Our project, “No-Plan Pantry”, aims to minimize food waste and inspire creativity in the kitchen by developing a web-application which generates recipes based on user-inputted ingredients. Using web scraping, recipes are collected from allrecipes.com and cleaned to ensure data quality. Advanced machine learning models, such as GPT-2 and BERT, are further employed to generate AI-based recipes and predict cooking times using textual recipe instructions. The application integrates these features with a user-friendly interface developed using Dash.
Data cleaning plays a critical role in standardizing recipe information, such as unifying time units, extracting key ingredients, and estimating missing cooking times. This step ensures the dataset is well-structured for machine learning models, enabling accurate recipe recommendations and cooking time predictions. The app’s interactivity allows users to select ingredients, set time or calorie preferences, and view both AI-generated and sourced recipes in an organized layout.
Overall, the No-Plan Pantry project combines data science, natural language processing, and intuitive design to create an innovative tool that empowers users to cook creatively while reducing food waste.
First, please clone this resposity to your computer. You can do so by running the following code on your terminal.
git clone https://github.com/jade-y-liang/no-plan-pantry.git
Then run the following code on your terminal.
cd no-plan-pantry
python Web_Application/webapp.py
The terminal window will then display a message like "Dash is running on http://". You can simply copy and paste the link shown on your terminal window to visit the web page. After you're done with the web app, simply click ctrl+C on your terminal window to exit the web app.