Cooking in quarantine? Check out this Twilio recipe finder!

Austin Crim - Apr 8 '20 - - Dev Community

What I built

With a growing populace "sheltering in place" and restaurants closing their doors temporarily, the need for home cooking is on the rise and if you're anything like me, you are lacking inspiration. That is why I decided to help myself out with a recipe finder! Simply send a text to +1 (202) 952-8194 with a comma separated list of ingredients and receive delicious recipes. If only Twilio could cook the meals too...

Example Interaction

You can also send a number as the last parameter to specify how many recipes to bring back (e.g. Carrots, potatoes, 7). Keep in mind, each recipe will be a separate text message and contain an image.

How I built it

I wrote the project in NodeJS and it is currently hosted on Heroku. I utilized Twilio's programmable SMS API as well as the Spoonacular recipe API.

Here's the source code.
FYI, I'm currently working through an issue where Twilio is slow to post my message to my app. This causes intermittent delays in the recipe response. Thanks for understanding!

Let me know what you think in the comments!

. . . . . . . . . .