I think a fair bit about how generative AI can help our everydays. (I also think a lot about its challenges, but this post is not about that.) Here is a good example for how it can be useful with a complex meal prep situation for which Thanksgiving is the ultimate case (which I’m celebrating in Zurich this year having taken a day off work since of course it’s not a holiday here, but my cooking requires more than a few hours).

Assuming limited stove top, oven, and counterspace (a very fair assumption in the Zurich housing market), it is important to optimize the order of preparing the various dishes that require a complex mix of preparations. One example is needing to roast some garlic for 30 minutes as just one ingredient in this amazing mashed potatoes and yams dish that I have been making annually for 25 years (I seem to have blogged about it already 20 years ago).

So how can Gen AI help? Give it your list of recipes and ask it to optimize the process for you. I used Google’s NotebookLM for this as cooking optimization is something I want to keep long-term and I like having a separate saved notebook for it (handled well by some AI tools, but not so much Gemini, which is where I have a subscription). (As much as I like NotebookLM – as far as I can tell it requires a Google account – I do wish they would introduce folders.. available as browser add-ons, I know.) This should all work with your preferred Gen AI tool as well, or if it doesn’t then you may want to rethink your Gen AI choices. ;-)

My prompt was simple: [click to continue…]