Sometimes utilities can be production-grade, tho, so I don't think that captures the nonchalance the author was looking for.
"Home-cooked apps" is still my preferred phrase. Personal software and subsistence development are also good terms.
"subsistence development", to me, sounds like "doing menial dev tasks in order to earn enough $ to survive"
Home-cooked doesn't sound right. The term Handmade has a fair bit of usage for this already and has a lot less semantic friction in my head. Homemade isn't bad either, if you really like the cooking analogy.