Forum

The site just keeps getting better, so thank you for all your hard work! Even in its beta stage, EYB has got me reopening favorite books I haven't used in years.

My request would be to be able to enter my favorite recipes for books that haven't yet been indexed. This would certainly make finding specific recipes in un-indexed books much easier, without having to index an entire book just to be able to access a single recipe.

I also am excited that you're working on a way for us to be able to add books that aren't on your list. I wonder if you could tell us more about the fields that must be included to download the book list from an Excel spreadsheet onto EYB. In other words, what data will we need to include? Although many of my books are already on a spreadsheet, I'd like to start correcting the format into one that will be compatible with your bulk import program. That way, when your program is available, I'll be ready to import.

My problem: As I understand the advanced search function, I should be able to search for an ingredient within the "my categories" field.  In other words, search for spinach in just the books I've categorized as Italian. This doesn't work for me. If I search on just spinach, it comes up with a zillion recipes, many of them in my "Italian" books. But if I search on spinach+Italian, I get a message "Sorry! We couldn't find any Recipes that matched your search terms." I'm wondering, am I doing something wrong or is there a glitch in the program?

Thanks again for a great idea and a great program.

Thank you so much for your support.  Once we add the feature that will allow you to add personal recipes then you could add individual favorite recipes from your cookbooks.  Ideally we want the entire cookbook indexed for everyone but if you don't have the time or interest to do that then individual personal recipes is the option.

Our developers are working now on the import feature - it is part of a much bigger expansion of the EYB Library.  As soon as we have some information on the format for data imports, we will post it here and on the EYB blog.

I don't think there is a glitch in the search, using an ingredient or your own categories, as I just tried it with my categories and it worked fine.  Double check you have spinach as a recipe ingredient in your category Italian - click Classifications in the left navigation, then Italian and browse through the recipes.  Are you assuming that because you have categorized a book as Italian that all the recipes will then be categorized that way?  This is an interesting one.  We decided that it didn't necessarily follow that because you categorized a book then all the recipes should be the same - for example you may categorize a book as vegetarian because it mainly is (e.g. some Moosewood books contain fish) but you wouldn't want all the recipes to be classified as vegetarian.  Or a book with lots of great Dinner party desserts may get that personal category but not all the recipes in the book are desserts.

I would be interested to know your view (and everyone else's) on this.  Would you want to be able to categorize an entire book of recipes with the same personal category?

With the revised search process, which we will be working on after we expand the EYB Library, you will be able to view an abbreviated list of recipes from a book (recipe name only) that you see all as one page then you can select all and add them all to your personal category.