Slashdot Mirror
Cooking with the Internet?
VonGuard asks: "Not all of you live on ramen and coffee. At some point, you have to cook, and the Internet should be a great place to find recipes. Is there a Google for recipes. And why isn't there a larger open cookbook on the net? So, is anyone working on this, or is there something the rest of us don't know about yet?"
> I once heard a story of a woman that was eating a
> dessert at a restaurant and thought it was so
> incredible that she just HAD to have the recipe.
Dude, that was a famous old urban-myth email chain letter hoaxes. Go to any "Web Hoax" site and you'll find this. I got the email back in the late 90's, and it's made the rounds again every few years. The email suggested that since the customer was so angry and the store for over-charging her that you should help her seek revenge by forwarding the recipe (oatmeal chocolate chip cookies) to to "everyone in your address book".
Murray Todd Williams
(Search The, ah, Freakin Web)
... google for "recipes". My personal favorite is epicurious, tho I often have to tone down the expensive and/or hard to get ingredients.
I mean, really
Lots of these places let you submit your own recipes, many let you rate and comment on them. There isn't much interest in an internet-wide p2p schema of recipes because, well, it's not really something that's needed such a trading scheme before. Use a blog, paste the recipe in, google will pick it up in a couple days.
I'm not sure what the challenge or barrier is here.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
Another suggestion:
Newsgroups. There are groups dedicated to recipe trading (rec.food.recipes), and on EVERY group the regulars will occasionally post their favorite recipe for something, especially if they just hacked together some good food. Just do a Google Groups search for whatever you want...it's there. Maybe it's not really organized, but who organizes things anymore? The thought these days is to throw everything in a pile with some rudimentary crosslinking, and use a search engine to ferret out whatever you're looking for.
...
.. is a Google API and here's how it works:
Argh... the link got eaten. Here it is: Orkut Cajun Food wiki.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
I was involved in a proposal for a cookbook at one time. As the subject was explained to me by agent and publisher, the ingredient list and the "facts" of the recipe procedure are NOT protected by copyright. The *specific* wording of the procedure as written by an author is protected -- which simply means another author has to rewrite the procedure, but can retain the facts and sequence. Those very few recipes that are protected as trade secrets have nothing to do with copyright and have everything to do with business practices. Very few businesses revolve around a single 'secret formula' recipe, so this is a small category.
Allrecipes is good, but come on, how about the red-headed stepchild of the Internet, Usenet?
rec.food.recipes is the logically starting point. It is moderated, and has quite a few good recipes. Google groups can turn up any number of personal recipes posted by ordinary people, not from cookbooks eminating from some faceless corporation.
I post to rec.food.cooking on a daily basis. Recipes are not the focus, but there are plenty there, along with cooking tips, friendly banter (i.e. flame wars), and discussions about anything dealing with cooking from nutrition to what pots and pans are best. If you decide to join the fray, I post with my real name and email, John Gaughan. Feel free to flame me on Usenet for being a Slashdot geek24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
I can assure you after seeing her in London several times that she is *not* bulimic!
Now if everyone just started to comply with internationally agreed upon standards (metric units) I wouldn't get the same uneasy feeling I have when receiving a Word-attachment whenever I read an American/English recipe on the net. It's time for a W3C validator for recipes!
obsess over cooking and ingredients. In a couple of months, you'll be cooking up things like Etheopian Injera, Indian Naan, Thai green curry, crepes, orange beef, hand made pasta and everything else you ever wanted to cook. The downside is you'll be in the kitchen 24/7. Cooking isn't hard and America is slowly maturing in terms of food diversity. Most people are pretty pathetic when it comes to techniques, but once you know the major techniques of each cuisine, you can whip up a gourmet meal in 30 minutes.