It all started with a donut

Looking back

It’s hard to believe how one little thing got me on this journey, but it’s the truth. A simple donut, or rather a donut recipe, sparked an idea that, I feel, will last for a lifetime. It’s these small incidents in life that have huge impacts and I’m happy to share my journey with the world and those interested.

Humble Beginnings

One day in October, my cousin and I decided to have a nice, relaxing day of baking. She likes to bake. I like to bake. So why not embrace the fall and Halloween spirit and bake related treats? Her daughter also wanted to make pink cupcakes, but that’s beside the point.

Together, we started looking through the internet for various recipes and decorating options. And let me tell you, there are a ton. 100’s of different recipes for cookies, cakes, donuts, and Halloween themed desserts. I’m actually getting a bit overwhelmed just thinking back. It took us hours to figure out which ones we wanted to do. There were many above our talents and some had ingredients we didn’t recognize. However, we eventually settled on four that seemed reasonable and fun to make (not including the pink cupcakes).

After we figured out what we wanted, it was up to me to make the grocery list. I’m still old-school in some regards, especially in this instance. Rather than make a list on my phone or pulling up the recipes while at the store, I hand wrote a list.

And let me just say, it was a long list.

The trip to the grocery store cost us more than we really wanted. Price of groceries had been up for a while and we didn’t think too much of that when we planned this day out. However, we figured it would be worth the pain to our wallets since we definitely needed a day to relax.

Disaster Struck

Back at home, we started to get to work. This was our element and we were having fun. The cupcakes went in first since they needed time to cool before icing. My cousin got started on the cutest Frankenstein s’mores, which needed time in the freezer. While the cupcakes baked, I got started on the thing I was looking forward to the most, apple cider donuts.

Now before I go on, I have to mention something. I’m not much of a donut fan. I find most of them too greasy and sweet to eat more than a bite of. The baked donuts are often too dry. All-in-all, not my favorite dessert. Therefore, I’m not really sure why this particular recipe caught my attention like it did. Maybe it was the promised apple cider? Still have no idea to this day.

Anyways, I pulled out all the ingredients I had written down for the recipe and went back to the website on my phone. That’s when it happened. The thing everyone dreads when they look at things online.

I got stuck behind a paywall.

This website wanted me to buy in and subscribe to wherever I was, just to see this dumb donut recipe. I would have felt better if they had punched me in the face, to be honest. Nothing irritates me faster than being able to read something online, then going back to it, only to see that I must pay now.

We tried everything to get back to that recipe. Clearing the browser cache, sending it to other computers and phones, I even tried to look at the actual source code of the webpage. Everything was hidden from view.

Looking at other recipes was not the same. Yes, they were generally the same, but they called for different ingredients that we didn’t want to go back and buy. We also weren’t (and still aren’t) creative enough to figure out other alternatives.

A “Simple” Solution

By now, you’ve probably realized that I’m somewhat of a nerd. I know a lot about computers and technology. I would honestly say it’s somewhat my job (because it actually is). I love keeping up with the latest trends and seeing how they may change our world in the future.

That’s why an idea popped into my head as we were struggling to figure out what to do with these ingredients we bought. I have been keeping track of AI trends for a while now. In fact, I’ve used it to help me write emails, abstracts, and small programs for my actual job. I knew what it was capable of and what it struggled with.

Therefore, I said “To hell with this, I’m asking AI to give me a recipe”.

Now, I love my cousin. She may as well be my sister. She’s put up with a lot of things with me and our family. Bless her heart though, she doesn’t understand technology. If you ask her, she will tell you how long it took her turn on her brand-new computer. That’s why I was pretty surprised when she said back, “May as well. It’s bound to have a better idea than us.”

So, pulling up the app on my phone, I typed the following prompt:

AI Prompt -> Give me a recipe for apple cider baked donuts that uses white cake mix

I can honestly say I was surprised at the recipe it provided. It literally explained how to make both the donuts and the topping. Of course, I had forgotten the other weird ingredient we bought to make these donuts, so I told it:

AI Prompt -> Do it again but add instant vanilla pudding

Once again, it provided a recipe, slightly altered from the earlier one, to include these two random ingredients into a recipe for baked apple cider donuts.

As I said before, I’m not a creative baker. I do what the recipe says to do, and I do not stray or experiment (much). When I tell you I followed this recipe to the letter, I mean it. When I also tell you that those were the BEST donuts I had ever had, I also mean it. Those donuts were so good that I had to hide them from myself so I didn’t eat all 18 that we had made.

We finished our baking day soon after that, burning an apple oat cookie in the process, and I went home. We were both still high off our donut success and I thought about it on the long drive. I thought of what other recipes it could possibly provide us based off various descriptions. I always have odd ingredients left over from these types of cooking sessions, so I thought it would be nice to have something to give me recipes, rather than search for hours on the internet.

“Natural” Progressions

Before I go further, I have to reveal something else about myself. I’m health-conscious (ish). I was very chubby when I was young (obese actually) and lost around 100lbs when I went to college. I did it by literally counting every calorie that went into my body and kept it at a strict 1200 calories a day. While I’m not as bad now (my family would probably say different), I still watch everything I eat and only allow myself a cheat day once in a while.

One of the hardest things about maintaining this strict calorie diet is the fact that almost everything is pre-processed. There is so much added sugar and sodium that buying it in a package is probably doing more harm than good. Unfortunately, I’m not smart enough to know this information. Research online is difficult. There are too many “experts” that you don’t know what’s true and what’s not. I always wanted to go to a nutritionist somewhere locally, but I was never able to find one that wasn’t specifically for diabetics.

Thus, I was stuck. I was eating bad things, but didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know what recipes were truly good and I didn’t know why the “bad” things I was eating were actually bad.

That’s when I had this grand idea; What if I turned to AI for help? It could tell me what to eat, when to eat it, and how much to eat. It could tell me what to do in terms of exercises and stretches. It could be my recipe guide, nutritionist, and fitness coach all wrapped into one.

It could be my life coach.

And that brings us today. The day before we actually begin to follow this crazy idea. I’ve got a couple of things to figure out beforehand such as how long I want to do this for, what my end goal is, and how to write a good enough prompt for this tool. But, I’m pretty excited to see how this will work. Will it be successful? Will it be a complete waste of time? Who knows! But I’m going to have fun doing it.