I was in the exact same boat as you, but its pretty much there now. You can set a specific user group (i.e. Default) to have its recipes be public and then redirect index to that page.
Also I recommend upgrading because IIRC there’s a security vuln with that old version of Mealie
I use Wallabag in the sense that I save articles to it, but I only really read them when I don’t have service or on my e-reader