Forum

Hi,

I know this would probably be a really low priority on your list of site enhancements, but I'll throw it out there, anyway.  I'd love to see a random recipe generator that would spit out a recipe from my bookshelf.  I can never decide what to make.  Sometimes, I just need to close my eyes and point at an index in order to get the creative juices flowing.  It would be great if the site had a feature that could do that for me.  :)

Thank you!

allison

We have a huge number of high priority items we are working on (yes, member indexing!) but we are always open to suggestions for other features.  Would you want the randomly generated recipe to fit within a course though, so for example if you are looking for inspiration for dinner , it wouldn't be much use to get a recipe for a dessert (unless that's your idea of dinner!) or a side dish.

There's always something fun about random (the possibility of discovery!)

But I can see how you might not have this as a high priority. So in the meantime here's one way of doing it while we're waiting; although it does give a bias to recipes in small books over those in large books.  But the plus is you can include those cookbooks that aren't yet indexed by EYB. You need a random number generator and your EYB bookshelf listing.  It is best to decide what order to arrange your bookshelf first. As an example, I will arbitrarily arrange mine by Author.

For the random number generator go to www.random.org and in the box on your right plug in the number of books on you Bookshelf in the Max box.  Press the "generate" button and Voila! you have chosen your book.  I got #40 and that happens to be "Sauces, Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making” by James Peterson.hmmm Now we have to randomly choose a recipe in that book.  And that takes a little rule setting and design on your part.  It brings up the issue Jane asks “do you want to limit the choices for a particular purpose?”, ie main courses, deserts etc. 

Then go and get the cookbook. Since EYB tells you how many recipes are in a cookbook, you could use this info for your choice but it’s too tedious to actually find a specific recipe that way, particularly in big tomes so I do it by pages.  First you need to decide whether to use all the recipe pages or a subset (say main courses or deserts).  Then back to the box at www.random.org, enter the first page number with recipes in the MIN box and the last page number with recipes and press the Generate button. Voila! There’s your page.  If you have multiple recipes on the page you can decide whether to choose one yourself on randomize that set too. In my example, I got p. 429 which included a fascinating chutney recipe using yogurt, chiles, and either mint or chilantro leaves. Which gets me thinking about how I could use such an intriguing combination of flavors in a main course dish.

There are variations of course: like you could make a category for your bookshelf just of books to randomize and start with this sublist.