Okay, so today I’m gonna yap about this little project I did, totally random, called “meals chef pants.” Don’t ask me about the name, it just kinda popped into my head and stuck.
Phase One: The “Oh, This Could Be Cool” Moment
It all started when I was staring into my fridge, like usual, wondering what to eat. I had a bunch of random ingredients, and instead of just making my usual sad sandwich, I thought, “Hey, what if I could input these ingredients into something, and it would tell me what I could make?” I know, groundbreaking stuff.
First things first, I needed to figure out how to store the ingredients. I decided on a simple list in a text file. Each line would be an ingredient. Boom, problem solved. I’m not trying to over-engineer this thing, ya know?
Phase Two: The Code Monster Awakens (Slightly)
Alright, time to write some code. I used Python, because, well, it’s easy. I started by creating a script that would read the ingredient list from the text file. Nothing fancy, just opened the file, read each line, and stuck it into a list. I even stripped the extra spaces, because I’m meticulous like that.
Next, I needed a way to find recipes. I figured I could just search the web. So, I used the `requests` library to make a search query on Google. My search query looked something like: `”recipe with [ingredient1] [ingredient2] [ingredient3]”`. You get the idea.
Then, I parsed the search results using `BeautifulSoup`. I grabbed the top few links and printed them out. That way, I could see if my search query was even working.
Phase Three: The “Chef” Part (Kind Of)
Okay, so now I had a list of ingredients and a bunch of search results. It was time to get “chef-y.” I decided to create a function that would take the ingredient list and generate different search queries. For example, it could try searching with all the ingredients, then with only the top three, then with pairs of ingredients. The goal was to increase the chances of finding something useful.
I added some logic to filter the search results based on keywords like “recipe,” “cook,” and “easy.” This helped to weed out the junk results. I also added a little timer, so I didn’t accidentally DOS Google. Gotta be respectful.
Phase Four: The “Pants” Part (Weird, I Know)
So, the “pants” part of the project was totally random. While I was working on the code, I kept thinking about how much I hated wearing tight pants while cooking. I wanted to be comfortable! So, I decided to add a feature that would also search for “comfortable cooking pants” on Amazon. Just for kicks. It was a completely separate search, and it had nothing to do with the ingredients.
Phase Five: The Grand Finale (It Works…Sort Of)
After a few hours of coding and debugging, I finally had something that worked. I could input my ingredients, and it would give me a list of potential recipes and links to buy comfy pants. Not bad for a random afternoon project.
- What I Learned: Web scraping is fun, but also kinda messy. Google doesn’t always give you the best results.
- What I’d Do Differently: Use a proper recipe API instead of scraping Google. Maybe add a database to store my favorite recipes. And definitely rename the project.
So, there you have it. My “meals chef pants” project. It’s silly, it’s random, but it was a fun little coding adventure.
