Forum

Hi

I'm wondering why you don't list the quantities in the ingredients list for the recipes. Copyright issues?

It would make the shopping list much more useful. As it is now, I would have to print the list and then refer to the books to make note of the quantities before leaving home.

I understand how that would be a hassle to change after having indexed so many books though :)

Katti

Having indexed a few books, I can tell you that adding the quantities would significantly increase the amount of time needed to index a book and therefore would definitely decrease the amount of books being indexed.

When indexing, adding the ingredients takes about half of the total time (depending on the recipe, of course). Adding the quantities means you have to note for how many persons the recipe is, and you would have to type the quantity for each ingredient. So you would increase the time needed by at least half.

Thanks wester for your response to Katti.  We did have some other considerations as well when we decided not to add ingredient quantities.

• Eat Your Books is an international site and the US uses different measurements than the rest of the world.  We would have to reindex every cookbook that is popular internationally.


• It was important to us that the cookbook authors and publishers support the website and if we list the ingredient quantities, we are getting close to reproducing the recipes.


• We don't know what multiple or fraction of a recipe you are cooking, so the recipe quantities may not actually be what you want.

You are planning to cook that recipe anyway so getting the book and sticking a bookmark in it when you do your shopping list hopefully isn't too much extra work.  It is a good idea to always check the recipe before you shop as what we consider store-cupboard items and do not list, unless they are a main ingredient, may be something you need to buy e.g. butter, eggs, garlic.

We do plan to do a total overhaul of the shopping list when we develop our iPhone/smartphone app.  We want to make it more editable so you can decide what items you want to list as your own store-cupboard so they don't appear in the shopping list each time.  And that you can add other grocery items to your list.

I totally get why there aren't amounts listed, and I don't need that from this site.  However, I do wonder why one would bother using the grocery list feature without quantities.  Great--so I need heavy cream...Without a quantity, that information is 100% useless to me.  Do I buy one container?  Two?  Is it a small enough quanitity that using light cream won't change the recipe much?  Can't tell without a measurement.

I think, in some ways, this site is trying to do too much.  Instead of putting the time into a grocery list function that requires me to do the work manually, anyway, I would have liked to see the time spent on indexing more books.  Just my two cents.

Thanks. I can see how it would complicate matters. I still think the shopping list is useful though. Especially if doing a menu, since ingredients are grouped according to where you're likely to find them :)

There's an app around the corner? How exciting! Maybe you could post interface sketches in the forum and get feedback before doing any coding :)

Thanks for your comments.

grumpybear - I understand that you don't find a shopping list useful but a lot of our members do and it will be a major feature of the app.  You will then be able to build your shopping list wherever you are, adding recipes or additional items to it when you are away from home.  The development of features for the website is quite separate to the indexing of books - we have developers who work on features and we have a data manager, Deborah and a team of indexers who are doing the indexing.  So spending time on new features does not distract at all from indexing.

Katti - we will definitely be getting suggestions from members before we start developing the app.

I'm new here so bear with me if this has already been addressed.  How about tying back the recipe to items on the shopping list so you know what recipe they are sourced from?  For example avocados could be needed for recipe 1 and 4 on your grocery list.  That way if you decide not to make one of the recipes, things could more easily be crossed off or modified.  Also might make for quicker referencing of item quantities...

Welcome gumbo5116 - we don't mind questions being repeated as we don't yet have a search facility on the Forum and there are lots of other new members who may also want to know the answer to your question.

The shopping list is currently not in any way the feature we want it to be and it will get a major overhaul when we start developing the mobile interface (app).  Your idea of linking the ingredients to recipe numbers is a good one and we have noted it.