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With the recent kernel panic in my Raspberry Pi, I had to reinstall and setup the applications once again for my self hosted server. This, combined with a desire to simplify my life, has meant some changes to how to manage my recipes, and I’ll go through the changes in this short post.
Initial Setup
I go into more detail of my setup in previous posts, starting with this section on Mealie, this one on Nextcloud Cookbook, and an update here on moving from Nextcloud Cookbook to Tandoor.
However, the brief summary is that my setup was using Tandoor to quickly access my favourite recipes, and Mealie used to store various recipes that had caught my interest over the years, but not yet got round to actually cooking them. And I was planning for all this to continue following the reinstallation of these applications after my server died.
Tandoor
However, reinstalling Tandoor following the kernel panic was a disaster, and I could not get either my saved Docker Compose file working, nor any guide online working either. I was able to reinstall Mealie though, and I began to consider if I really wanted Mealie to keep hundreds of old recipes I had found throughout the years over the internet. Was I, instead, just using a search engine to find a recipe I wanted and ignoring this database?
Mealie
Yes, I was. So, with seeing little point of keeping it, and realising removing an application would also simplify my life, I decided to give up on Tandoor, wipe the Mealie database, and start again with importing just the select few recipes I had used, enjoyed and wanted to keep for future use.
And it was going well, I enjoyed using the Android companion application Mealient, and my Mealie installation was more responsive with less recipes. However, I tried to log in one day, and was told my password was wrong. I tried various old versions from my password manager, as well as the two default logins Mealie provides, and nothing worked.
Not a big deal, I have all the recipes backed up, and I manually saved the URLs again just in case, so I wiped the installation and reinstalled it from my saved Docker Compose file. But it didn’t work. I tried following a guide online and found it was incredibly difficult. I tried installing both V1 and V2, and neither worked.
Frustrated, I considered going back to Tandoor, but also struggled with its installation process for some unknown reason - I had installed both these applications before, why weren’t they working now?!
Alternatives
I began looking elsewhere, first considering Gourmand, with Tournant as a companion Android app. But then quickly realised it wouldn’t run on my Mac, as it is a Linux only application.
At this point, I was really just looking for something simple that worked, though was put off by the high costs of Paprika needing to be purchased for each operating system, and Mela, though working on my Mac, would not work on my Android device.
Trying and failing to get Mealie or Tandoor working yet again, I seriously considered dealing with the headache of installing Nextcloud solely for the purpose of its Cookbook application, and then stumbled across…
RecipeSage
Initially, I tried out the free hosted version of RecipeSage here to see if it was worth the hassle of trying to install it, and despite it not having a dedicated Android application (instead accessible on mobile devices as a Progressive Web Application), I found it really easy to use, lightweight, and easy to backup and restore.
Happy with what I saw, I looked into its self-hosted version, and was glad to see a Docker Compose file provided. To my amazement, although it took a while to deploy, RecipeSage worked first time perfectly on my Raspberry Pi! I was able to quickly set up an account, log in, and easily import the recipes backed up from the hosted version.
Fingers crossed nothing breaks now!
Tags: Setup Self Hosting Food