manual. If I'm making several dishes for a big party, it takes time to type each ingredient I need, then I also have to keep track of which ingredient was meant for which recipe.

Recipe App with Grocery List

RecipeShare allows users to update their grocery list directly from the recipe page. Simply click the grocery cart icon right beside the ingredient you want to add to your grocery list and voila, the item will be added to your list.

Recipe App with Shopping List

If you want to add multiple items to your shopping list, you can do so in two ways. First option is to go to a recipe and clicking the grocery cart item there. Second option is to go to your personalized Grocery List page, click on Show Other Items button, then simply click on or search for the item you would like to add.

I Always Forget Ingredients I Already Have in My Pantry!

Another problem I had was that I keep on forgetting what I already have in my pantry. I would end up buying another pack of bay leaves even if I still have a couple of packs of them in my cupboard. I also keep on forgetting to use certain perishable ingredients before they use by date. I end up wasting so much food because I forget about them and they become stale.

Trying to Look for the Best Recipe App

I tried downloading several recipes sharing apps like Paprika, Pestle, Whisk, Half Lemons, Tasty, Crouton, and so on, however I can't recall finding an app that makes it easy to search for new recipes and at the same time search for a specific ingredient within a recipe. I also didn't like the recipes or lack of recipes in these apps. A lot of these apps seems to have been developed a couple of decades ago. For most of them, their user interface looks old and uninspired. The owners, I thought, probably moved on to different projects.

And so, in my attempt to solve all my cooking abd recipe problems, I created RecipeShare.app.

So... What is RecipeShare.app?

With RecipeShare, you can:

• Save recipes from a lot of existing online resources - work in progress!
• Create your own recipes with procedures - work in progress!
• Modify recipes that you have created - work in progress!
• Add tags to group recipes by any classification - work in progress!
• Search by recipe title and by ingredients - done!
• Upload and share photos of what you have cooked - work in progress!
• Share recipes with friends using a link - work in progress!
• Create and update your own grocery list - work in progress!
• Track items or ingredients you have in your pantry - work in progress!

The Site is Still Being Updated...

Due to some issues with the performance of the original design of the site, I've had to re-design the strcuture of the site. I have therefore had to disable a lot of the functionalities while I search for better ways to implement them without slowing down the site. Anyway, I want to share the future plans for this site if I find that users are actually making use of the site:

• Weekly meal planner - done!
• Nutrition details per ingredient - pending!
• Food cost calculator - pending!
• Integration with online groceries for seamless food ordering and delivery - pending!
• And other ideas from community members - please share me your thoughts on the contact us page!

Final Thoughts..

So for anyone out there who is reading this, I would like to say a big THANK YOU to you for using this site and keeping me motivated to work on improving the site's functionalities. Please do get in touch with me through the Contact Us page for any comments, suggestions, requests, or any other things you want to share.

Happy Cooking!

JojoM