It started with a steak.

It’s funny how the smallest things can lead to something much bigger.

I was out for dinner with my girlfriend when, before we ordered, I nipped to the loo and asked her to order me a well-done steak if the waiter came by. Horrified at my lack of culinary sophistication, she ordered it medium rare instead.

I didn't want to make a fuss, so I ate it. And discovered what I'd been missing.

On the way home, I said, “You know, there's no reason we shouldn't eat like that every night. I'm going to learn to cook.”

And so it began.

From carrots to code

As I got into cooking, Monday evenings became our time to plan the week's meals and write the shopping list. It worked well enough, but I soon grew tired of writing “carrots” on the list, only to discover we'd already bought some, or adding another tally because we needed more.

There had to be a better way. Being a bit of a data freak, I decided to build a database to keep track of it all.

In April 2004, I sat down to watch a film with my laptop on my knee and started building. By the end of the evening, I had the beginnings of a system that would become the backbone of Nutrition Magician.

I had no grand plans for it. I just wanted to make my own life easier.

Eating well shouldn't cost the earth

For years, I used it to plan our meals, organise the shopping and keep an eye on what we spent. The routine was simple: decide what we wanted to eat that week, put together the shopping list, tick off anything we already had in the cupboards, and buy only what we needed.

The result? We ate well, ate healthily and spent less. We wasted less food and stopped buying things we didn't need. Best of all, we could eat like kings without spending like them.

Over the years, I kept improving the system, adding features whenever I spotted another way to make life easier. What began as a personal solution gradually grew into something that I thought other people might find useful, too.

Because planning what to eat isn't really just about recipes. It's about making the whole thing work: deciding what to cook, feeding everyone at the table, knowing what to buy, using what you've already got and keeping track of the cost.

That's what Nutrition Magician is designed to do.

More than a recipe website

There are plenty of places to find recipes. Nutrition Magician is about what happens next.

Take a recipe, build it into a meal plan for the week, adjust it for however many people you're feeding, and turn it all into a shopping list organised by supermarket aisle. Tick off what's already in your cupboards, buy what you need, and keep track of what you actually spend.

It's the whole journey, from “What shall we eat this week?” to “How much did that cost?”

And it's for anyone who wants to make that journey a little easier. Busy families juggling meals and budgets. People who want to eat well without spending a fortune. Those who need to follow a particular diet for their health. And people like me, who simply love good food and enjoy a bit of organisation.

There's more to come

One of the things I've added along the way is the ability to save meal plans. If you've put together a week that works, there's no need to start from scratch next time. Save it, bring it back when you need it, and spend less time planning.

But the more I thought about this, the more I realised that saved meal plans could be useful well beyond my own kitchen. Health professionals could use them to help people manage diets required for their health. Personal trainers could plan meals with their clients. Food banks might be able to use them to help people make the most of the food available to them.

Those are just a few of the possibilities, and I'd love to see where they lead.

My main aim, though, remains the same as it was back in 2004: to help people eat well, spend less and waste less. But Nutrition Magician was never meant to stand still, and I have some exciting plans for its future.

Finally, making it happen

Nutrition Magician has been a passion project for a long time. I'm an amateur cook and a sometime data architect, and I've been using it to plan my own meals for years. Every so often, I'd tell myself that one day I'd get around to releasing it for other people to use.

Then life would get in the way, and it would stay on the to-do list.

Until now.

After all those years of building, tweaking and using it myself, I'm finally making Nutrition Magician available to others. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time, and I'm excited to see what people make of it — and how it might grow with their ideas, too.

So, thank you for being here and being part of the journey.