Hello Meal

One afternoon of cooking, a week of meals, in the chat you already have open.

Open in Telegram Use it in the browser

@hello_meal_bot · free, no account to create

Hello Meal is a Telegram bot for cooking in batches. You choose what you are going to eat, it tells you what is missing, it puts the recipes together into one cooking session with the steps in order and the timers running, and then it counts the portions in the fridge and the freezer until the last one is eaten.

Who it is for

The person who cooks on Sunday so as not to think about it until Friday, and the household they cook for. The one who spends the afternoon with four pots and no idea what to start first, who finds the second box of chili in the freezer in March, who forgot the rice on the shopping list. And the one who cooks in batches because they count their protein.

Three decisions it is built around

• A plan is a set of portions before it is a calendarYou start from what you cook on Sunday: chili for six, chicken and rice for four. Then the portions go on the days. A portion on no day is fine: it is a lunch nobody has decided yet.
• One session for all the recipes, with the timers in the chatSteps where your hands are busy run one at a time. Steps that do not need you, like the oven or a pot on the heat, run alongside. Before you start it shows how long it takes. A timer inside a page stops when the phone locks, so the bot sends a message with a sound when a timer ends, with a Done button.
• Portions, counted in the fridge and the freezer until they are eatenAt the end of a session you say how many go in the fridge and how many in the freezer. The evening before a meal, if its portions are in the freezer, the bot tells you to take them out. Eaten is one press.

The schedule is a suggestion and the timers are real. Nobody cooks on a clock: the next step starts when you press Done, and the plan is worked out again from there.

And the rest

• What is missingThe plan shows what the recipes need that you do not have, as a text you can copy.
• Recipes of your own, and some readyYou write a recipe one ingredient a line and one step a line, with a duration. About twenty recipes built for batch cooking come with the bot, in Italian and English. Scaling a recipe scales the ingredients and not the times.
• Calories and protein, as estimatesCalories, protein, carbohydrates and fat per portion, always marked "≈", with how many ingredients the number covers. An ingredient with no value is named, not guessed. The values come from what you type, from Open Food Facts for a product you confirmed, or from a table of common foods.

It works on its own

Hello Meal is the third of the kitchen. Hello List knows what you need to buy, Hello Pantry knows what you have, and Hello Meal is what you do with it. It does not need either: without them you still get the recipes, the plan, the session and the portions, and what is missing is a text to copy.

What the links add

Each link is something you ask for in Hello Meal, and the other bot then asks you to confirm. Nothing is shared without that, and either side can end it.

• Hello Pantry. Hello Meal reads what the home has and subtracts it from what the recipes need, so that the plan shows only what is missing. When a session ends, you see what is about to be taken from the pantry, first what expires first, and you can change every line before you confirm. The portions then become lots in the place you chose, with their expiry, and eating one in Hello Meal uses it up there. A button undoes it for a short while. This link is not available yet.
• Hello List. One press sends what is missing to a single list you chose once, each item with its amount written out, such as “500 g”. What is already on the list and not ticked is not added twice. This link is not available yet.

Links come after the first release, one at a time. The links are free.

Mini App and web app

The Mini App opens from the bot and is for the kitchen itself: big steps, what is running on its own, what comes next. A web app at hello-meal-app.gpm.name shows the same data in a plain browser, which is better for planning a week on a laptop. Neither exists without the bot. You sign in with Telegram only: inside Telegram through the Mini App, in a browser with the Telegram sign-in. There is no password, no email address and no other account.

What is free, and what Pro is

• FreeOne home, one active plan, 15 recipes of your own and the built-in ones, which do not count, the session with its timers, the links to Hello Pantry and Hello List once they are out, and calories and macros per portion. A real week of cooking.
• ProRecipes beyond the 15, sharing a home with other people (up to 10 members), up to 10 homes, the history of past plans, the totals of a day, daily goals for calories and protein, and export.

Everyone, free or Pro, has the same limits on the size of a thing: a recipe holds up to 60 ingredients and 40 steps, a recipe or a line of a plan up to 12 portions, and a plan up to 8 recipes.

It is paid in Telegram Stars, two ways: 150 Stars a month, a real subscription that renews itself and is cancelled from Telegram’s own settings, or 1500 Stars for a year, paid once, which does not renew: when it runs out you are back on the free plan.

Nothing is charged to a card and no payment details ever reach the bot. Stars is the only way Telegram allows digital goods to be paid for.

What it is not

• Not a diet. It gives no advice, sets no targets of its own and has no opinion about a number. The estimates are for someone who already knows what they want.
• Not a recipe site. No feed, no ratings, no photos of other people’s dinners.
• Not a generator. It does not invent recipes or choose what you eat.
• Not a pantry. It does not keep what is in the kitchen. The portions are the one thing it counts.
• Not a shopping list. Nobody ticks anything off here.
• Not a shop. It does not order groceries and does not know what anything costs.

When something is broken

Once it is open, the information section, in the bot and in the app, will let you report what does not work. What you send goes to apps-management, the service that answers for the apps in this family, with the version you were using attached. Hello Meal does not have your email address, so you get an answer only if you type an address into the report. The ideas other people have sent can be read there; you cannot propose or vote on them from Hello Meal.

Your data

There are no analytics, no advertising and no third party with a copy of what you write, beyond the lookups on Open Food Facts that you ask for. Export is a button for Pro, and deleting your data is a button for everybody. The privacy policy says exactly what is stored and who can see it.