The FastDay Forum

[Moogie]

I think it's time I took a bit of a break from the Progress Tracker development, it does just about everything I planned for it to do and more besides.

So, I've been looking for recipe systems I could add to the forum and decided I didn't like any of them really. Time to create my own!

Just looking for a few thoughts on what people would like to see in terms of the form to fill in when submitting a recipe and how you'd like to be able to search for them?

For example, these are my initial thoughts:

Adding recipes:

• Recipe name
• Calories per serving (probably also how many servings it makes)
• Ingredients list with weights & optional itemised calories, including a link to online calorie tools for quick checking
• Specify if safe for veggies or vegans, if it contains nuts, wheat etc (any suggestions for these?)
• Specify key ingredient, eg beef, pork, chicken, turkey, fish, shellfish, vegetables (any others folks might want to search by?)
• Include cooking method
• Include additional nutrition information
• Approx Cooking/prep time?
• Ability to include a photo or series of photos?
• Ability to include website links, eg for specialised products (such as zero noodles) or for a source website
• Specify cuisine ethnicity (eg Asian, Indian, European... further suggestions please? I'm no good at classifying foods!)
• Specify meal type, eg breakfast, lunch, dinner, desert, drink, snack (will be able to select multiple options, eg if it's suitable as a lunch or dinner etc)
• Ability to select related recipes which will be automatically linked to it.

Searching Recipes:

• Search within name
• Search by calorie range
• Search by cuisine ethnicity
• Search by meal type
• Search by veggie/vegan/wheat/nuts etc
• Search by key ingredient
• Search by author

(will also be able to simply browse recipes - undecided as to how best to categorise the list - by calories? meal type? by author? by key ingredient, eg 'pork dishes', 'vegetable dishes'? bearing in mind you'll be able to filter the list by all these things as above!)

Viewing recipes:

• Nice layout to display all info clearly along with photos if provided.
• Units of measurement as specified in recipe can be displayed in metric & imperial, converted on the fly
• Possibly ability to add comments (with photos of own version?) or rate the recipe?
• Original author able to edit recipe, and mods/admin able to edit/delete.
• Simple printable view available
• Links to online calorie counters/checkers

Maybe I'll include the ability for people to add 'favourite' recipes to make it easier to find the ones you like over and over again?


Any of these things sound like they're not really needed? Anything glaringly obvious or useful which I've not considered?

All feedback welcome! I hope to start development this weekend

You pretty much nailed everything. However I don't care too much for the cuisine ethnicity, it would probably get too complicated with that...but that's just my opinion.

I really like the rating option gives a sense of whether recipes are worth the effort on a fast day lol.

In terms of browsing recipes, I would prefer categorizing them by meal type and sub-categorizing by calorie range. For example

Lunch- Under 300,
Dinner- 400-500,
Snacks under 200 kcal or something of that sort.

I'm sure others will chime in, but I just want to thank you for all the effort you're putting into developing the forum. It's definitely appreciated Moogie )

[wildmissus]

Rather than meal type what about categories - soups, stews, eggs, grills, takeaways, salads, puds, breakfast etc

Please also include measures as well as weights e.g. Cups, 1/2 cups. Thanks for the idea, it's easy to get bored with the same fast meals.

Would really appreciate the conversion of units "on the fly". I work in metric units, and sometimes struggle with the conversion from imperial, and particularly from "cups", which don't mean a thing to me!

Forgot to say - thanks very much for considering doing this. It will be very useful.

For headings, have a look at how BBC Food classify their recipes. Lots of headings I wouldn't have thought of.

A very good idea, easy to default to the same foods all the time.

Thanks Moogie that is a great idea . It would be really helpful if you could please categorise them by vegan or vegetarian as well as by gluten free GF. As a person with severe coeliac disease, I need to avoid wheat, rye barley and oats. I know here are lots of other vegans out there too these days. Thanks for a very helpful forum
Elayne
Sydney

Hi

I'm new to the forum but have been doing the 5:2 diet for two weeks now.
I have limited myself to 500 calories on fast days and 1200 on non-fast days and am using My Fitness Pal to keep track of what I am eating - I find it very useful indeed.

I notice that you are thinking of posting recipes and I would be delighted to find some new and interesting ones here, its a great idea.

I am 12 stone and 5' 2" - far too heavy and would like to lose 2 stone. Also I'm 67 years old - never too late!!

It would be nice if people could post the amount of calories in their recipes - this helps a lot - I'm so looking forward to reading them.

Thanks for this forum - i'm going to put a short cut on my computer to it so I can keep checking back.

I'd search for recipes by vegetable first (we work around the veg box...), then calories - looking for no more than 300 for a main meal, then serving one or two people - easily doubled or halved. I doubt people will be cooking v.low cal meals for more than two servings?

[Moogie]

Okay, so possibly the ability to search on specific ingredients (which will of course depend rather on people spelling them correctly!).

As for number of servings, I plan to have a calories per serving which is searchable and then possibly some kind of tool to recalculate the recipe based on the number of servings required. I actually like to batch cook and freeze in my spare servings for easy fast day meals, so for example my lasagne recipe serves 6 and the chilli I make serves 8!

Thanks; this idea sounds sensible as we all strive to not let this get boring!!
Could we have the recipes broken down to to Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner which makes it easier to find?
Looking forward to seeing the results.

Thanks, Moogle for thinking of this. Personal perspective:

Type of dish – Vegetarian, Piscatarian, or Carnivore

Calorific value per portion and whole dish

Portions (number of)

Time taken

Ingredients

Whether breakfast, lunch or dinner is a purely arbitrary decision, based on mood,
time of day, hunger drive etc I tend to make up my mind based on how I am feeling on a particular diet day.
Contrary Mary, that’s me!!

Atricapilla

Hi Moogie

On your list of books - have you tried any of them? If so which ones and what did you think?? Regards

Just adding my thanks for this... Personally I like the idea of putting them in categories like "under 100 cals"/ between 100 & 250 calories...something like that. I tend to search by the numbers rather than anything else!

But whatever you do, it will be a lot of work - so THANK YOU!