Cookbook talk:Table of Contents/Archive 4

Recipe Summary Template
I've created a Template:Recipe_Summary to produce the inset with servings, prep time, etc seen on many pages. This is modelled after the one on the dutch wikibooks (nl:Sjabloon:Recept). Its use is demonstrated on the Cookbook:Flaky Pie Crust page.

An example usage:

Usage notes: Kellen 3 July 2005 22:06 (UTC)
 * Usually this template should be the first thing on the page (before navigation).
 * All fields shown here are required (otherwise you'll get template-looking output ).
 * The "Category" tries to resolve to an actual category.
 * Rating is between 1 and 5 inclusive.


 * Looks great. Now for the grunt work... --bleh fu talk fu  4 July 2005 00:29 (UTC)


 * One more usage note: I've used to expand the name of the article. For now this'll expand to "Cookbook:Recipe Name" but in the near future when "Cookbook" becomes a proper namespace on wikibooks it'll just expand to "Recipe Name". This might even just get put in the template, but for now I wanted to leave the options open. Kellen 4 July 2005 00:57 (UTC)


 * I've created a shorthand template for this as well. See Cookbook:Policy for details. Kellen 04:47, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

I've noticed a few pages have boxes like so:

 Though there don't seem to be very many active contributors at the moment (on vacation?) I wonder if people would like to try to categorize all the recipes with something more thorough like this. Well, do you? Kellen 17:40, 26 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I've been using the recipe summary, but I've got one improvement to suggest (see the sample template for the Desserts category, below). The energy value of food is currently called Calories, but this makes it difficult for people that use kilojoules for this measure. It's also like saying square footage when you really mean area, it's not really correct. I propose that the the section be changed to Energy, and that the units follow the quantity (e.g., kcal == Cal, kJ, etc.). I would also suggest that contributors follow their preferred unit with the corresponding one in the other system (in parentheses, like with ingredients). Note that 1 kcal = 4.186 kJ. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 00:51, 6 August 2005 (UTC)




 * That's fair. I think maybe we should suggest an order though, calories first and kJ second? No preference with respect to the other fields in the example above? Kellen T 03:33, 6 August 2005 (UTC)


 * We could use a consistent order. But, maybe it would be better to use the original units first, and the derived units second. That's how ingredient quantities are done at the moment, I think. Also by putting one before another, you open another kettle of fish, like favouring US English over commonwealth English (we don't want to go there ;). GeoT 05:15, 6 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Heh. I wonder what the predominant unit usage is in english-speaking countries.... I was actually thinking that at some point we might get actual useful tools inside of templates (calculations, conditionals, etc) and that an prescribed order might help that. But that is the future. For now it doesn't really matter at all except for stylistic reasons. Kellen T 05:28, 6 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Getting back to what I was origionally suggesting though. Do you agree that we should change Template:Recipesummary and Template:Recipe Summary so that the Calories field is labelled Energy instead? GeoT 05:51, 6 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Yeah. Do it. Do you have any other suggestions about the other fields? Kellen T 06:03, 6 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Done. The rest of it looks good.;) GeoT 06:33, 6 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Now that I think about it, we could have a nutrition template too. It could have the fat, saturated fat, carbohydrate, sugars, sodium, vitamins, etc. content per serving. The problem is that it would be a pain to insist that everyone calculated these values, and some contributors would want to specify a subset of all of the possible quantities (e.g, they may not know, or care to calculate, the selenium content of the dish). GeoT 06:44, 6 August 2005 (UTC)


 * This is already done. I found a single recipe with one (Cookbook:Spiced Pumpkin Soup) and made a template. See Cookbook:Policy. Kellen T 07:52, 6 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Again, we probably need to standardise somehow. Maybe it would be more useful to state the quantities of each constituent per 100 grams (or as a percentage by weight if you don't like the metric system), that would give people a better idea of what was good and what was bad for them, at a glance. Giving the weight of a serving is a given though.


 * Stating the percentage of the RDI for vitamins is fraught with problems, as different governments have different recommendations! The template should allow it, but the mass (in micrograms or milligrams?) may be more useful. Again, we could just leave it up to the contributor to decide.


 * Also, because it's going to be a really long template, maybe there is a way of electing to leave bits out (like the vitamins, or the minerals). I'm still trying to get my head around writing templates like this. When I get a bit of free time, in a couple of days, I'll try to come up with something workable. GeoT 12:16, 6 August 2005 (UTC)


 * With how mediawiki currently works, there is not really any way to leave things out so far as I can tell. What I said before about "conditionals" (if-then statements as in programming) and their non-existence in mediawiki means that there is nothing optional in a template. If you leave something out you get the fun  output. We could make a bunch of different templates that each showed some part of the nutrition stuff, but that seems like less useful work than other things, and it seems like we should really just push for conditional statments in mediawiki. Kellen T 19:20, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Cross-referencing
Out of boredom, love of food, and love of plants, I've begun cross-referencing Wikipedia, Wiki-Cookbook and Wiki-Gardening entries. Are there any other wiki-resources I should also include? Wiktionary, I suppose.... Also, I tried the cookbookpar template on Gardening entries but it doesn't seem to work... --bleh fu talk fu  20:04, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

overlapping categories
I've spent the last little bit tagging all the linked vegan recipes with Category:Vegan recipes, but there are also subcategories in the vegan hierarchy (e.g. Category:Vegan desserts and Category:Vegan soups). Seems to me this is redundant and a vegan soup should be tagged as vegan and also with soup, but not with the redundant: vegan, soup, vegan soup. Since there are other divisions (by diet, region) it seems like the de-facto categorization will force us to recreate all the top-level categories under each specific category. A better way to do this would be some sort of set difference for the categories (e.g. to see the overlap of vegan recipes and soups). There's probably not a way to do this in mediawiki yet, eh? Tired. Kellen 8 July 2005 07:59 (UTC)

listing of everything in Cookbook: namespace
You can get a listing of everything with the "Cookbook:" prefix here. It's not a purely cookbook listing, but good enough for gov't work. Kellen 02:48, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

policy page
I created a policy page at Cookbook:Policy. So far this only has the available templates and capitalization rules. I think we should try to set consistent policies for these things. Yeah. Kellen 03:23, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Nicely done. This is the sort of fussy business that makes me happy. :) --bleh fu talk fu  06:10, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

featured recipe policy
Since most contributors probably aren't watching the policy module, I'll ask this here -- what's the policy for changing the featured recipe? I'd like to nominate my Cookbook:Flaky_Pie_Crust recipe as the featured recipe. It has lots of pictures! It's used in the Cookbook:Rhubarb Pie, the Cookbook:Strawberry Rhubarb Pie and the Cookbook:Pennsylvania_Pot_Pie. Kellen 22:53, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
 * It certainly has enough pictures. :) However, I think a featured recipe should be something 'finished'. You don't exactly eat a piecrust on it's own. The strawberry rhubarb pie would make a nice featured recipe, I think (pitty you don't have a photograph of the finished pie though, that would make it perfect). My thoughts on a policy; a featured recipe should ideally have the following characteristics: properly formatted, describes a 'finished' dish and a photograph (preferably of the end product). I basically see the featured recipe as an advertisement for the cookbook, the more it makes your mouth water, the better. risk
 * Good points! My roommates ate the pies before I could take nice pics. I'll take some the next time I make one (the pies all look the same on the outside anyhow =) Kellen 07:22, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Trying to codify this... A featured recipe should:
 * have a picture of the finished recipe
 * follow the recipe template
 * have a recipe summary
 * have proper categories (by ingredient, diet, region, etc as appropriate)
 * be an entire food item (i.e. not a component as in pie crust, sauces)

How often should they be changed? I think Paella has been up for 2 months now... Kellen 08:16, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
 * That seems to cover it. I think the original idea for the featured recipe was a new one every week. So I'd say a new one as soon as possible (or whenever someone feels like it) with a minimum time of one week for each recipe. This does give us the problem of running out of recipes if we actually manage to stick to the one week rule. Mzybe we need a page (or a category) for recipes that are eligible for featured recipe, so we can easily find them and rotate every so many weeks. All this applies to the featured ingredient too, of course. risk 14:41, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I'll set up a category and link it from the Talk page for the featured recipe/ingredient. I'll also add this little bit to the Cookbook:Policy page. Kellen 17:59, 19 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Just for background, I used to do all the featured stuff all by myself, and I tried to change the content somewhere between one and two weeks, normally around every 10 days. Most of the time I did what the policy now states, picking failry complete modules, but every once in a while I'd add something that needed work, just to give it some exposure and help it grow (that didn't work very well, actually).  Then I started slowing down, because life got in the way of Wikibooks, and because I wanted to see if someone else would change the content on their own.  When Albert changed to Paella and bacon, I thought someone else had decided to take up the challenge, so I stopped paying attention to the templates.  After realizing the featured recipe and ingredient hadn't changed in months, I decided to take quick action to fix the problem. When I just now changed the templates, I didn't know a new policy had been enacted, so I went back to somewhat shady "featured" modules, to encourage their growth.  Please feel free to change them in accordance with the new policies. Gentgeen 23:51, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 * That's fine, the "Policy" is not actually supposed to be setting policy so much as reflecting what we actually do. If it's not reflective, that page should be changed (the policy, not the featured one) Kellen T 02:00, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Cookbook pages needing work
I've created a category, Category:Cookbook_pages_needing_work, for cookbook pages in need of help. See Cookbook:Policy for more info. Kellen 04:48, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

comment on cookbook
I'm really glad to have found this cookbook, and I think it's going to be usd a lot once it contains a few more recipes. Just one idea to make it much more useful: all recipes should be catgorised according to how long they take. Usually people only have a certain amount of time for cooking, so that really determines what recips will be of use to them. Sorry - haven't got time to do it myself now. 217.43.64.160 18:03, 28 July 2005 (UTC)


 * This is a pretty good idea. We should be able to do this from the template once everything gets more standardized. Kellen 19:15, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

even more awesome cookbook feature
On recipezaar, there is support for dynamic "filters" -- adding and removing categories and only seeing the set intersection. Here's: RAD! The categories here seem like they could support this with relatively little work, but there would also need to be an interface. Perhaps one of you other coders wants to jam yourself into mediawiki development and do this? Kellen 17:18, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
 * English recipes
 * English Desserts recipes
 * English Desserts Pies & Tarts recipes
 * English Desserts Pies & Tarts Pies Crusts/Pastry Dough recipes

Search
I think search within the cookbook is obscure and a search engine of sorts should be created. As well the wikisoft should be modified to create auto-linking, but I see where that could be tricky and lead to uber-linking, and besides it's not talk for right here. Anyways, for example: I've just made a (three) lemon pie, and have a LOT of merengue left over, so now I have merengue, and I don't know what to do with it. I was searching for something easy to make with merengue but I don't know how to find this. --Lacrymology 12:53, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * You make meringue cookies with chocolate chips. Just fold in the chocolate chips, then scoop spoonfuls onto a baking sheet. Cook at 250 i think for 45 mins to an hour i believe -- this was on "everyday food" so its kinda hazy. We also need a search. Kellen 18:15, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

initial recipe formatting complete!
I have gone through all the recipes listed in Cookbook:Recipes and added appropriate templates, done some formatting, and added obvious categories. There are some recipes not listed there, including some tagged with Category:Cookbook pages needing work, which I intend to do next. Some issues came up during this, including: Yeah. Kellen 19:36, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Whether Category:Recipes is really the right place for a recipe listing (I would say no and that Category:Recipe would be better -- this would require a bot, a bunch of null edits, or mediawiki admin's help since it involves templates and categories)
 * Whether we need a more complete recipe summary with origin and "type" (vegetarian, etc)
 * How we should deal with categories for ingredients, origin, etc with an eye on how mediawiki actually works for now
 * What suggestions we can make regarding improvements to mediawiki that would make our lives as contributors easier (Category intersection comes to mind for me)