Enter the outlaw
Back in prehistoric times, I wrote a fantasy about Meal Bandit, a web site that would let you post your dinners and see what other people are having for dinner. I even flirted with actual writing it.
Reader JR Tipton took the idea much more seriously than I did, and I’m pleased to report that the site—his version is called Meal Outlaw—is now a reality. And it’s awesome. Here are some things you can do:
- Add meals to a calendar view (it doesn’t say this, but you can simply click on the blank area of a day on the calendar and type your meal right on it) and drag them around to different days if necessary. Here’s my calendar.
- Tag your meals (“italian, pasta, pancetta”) and see other people’s meals with a particular tag.
- Give your meals a star rating so you can look back and remember whether you really liked a particular recipe.
- Post comments on other people’s meals.
- Add photos.
- Get an RSS feed of somebody else’s meals, to add to your RSS reader or to an online calendar such as 30 Boxes.
- See what people are eating in your area, based on your zip code. (Canada coming soon.)
- Log in with your Facebook account, if you have one.
- Use it to plan upcoming meals or report on meals you’ve already had.
- Create a badge to put on your blog—mine, over there on the right, now comes from Meal Outlaw, not 30 Boxes.
The more people who use Meal Outlaw, the cooler it will get. Please give it a try, and email JR with bug reports or feature requests. I’ve sent him about a hundred of these and he always responds promptly. Have fun and please post a link to your calendar below if you feel like sharing.
Comment by Jon
Meal Outlaw is still completely unusable on Firefox/Camino on the Mac. I reported this to him back in September. It looks like this.
Posted on November 12, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Comment by heather
hey, that’s funny…that’s how all the culinate columns look on my crappy 7 year old dell. i have to wait until my husband comes home with the mac to read ‘em. finally, SOMETHING isn’t better for mac people! ha HA! :)
Posted on November 12, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Comment by mamster
Jon, you have a weird extension installed or a font issue or something—Firefox on the Mac is my main browser, and I just tried it on Camino and it was also fine. On two different Macs. (Firefox 2.0, Camino 1.5, OS X 10.4.10.)
Posted on November 12, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Comment by Jon
Well, it’s not an extension, because Camino doesn’t support Firefox extensions. If it’s a font issue, then I’d expect I’d be seeing it on more sites. So I dunno.
Posted on November 12, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Comment by JR
Sorry Jon, I haven’t been able to reproduce it myself.
Does http://mealoutlaw.com/playgroundnomaster.aspx work for you?
Posted on November 12, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Comment by JR
Oops, that link should be mealoutlaw.com/playground [underscore] no [underscore] master.aspx
Posted on November 12, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Comment by Jon
JR, yep, that page works just fine.
Posted on November 12, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Comment by mamster
Honestly, I used the Stylish extension to change the default font in MO to Georgia. Although it still works if I don’t; I just prefer Georgia.
Posted on November 13, 2007 at 7:02 am
Comment by Kathleen
I just tried in Firefox on Mac, too — didn’t explore too much, but didn’t have any problem with what I did see. I know, that’s probably not helpful for Jon, but I’m just reporting in (maybe that’s helpful to JR). I’ll be exploring more later!
Posted on November 13, 2007 at 11:03 am
Comment by Lauren
That is one of the cooles things I’ve seen. It will replace the one I have hanging on my refrigerator.
I see kale gratin on your calendar. Paul told me that you two talked about it on Friday. Can you share the recipe with me?
Posted on November 15, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Comment by mamster
No, problem, Lauren. I’ve been meaning to post about it—it’s a Susie Middleton recipe from Fine Cooking, last winter. I’ll get the post done soon.
Posted on November 15, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Comment by Laurie
That kale gratin was one of the BEST things ever.
Posted on November 15, 2007 at 6:51 pm