7
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What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
Does anyone have a good digital solution for storing/retrieving recipes?
I have a lot of favourite recipes that I use from a myriad of sources. Some of these are just random links from the web, some are from cook books etc.
I want an iOS or preferably web-based solution with good mobile support that either has a self-hosted server or is using local storage in the case of an app.
I want a simple format for recipes files, preferably just markdown.
I want the ability to tag/sort/browse/search stored recipes.
I want minimal features beyond this.
Does anyone know of anything close to my requirements?
It doesn't meet all those requirements (which I don't think any recipe app on iOS will, TBH), but I have been using MealBoard for years. It's not self-hosted, it's local storage based but with cloud backup/sync, and you can also access it on the web. The recipes aren't in markdown either but a custom format with cooking instructions and ingredients stored separately (necessary for the app's other functions to work correctly). But IMO it's by far the best meal planner and recipe organizer on iOS and iPadOS.
Its recipe import system is great, supports a ton of recipes sites, and even handles importing from random blogs and whatnot reasonably well too. Custom recipes are also pretty easy to manually input into it. Its recipe organizer doesn't support tags, but it does have customizable categories which functions similarly since a single dish can be in multiple categories. The pantry organizer, meal planner, and grocery list functions are also handy although I don't use them all that often, I mostly just use it as a recipe organizer. But best of all, it's not SAAS, monthly subscription based bullshit like the vast majority of other similar apps on iOS. It's just a one time payment to get access to the full version of it.
Hey, thanks, that does seem promising. I'm not sure I could sell my wife on a digital meal planner (she hand copies our shared google calendar onto a whiteboard each month) but it looks pretty slick!
I don't really care about recipe format as long as there is an easy path to input recpies which it sounds like this has. Probably similarly to you, I'd like to 'own' all of my recipes in one place with no SEO to scroll through and not pay someone else monthly to own them for me.
Just to make sure I understand re: categories, could I make a 'quick' category to put all my under 30 min recipes in addition to other categories like dinner/Caribbean/vegetarian/etc ?
Yes. I do something similar although not time-based like that... but now that you mention it I may actually add that as a category since its a good idea! E.g. I have a bunch of standard categories like appetizers, breakfast, mains, sides, desserts, etc. along with cuisine types like Indian, Chinese, Japanese, etc. and with various other categories like vegetarian, meat, fish, soup, bread, smoothies, etc. And if/when I want an Indian+Vegetarian+Appetizer, I can select those three and it will only show me the recipes that match that particular combination of categories. Like I said, it's very much like a tag system, despite the name.
I use Paprika on Android and it works great. There is an iOS version, it supports tagging, and (in my opinion the best feature) - recipe scraping.
It's even fast enough to grab Bon Appetite/NYT recipes before the overlay pops up.
I actually tried Paprika a long time ago, and while it's every bit as good as MealBoard (what I use now), and has very similar features, my biggest issue with it was that you need to repurchase it ($5) for every mobile device, the desktop versions are expensive ($30), and it has no web version. Whereas MealBoard does have a web version, and you only need to purchase the pro upgrade for $10, which is then transferable to all the devices you downloaded the app to. E.g. My family all use it so we can share recipes with one another and plan our meals + grocery shopping trips together, and it only cost $10 total for all our devices (3 iphones, 2 ipads, 2 computers).
MealBoard isn't available on Android though, so... :(
Ah, yeah, I only really share recipes with my spouse and we both have Android devices - and we have family sharing set up so it's only one purchase.
Huh... y'know, I never even thought about family sharing. I should set that up for my family. Thanks for reminding me of its existence. :P
I use keep for just about everything that I want to write down in my life. Journaling, Recipes, Packing Lists, To Dos, Books I want to read... everything.
That being said, I recently felt that it lacks some nice features for organizing recipes. Mainly:
Apart from that I have to say that Google Keep has some nice automatic tagging. If I search for "recipe" in my Keep, I get all the recipes, not only the ones that are explicitly tagged as recipe or have the word turn up somewhere. Apparently, Google recognizes the format.
Great software, blazingly fast and it also gets rid of the ads (or was that my adblocker?) - thank you for the recommendation!
I recently made my first batch of homebrewed beer. I've been wanting to try it for years, but I'd always get overwhelmed by the price, size and complexity of recommended beginner equipment. But then I got a beginner's kit from Brooklyn Brewshop for Christmas. You only need a cookpot and a regular stove, although that does make it trickier to keep the temperature in the right range.
Thankfully, it was a success! I actually got drinkable beer that's quite tasty. The biggest beginner mistake I made was accidentally overdoing the carbonation. The recipe called for honey dissolved in water to be added during bottling for CO2, but apparently I put in way too much, because the first bottle I opened practically exploded in a geyser of foam. Some of the other bottles were only moderately over-carbonated.
The upside and downside of the Brooklyn Brewshop kit is that it's designed for brewing in small apartments. It only gives a gallon of beer. My apartment is small, but not cupboard sized. I'm planning to brew my next batch together with my father, and we both figured 3-4 pints each of finished product for a process that takes 4 weeks was a bit too modest of a yield. So I'm trying to figure out what I need to brew a slightly larger batch without breaking the bank.
Brewing is a fun hobby! Can definitely get expensive if you go crazy though.
Last year I made a dandelion wine that is still aging quietly in my basement. It supposedly won't be ready for another year, so who knows if I did it right or not. Going to make another batch here pretty soon, as the initial yellow tsunami is about to erupt in my back lawn.
I made quinoa today and I imagine I'll have it for most of my lunches this week. Today I put a couple of shallots and a couple of onions in olive oil, added some cashews, dumped a bit of quinoa in, then added curry paste and lemon juice (edit for clarity: in a pan, with heat). Mixed it all up for a few minutes, and then tucked in. It is delicious.
I'm a big fan of quinoa salads too. I usually throw a bunch of random stuff into it, whatever I have handy in the pantry and fridge that goes well together, and then dress it with olive oil and lemon juice (or apple cider vinegar) as well. But my favorite recipe is with green onion, garlic and chili flakes, cilantro, feta cheese, dried cranberries, apple slices, and chopped walnuts or pecans. Yum!
Oh I should have noted - I had just finished cooking the quinoa, so today's was more of a "fried rice-but-its-quinoa" dish. Tomorrow I'll be doing a quinoa salad but I don't have any feta, but will probably do goat cheese instead, but otherwise pretty similar.
Ah, I've never had it like that before. I'll have to try it one day. But all this talk actually did get me craving the salad, so I just checked to make sure I had everything I need. I have no apples, but I do have pears, so I'll just use those instead. I have everything else though, and I also have some mahi-mahi I can grill to go with it. So my plans for dinner are set now! :)
It's not a bad way to have it, especially if you want something fried-rice like and have just made quinoa for salads later in the week. ;)
Do you ever mix in eggs, like in a fried rice, too... or nah? I'm kinda curious now how, and if, that would work. :P
I frequently add in eggs and it works very well, just like with fried rice! But I would happily add eggs to nearly any meal I ever eat, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
I'm a big fan of fried rice with lots of egg in it, so I'm definitely going to give it a try with quinoa now. Thanks for the idea!
We had the Quinoa salad with dinner. I made it with the pears instead of apples, and toasted some pumpkin seeds and almond slivers instead of using walnuts. It turned out amazing, and even my father, who normally hates that "healthy crap", had some. He moaned a bit about it at first, but he ended up going back for seconds, saying it was "growing on him"... so I'd call that a resounding success. :P I did the mahi-mahi in the oven with some blackening spices instead of BBQing it though, since the weather is absolute dog shit today. It hailed this morning, and even started snowing briefly a few hours ago. Oh, and I also quickly pan fried some fresh sugar snap peas as a side. So good!
That sounds amazing! I'm probably going to go with pears instead of apples for my quinoa lunch salad tomorrow (as that's what we've got).
Your story about your dad reminded me of a story of my dad.
Last year we were coming back from one of my dad's many doctors appointments, and we were stopping for lunch. He wanted to go to Burger King, so we pulled into the drive-thru. The previous week we had gone to A&W and spent 35 bucks on lunch, and he wanted to avoid that; he saw that there was a 2-for-$10 deal on whoppers or impossible whoppers. So he suggested, "Why don't we get two impossible whoppers? That sounds good right?" I personally love impossible burgers, so I agreed. This particular burger kind wasn't particularly fast, so when we got to the window, they asked me to pull around and park and they would bring out the burgers.
After we'd been waiting for a few minutes, my dad gave one of his favourite quips: "They must have had to go out and kill the cow!" And the penny dropped for me; he had no idea what he had suggested that we order.
The burgers came, we ate them, they were pretty good. I asked him how it was; he said it was great. I let it rest for a bit; when we were almost home I asked him if he knew what we'd eaten, and let him know that we'd had meatless burgers. It blew his mind.
Hah, nice (my dad makes similar jokes). I haven't actually had a chance to try the Impossible Whopper yet myself. I have had the A&W Beyond Burgers a bunch of times though, and I always keep a box of Beyond Burgers in the freezer for myself since I use them crumbled up in a lot of dishes in place of ground meat. Both my parents have tried the Beyond Burgers too, but neither were fans so they still stick to their beef burgers and ground beef. I suspect them knowing it wasn't meat ahead of time influenced their opinions though since they're pretty prejudiced against meat alternatives, so I wish I had caught them unawares like your father was the first time. :(
I thought the impossible whopper was pretty good, exactly as good as as a whopper, anyways. I have a lot of family who just won't try any of the meat alternative stuff when they know about it, and for the same reason - they're prejudiced against meat alternatives. I don't know why they feel like something has to die for them to enjoy a meal. I've ordered "The Great Beyond" pizza from Pizza Hut for family before and just not told them it wasn't meat, and they loved it (and I did not do the big reveal like I did with my dad), so I think it's just one of those "afraid of making changes" things that is so ingrained in so many people.
At least with my parents, I think there is more going on than just a fear of change. I think there is a lot of repressed guilt involved too. They don't want to admit that their heavily meat based diet contributed to us humans fucking this planet up, and they feel like meat alternatives are an attack on their lifestyle choices, and even their parenting. And the really annoying part is they even seem to be trying to overcompensate now too... like them constantly trying to push my nephew to eat meat, despite him refusing to for his first 8 years on this planet. Even as a baby he refused to eat the meat based baby foods and would only eat the fruit/veg ones. But he recently relented and now eats burgers and steaks along with them, and they celebrated it and boast about it proudly as if its a major accomplishment and positive thing. However, I honestly can't help but feel that it's the exact opposite, especially since I personally cut red meat entirely from my diet about 5 years ago, and have been making a concerted effort to eat more and more lacto-ovo vegetarian, pescetarian, and even the occasional vegan meals over the last few years. :/
Yeah, I think that's it. I mean, obviously you know your parents better, but I think that's it more for my family, and probably lots of people.
I just discovered this group existed on Tildes, can't believe I'd missed it.
Friday I ordered an outdoor wok burner, wok, and utensils, and I'm pretty psyched. I've gotten pretty good at making things in my flat-bottom wok on my gas range, but I dislike using it especially in winter. I hate how easy it is to smoke up the house because my microwave vent just blows it straight back into the room (practically useless). And of course a standard US gas range doesn't have nearly the BTU output of a commercial wok burner.
So now that the weather is nicer I ordered up the supplies I've been wanting to get for awhile, and I'm excited to make some batches of fried rice this week to lay down some initial layers of seasoning!
Inspired by Alex? If not, that's a great series to watch if you want to up your fried rice game, BTW. The Path To Fried Rice playlist
No inspired mostly by J Kenji actually, but that playlist looks great, thanks!
Ah, nice. I love JKLA too. Serious Eats is a seriously great resource, especially their food science and review articles. I used to watch his YouTube channel a fair bit too, but haven't in a while. I should remedy that. :)
He's had a bit of a dip in quantity lately (not sure why, probably not my business), but there's a bunch of good stuff. Some people don't like his headcam thing, I love it, it allows me to see exactly what he's doing.
You can see everything because you get his view of things, but on top of that he usually real-times it all. The only things he does off camera is let stuff rest/bake and get his ingredients out of the fridge. Which, unless you wanna learn to cook in his kitchen is irrelevant. But there's no jump-cut from a whole onion to a diced onion, nothing of that sort. On his Chicago pizza one he pointed it out: This video is 30m long, so that's how much active work you need to put in. Super useful.
That's definitely another aspect I really appreciate, I noticed that early on. Even though I might take longer, I know it's going to be because I just don't chop an onion as fast as he does, not because he cut a bunch of steps out for brevity.
Yeah, I'm a fan of the headcam too. I love that it gives you a unique view on how he actually cooks. No set. No fakery. No pretense. Just a really skilled chef doing what he normally does when cooking a meal for himself at home.
Crispy Chickpeas
Delicious!
Oh, I made this recently. You don’t even need the oil. It’s also a bit faster if you have an air fryer. For extra deliciousness you can cook it from dry in a flavorful broth but then it’s obviously not anywhere near as easy.
But the oil makes it so tasty!
The chickpeas make it tasty!
Besides I can’t do the oil right now with my diet.
Got me there. Have fun with your low-fat fiber and protein!