About
My Story — Crafting Cooklang
During the pandemic, online grocery shopping revealed an unexpected frustration: without wandering through aisles, I either forgot essentials or ended up with a dozen items I didn't need. After juggling sticky-note meal plans that looked curiously repetitive, I thought: "It's time to automate this... and never re-solve it."
So I began writing recipes in plain text—tagging ingredients with @:
That simple markup—both human-friendly and machine-readable—became the heart of Cooklang.
Next came the power tools: a parser, then a CLI, that turn your .cook files into shopping lists, organized by department with one command:
Shopping became faster, cooking became smoother.
But it's not just about lists—it's about ownership and flexibility. Because Cooklang is just text, you can version control it, tweak it, and use it forever. There's no subscription, no lock-down. Your recipes are yours.
I practice what I preach—my own recipes live in a public GitHub repository, where anyone can see how I organize meals, automate shopping, and continuously refine my cooking workflow.
What started as developer convenience turned into something joyful—meal planning is no longer a chore, it's a creative act. Cooklang emerged from necessity, yes—but now fuels creativity and clarity in the kitchen.
Support Cooklang
☕ Like Cooklang? Buy me a coffee.
Cooklang is a labor of love that I maintain in my spare time. If it's helped make your cooking or shopping easier, you can support its development by buying me a coffee—it keeps the project running and fuels new ideas.
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— Alex