Orchid Recipe
My wife used a paid recipe app that only referenced URLs to recipes. It never actually stored them. When a website removed a page or went down entirely, the recipe was gone. We also meal plan every week by writing it down on paper, which made it hard to keep track of what we planned. I kept asking "what's for dinner?" and it was becoming a running joke that wasn't funny anymore.
So I designed and built our own app that actually pulls in and stores recipe data in Firebase so it's never lost, while still referencing the original URL. It also handles meal planning with a calendar view and an iPhone widget so either of us can check the plan at a glance.
Solving Two Problems at Once
Recipe Storage
When a food blog shuts down or restructures, your saved recipes vanish. Orchid Recipe pulls in the actual recipe data (ingredients, instructions, images) and stores it in Firebase. The original URL is always referenced, but you're never dependent on it staying live.
Cooking Mode Layout
Most recipe apps make you scroll through a wall of text while cooking. The cooking view splits ingredients and instructions side by side so you can scroll easily to see both. It only works on tablet and landscape mode on iPhone, but it makes a huge difference.
Design Exploration
I've explored a few different directions for the app's visual identity. One approach is clean and minimal, letting the food photography do the heavy lifting. Another adds paper-like textures to give it a more tactile, recipe-card feel. The calendar UI uses a purple accent with a horizontal month scroller and week-by-week day breakdown that makes scanning the week intuitive.
Designed in Figma, Built with AI
The entire app was designed in Figma and developed using Claude Code. Native Swift with full iPhone and iPad support. Firebase handles the backend: recipe storage, user data, and syncing across devices. The development cycle has been rapid: design a feature in Figma, describe it to Claude Code, iterate on the implementation, and push to TestFlight for real-world testing with my wife as the primary user.