If it’s a spare box, scrap windows, push yourself outside the comfort zone, install a flavour of linux, install docker, and experiment.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t run docker on windows… but given 99% of what you run in docker is linux, just let go of the gui and connect to everything via terminal :)
If you can’t get your head around compose files, you can make do with just running portainer, that will give you an interface and it’s stacks are basically organised docker compose files.
The only concept you really need to grasp is volumes. Maybe networks too.
But it’s docker, with the right setup you can spin up hundreds of systems in a few lines on whichever platform.
Self hosting mealie is a slippery slope though :). Next thing it will be a reverse proxy so your friends and family can access it, then it will be a security layer to stop those damn bot and dodgy people. Then “oh I can host the db myself and use that with other apps”, then comes home assistant when you realise you could interface a new recipe flashing your lamps at home etc…. The latter isn’t really needed, but not that far detected if you wanted to really do it
This or use gmail/outlook. They take a little more configuration and bastardisation but it works