Stabbie in the kitchen and at the computer

[chrishansenhome]

London Stabbie has been quite annoyed today. He has resurrected his old computer in order to ensure that everything useful is removed, and exported his recipe book this morning. Now there is nothing more useful in keeping and disseminating and sharing recipes than a computer. One would think that after many years of storing recipes on computers someone would have figured out a good way of exporting recipes and then importing them into another computer or another program. One would be wrong. Very wrong. As wrong as drinking shiraz with lemon sole.

Stabbie was amazed at the speed of the export from a very old version of Mastercook into a text file. Less than 5 seconds for 2MB of recipes (Stabbie has lots of recipes).

Stabbie then copied the file into his new computer and fired up Mastercook 11, guaranteed to work with Windows 7. Then he imported the recipe file, and while there were a few mistakes (reported by the software) most of the recipes seemed to be imported fairly well.

So Stabbie took at look at his mother's recipe for spaghetti and meatballs. He was surprised to learn that it required no meat, no tomatoes, but a lot of flour and sugar and baking powder. Somehow Mastercook had slipped a gear and missed out several recipes, putting the wrong labels on the subsequent ones.

So Stabbie deleted all the recipes, and opened the text file with the exported recipes in it. He now has to import them 10 or 20 at a time and go through each. Some have ingredients misplaced, and others don't have the instructions or notes correct. Stabbie has more than 1500 recipes in his database. He's not looking forward to the next four months.

Cooking software is written by dweebs for noobs.

This is also true for geneological software.

Stabbie would like to get the programmers, and especially the people who arranged the user interfaces and the import and export engines, into a very small dining room, lock them in, and feed them chocolate cake iced with Ex-Lax. The toilets will not be accessible.

Comments

[dendren.livejournal.com]

I'm so behind the times... I've never used recipe software of any type. Just the crazy old fashioned cook books and torn out magazine articles. Oh, I guess I've printed recipes from the internet, that's a little closer.

What I really want to do is snag my granma's recipe box and scan those puppies in to my computer before she's gone and my cousin steals it all :P

[momshapedbox.livejournal.com]

Well... just snag it!!

[dendren.livejournal.com]

I know, I've been talking about it forever. I just need to get my ass up to her house and spend a weekend scanning.

[chrishansenhome.livejournal.com]

Oh, how I wish I had my grandmother's recipe box. I suspect my aunt snaffled it and her son probably either has it now or, nore likely, dumped it.

Recipes are, theoretically, simply a rather complicated multi-level database. The difficulty is this: No recipe program actually enforces rules strictly enough (and, of course, loosely enough in other ways) to ensure that the database is clean. Exporting recipes (unless the user has been unnaturally strict and consistent in how s/he enters and cleans the recipes) thus becomes a Cecil B. de Mille production ("I'm ready for my soufflé, Mr. de Mille."...)

The recipes that I actually entered myself are good. The problem comes when, for example, a recipe has no ingredients, just a "method" or "instructions". This can happen with a recipe with a small number of ingredients, or some ingredients with no amounts. The program should not throw up its electronic hands, slip a gear, and put the next recipe's ingredients and instructions under the previous recipe's title.

What I would expect is that the program that exports the recipes to the text file would, if it finds something like that, make some indication that there's a rogue recipe in there and, perhaps, ask what to do with it or, perhaps, put that recipe in another file to await human intervention.

So, instead, I have to go through every one of the recipes fixing it. That's more than 1500 recipes. It'll take months unless my OCD takes over, in which case I shall be in the funny farm in a week or two, muttering about how much garlic it takes to stuff an elephant.

[dendren.livejournal.com]

I know *exactly* who will end up with her recipe box, my cousin Becky. She gets all the cool stuff cause her mom just takes it. *grumble*

how much garlic does it take to stuff an elephant? I actually have a recipe for stuffed camel of all things, from some middle eastern country. It's bizarre... you stuff the camel with sheep and stuff the sheep with chicken and veggies and blah blah blah... roast in ground for some huge amount of time. Heh, the recipe ends with the line "feeds friendly group of 100" LOL

[chrishansenhome.livejournal.com]

Oh, and if you manage to snag it and scan it, share some with us. I'll gladly enter them into Mastercook.

[dendren.livejournal.com]

uh huh... already out to steal Gram's secret recipes! I'm on to you!

[chrishansenhome.livejournal.com]

If they're so secret why would she share them with you? ;-)

[dendren.livejournal.com]

she hasn't!!! LOL

[chrishansenhome.livejournal.com]

And a general comment: the Intarwebz have zillions of recipes. The reason I like the recipe database is that I can browse through it for something I've made before and liked so I can make it again.

I also have zillions of cookbooks. I hardly ever refer to them anymore. Craig Claiborne's "The New York Times Cookbook" is really almost as quaint now as "Mrs. Beeton's Cookbook".