For the person who feeds a household
Plan the week, shop what you’re missing, cook with it open, and see what everyone ate and what it all came to.
Other apps do one of these: a planner plans, a budget app counts receipts, a tracker logs one person. Spoon & Ledger keeps the recipe, the plan, the pantry, the receipt and the plate as one record, so each part knows about the others. That’s how it can say what Tuesday’s dinner cost, what the chicken that went off had cost you, and what each person ate from the same pan.
Free while in beta. In the browser, on the home screen, and as an iPhone app for testers.
Four things no other app does
What dinner cost, from your own receipts
$5.43
a serving of tonight’s salmon, on its meal sheet
needs the recipe and what you actually paid
A receipt that stocks the pantry
45 of 45
pantry items priced from the household’s own 14 receipts. Photograph it or paste the order email: every line matched, priced per 100 g, and put on the shelf in the units you bought
needs the receipt reader and the pantry in one record
What was tossed, in dollars
$17.97
tossed over 12 weeks, 2% of what was shopped, at what each thing cost to buy or make
needs the shelf, the receipt and what you cooked
One pot, three plates
1¼ · 1 · ½
Alex, Jordan and Riley, each against their own targets
needs the cooking and each person’s tracking
From the demo household you can open right now: three people, three weeks of cooking. Where a receipt could say, nothing is estimated; where it could not, the app says so.
One record
A recipe line, a pantry shelf, a receipt line and a logged meal all point at the same garlic, and every amount that can be weighed is kept in grams: nutrition per 100 g, prices in cents per 100 g from your own receipts. That is what lets the app do arithmetic where the others match strings — and why the pantry needs no upkeep: the receipt fills it, cooking draws it down.
The app, working
Recorded from the demo household at a phone’s size, doing the real thing.
Sunday, twenty minutes
Five dinners go on the week. Each is priced from your last receipts and added up against the $150 budget, and the list writes itself — minus what is already on the shelf, so the onions you have are not bought twice. Where another store has had something cheaper lately, the line says so. And it says which lines it can actually price, rather than inventing the rest.
$23.07 for this week’s list · every item priced · budget $150
The chicken nobody got to
A portion of Thursday’s sheet-pan chicken sat in the fridge until it was past. Tossing it records $4.44, what that serving cost to make, from the receipts that bought it. The Tossed tile adds it up and names what made it: cherry tomatoes first. A family of four throws away about $2,900 of food a year. This is the app that tells you yours.
Tossing it: $4.44 · the Tossed tile, 12 weeks: $17.97 → $22.41 (2% → 3% of what was shopped)
Wednesday’s sheet-pan chicken for the table
Alex eats 1¼ portions and is cutting slowly. Jordan eats 1 and maintains. Riley is eight and eats half. One “Cooked it” logs three plates against three targets, takes the chicken thighs and the potatoes out of the pantry, and puts what is left in the fridge with a date. Nobody opened a calorie app; nobody typed “chicken” three times.
AL ×1¼ · JO · RI ×½, each against their own targets
The receipt is the inventory
Paste the order email or photograph the paper receipt. Every line is matched to an ingredient and priced per 100 g, and the pantry restocks in the units you bought — 2.1 lb of thighs, a dozen eggs — with use-by dates from where they go. There is no “log every time you open the fridge”: cooking draws the shelf down, the next receipt fills it back up, and the app says which items it is only estimating.
45 of 45 pantry items priced, from 14 receipts
More moments
Cook once, eat three times
A pot of chili makes eight: three on the table, the rest in the fridge and freezer, each with a date and a serving count, and “Plan” beside it to drop it on a night.
Makes 8 · 2¼ fridge · 3 freezer
Five o’clock, nothing planned
“Cook tonight” ranks what the shelves can make by what needs using first, names anything missing, and plans it in one tap. The salad goes on because the cucumber has a day left, not because it was next in a list.
Ready · all in the pantry
The budget, and where it went
Twelve weeks of planned against shopped against the budget line, week by week, with tossed beside it. The week that ran over sits right beside what was planned for it: the conversation a budget app’s “Groceries” line can’t start.
$701.96 planned · $870.25 shopped · $17.97 tossed, over 12 weeks
The takeout question
Friday is pizza and nobody pretends otherwise. A bought meal goes on the plan at what it cost and what it carried, beside the salmon at $5.43 a serving. Not a lecture; a ledger. The comparison is yours to draw.
$14.50 a serving bought · $5.43 cooked
Where it sits
Every kind of app touches one part of feeding a household, and each is built so it cannot see the others’ part. Said by family, not by name. Where a family does it in part, the table says some.
| Spoon & Ledger | Meal planners | Budget apps | Calorie trackers | Pantry apps | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| …what this week’s dinners will cost, before you shop | ✓ | some | — | — | — |
| …what is already on the shelf, so the list skips it | ✓ | some | — | — | some |
| …what Tuesday’s dinner cost, from your own receipts | ✓ | — | — | — | — |
| …what the chicken that went off had cost you | ✓ | — | — | — | — |
| …what each person ate from the same pot, against their own targets | ✓ | — | — | some | — |
| …which store has had it cheaper lately | ✓ | — | some | — | — |
| …what to cook tonight from what is there | ✓ | some | — | — | some |
| …what you spent this month, by receipt | ✓ | — | ✓ | — | — |
| …what is for dinner, with the list written | ✓ | ✓ | — | some | some |
What they do better: the planners’ recipe catalogues and list polish, the budget apps’ retailer price feeds, the trackers’ twenty-million-food databases, the pantry apps’ barcode hit-rate. This app’s prices come from your own receipts — better after four of them, and honest about being empty before.
How it behaves
It does not make things up.
A price it doesn’t know is counted as missing, item by item, and an estimate is always marked as one. There is no national average standing in for your receipt.
Nothing happens without you.
Suggestions are proposals: nothing is planned, moved or bought until you accept it, and a no is remembered. Pictures it reads fill a form for you to check.
Your data is your household’s.
Each household has a database of its own. Nothing you enter is analysed for any purpose but showing it back to you, and outside services are sent only what their one job needs.
It says where it is rough.
The roadmap lists what is not finished, because someone who hits an edge unwarned stops trusting the rest.
One household
Everyone shares the plan, the pantry and the list. Each person has their own portion size and their own targets, so a dinner for three is scaled once and counted three ways. Every phone remembers who is holding it, and only the people who choose to track are counted — the trackers make each of them open a separate account.
Alex · 1¼ portions
2,500 kcal · 160 g protein · cutting slowly
Jordan · 1 portion
1,900 kcal · 120 g protein · maintaining
Riley · ½ portion
1,400 kcal · 50 g protein · eight years old
Every day
Made for a kitchen and a store
Every control is sized for a finger. Cooking mode puts big steps at the stove, with timers taken from the text and amounts rescaled to the pot you are making.
Works without a signal
Log a meal in a basement or on a walk; it is kept on the phone and sent when you are back. The pages you use open with no connection at all.
Reads pictures and hears you; you check
A shelf, a recipe page, a paper receipt, a nutrition label, a plate, or what you say at the stove: each fills a form for you to look over, and nothing is saved until you have. On your own household; the public demo has it switched off.
The demo is open: plan a night, cook it, toss something, read the numbers. Testers get a household of their own, shared with whoever they cook for, and a say in what gets built next.