Category recipe

Extratasty

This service is a publishing community for drink recipes. The service works around the MicroContent type Drink Recipe. The structure of this type consist of a title, a list of ingredients, directions and tags. The ingredients are categorised into booze, mixers and garnishes. For each ingredient the amount is specified as parts.

An interesting feature is the input facility. A user can only select from a fixed list of ingredients and the system helps a bit here. Once an ingredient is selected a drop-down menu helps to specify the amounts. But more interesting is that the service also generates standard directions (which can be edited).

[Inspiration eHub]

Categories/tags: MicroContent • type • recipe , drink
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RecipeOPML

Following the suggestion of Marc Canter that OPML is useful for specifying MicroContent, I had a go with a recipe. As I do not want to delve to much into OPML and create something specific, I decide to use some outliner application.

First I used a recipe-file as output by MacGourmet for my input. This application can publish a recipe as a separate XML file following the Property List DTD of Apple. In copied/pasted the XML file into NoteTaker. (it is possible to import a XML-file into the application).

The next step was to create a nice outline and here I must make some choices. When do I define a parent and when a child? For me each recipe is a parent and everything that belongs to it is a child. Also a list of ingredients is a parent and contains one or more ingredients. And as each ingredient contains multiple fields, I created a parent for that as well. And the same holds for preparation times.

Next step was to introduced the labels and values. I put every value in a separate child. Now NoteTaker has the ability to assign categories to each child (and parent). I did that, while following the keywords used by MacGourmet. I encountered here one problem. The preparation types and measurements were not output by MacGourmet. They used an enumeration for this, which I am not able to translate directly from the XML. A pity, but it shows that one somehow has to solve this issue. Another question is what to do with empty fields. Do I leave them in or not?

My next step was importing the OPML-file into OmniOutliner. And it work great. The categories turn up as a separate column in this application. I can rearrange the columns to have a nice layout.

Well the experiment shows that OPML can be used to specify MicroContent such as recipes. And that an outliner application can be used to create and edit such files. But these are far from the best applications to work with MicroContent, but they offer flexibility.

The OPML created by NoteTaker looks like this:

<outline text="Watercress, Rocket, Sweet Pear, Walnut and Parmesan Salad" category="Recipe" >
<outline text="What ... own." category="Directions" />
<outline text="Ingredient List" category="IngredientList" >
<outline text="Ingredient" category="Ingredient" >
<outline text="half" category="IngredientQuantity" />
<outline text="" category="IngredientMeasurement" />
<outline text="a pear" category="IngredientDescription" />
<outline text="" category="IngredientDirection" />
<outline>
<outline text="Ingredient" category="Ingredient" >
<outline text="watercress" category="IngredientDescription" />
<outline text="big handfuls" category="IngredientMeasurement" />
<outline text="2" category="IngredientQuantity" />
<outline text="" category="IngredientDirection" />
<outline>
<outline text="Ingredient" category="Ingredient" >
<outline text="rocket" category="IngredientDescription" />
<outline text="big handfuls" category="IngredientMeasurement" />
<outline text="2" category="IngredientQuantity" />
<outline text="" category="IngredientDirection" />
<outline>
<outline>
<outline text="lang:en salade" category="Keywords" />
<outline text="Watercress, Rocket, Sweet Pear, Walnut and Parmesan Salad" category="Name" />
<outline text="any additional notes one wants to make" category="Note" />
<outline text="any information on the nutritional values of the recipe come here." category="Nutrition" />
<outline text="information on preparation times" category="Prep_Times" />
<outline text="1" category="Servings" />
<outline text="Jamie Oliver (www.jamieoliver.com)" category="Source" />
<outline>

I wonder what the next questions are. I would like to put a repurpose such a OPML-file (or better everything within an outer outline-tag) to put it in a blog-entry, in a RSS-description, etc. So I need converters to create the right output. I think that is a task for the client used to create the MicroContent Item in the first place. Thus MacGourmet, NoteTaker or OmniOutliner should be able to export to the right formats. It would be even better if I could pipe the MacGourmet recipe right into my blogging client, such as MarsEdit.

Another thing is the values of the attribute category. These should be standardised is some way. It should be clear what keywords, name, description, source, etc. means.

Categories/tags: recipe
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Recipe Client

As mentioned earlier I have been playing with MacGourmet, a client for recipes. I think it is an interesting program as it shows how a client for such Microcontent can work. The program has a familiar three pane interface. Many Mac OS-X applications have a similar interface, such as iTunes or NetNewsWire. In the left pane are the lists. There are some pre-existing lists such as My Recipes, Find Recipes or Last Imported. There are also user defined lists and a user can drag any recipe in such a list. And there are Computed Lists. Based on a query involving one or multiple fields of a recipe, the list is computed automatically. An interesting list is called Featured. It reminds me of a RSS-feed, but that is unclear.

The top pane shows a list of recipes in familiar tabular format. For each recipe its name, source, rating and the presence of an image is shown. And the final pane shows the recipe itself. The presentation of the layout can a little bit be changed (only the colour scheme). The recipe is shown with title, ingredient list, directions, cooking time, etc.

The user can simply add recipes through a tabbed sheet.

There is an interesting integration between the web and the client. MacGourmet recipes on the Web can easily be imported by a drag&drop mechanism. The same is true for recipes in the Featured list. I think that this is the way integration should work.

By the way it is also possible to publish a list of recipes through WebDAV or exporting the HTML-files to a web-server. The XML-files are then exported as well. I did not yet check out the content of these XML-files.

I think this is a great example of how a MicroContent-client should work and integrate with the web. What is only missing is a Recipe RSS feed reader. For a first generation program I like it a lot.

Categories/tags: recipe
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MacGourmet

Marc Canter sees a recipe program, MacGourmet, on the Mac even and he shouts OpenRecipes. This program seems to support RSS, which is indeed quite interesting. I did not find this support however. Maybe it is hidden in the Featured group. Interestingly the program allows you to publish recipes. And when you look at a recipe, you can download the recipe by drag&drop. A very neat feature. If he now only publishes the format of this file, we have a bit of an open recipe.

It looks like a nice program.

Categories/tags: recipe
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