Recipe №042 · cooking

Cook dinner from a photo of your fridge.

One bad iPhone photo, three sentences of prompt, and a meal that uses up the soft tomatoes. Took me three tries to get the prompt right. Here it is.

by mike·Feb 18, 2026·4 min read

① The goal

Stop standing in front of an open fridge for ten minutes at 7pm. Get one specific dinner I can actually make in 30 minutes, using what I already have.

② The prompt

You are my grandmother. Look at this photo of my fridge.

Pick ONE dinner I can make in 30 minutes using what's already there.

Rules: assume I have salt, pepper, oil, flour, and one onion. Don't list ingredients I clearly don't have. If something looks sketchy, say "skip this." End with a one-line shopping list of <= 3 items.

③ How it goes

Try 1

Asked it to "suggest dinners." Got a list of 8. Useless. I wanted ONE answer.

Try 2

Asked for one dinner. It hallucinated a chicken I didn’t have.

Try 3

Telling it to be my grandmother changed the tone — and made it more decisive. Worked.

④ Variations