Traditionally, recipes in books tend to be on one page, with an ingredient list specifying quantities at the top, and the instructions following that.
One very important thing has changed: many, many people are no longer getting their recipes from books. Instead, the web is the source, and in some cases, great applications like Paprika* which can take a web page and extract the recipe details into a structured format, basically a scalable quantities ingredients list in one pane, and the instructions in another. Both are editable.
So when I go shopping, I reference the ingredients pane and simply work down the list, making sure I have the right things in the right quantities. Easy, direct, no messing around.
However, when I go to make the recipe, the recipe instructions almost always lack the quantities. Here’s an example:
Ingredients list contains:
2 tablespoons butter
Recipe instructions say:
Melt butter in pan
Which means that unless I’ve memorized the recipe (not likely, or I wouldn’t be trying to read the instructions), now I have to go look at the ingredients list and hunt down the quantity of butter. Which is annoying: I’m trying to cook over here!
So my suggestion, and what I’ve begun doing with all the recipes I grab off the web as soon as I get them into Paprika, is to edit the recipe thusly:
Ingredients list contains:
2 tablespoons butter
Recipe instructions say:
Melt 2 tablespoons butter in pan
Problem solved. Shopping, the ingredients list is all I need. Cooking, the recipe is all I need.
* I have no business connection with Paprika; I’m just a very happy paid user of the pro version.
Why Video Fails It
2008 Jun
2008 22
Posted by fyngyrz in Meta-Fyngyrz, Politricks, Social Issues, The Net, Things that are Busted, Uncategorized | No Comments
When it comes to opinion, commentary, and interviews, I am not enthusiastic about video. Not at all. Never really have been. But I hadn’t given it much thought; just sort of lumped the whole thing in with commercials, which I despise, “DJ” babbling, which I also despise, and the general failure of the mass media to properly do what I consider to be its job, which is report things as they are and as they happen, rather than give me their opinions, which I am not interested in.
So today I ran into a link on a website that announced that it led to an interview with someone of general interest to me (it doesn’t really matter who.) I clicked on the link, it is fair to say, with considerable interest. But as it turned out, the link led to a video of an interview. I felt let down. Not a little bit; a lot. I lost interest in pursuing the presentation; and this change of heart happened fast enough that it caught my attention as a mini-event all by itself. I didn’t watch. Instead, I did a little thinking, and here’s what I came up with.
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Tags: blogging, commentary, information, news, opinion, reading, video, writing