Thursday, June 22, 2006

Snacksby

A few years ago I had this idea for a countertop recipe appliance that would synch to the internet and pull down recipes based on what you have in your cupboard. Like a lot of great ideas I've come up with, this languished into obscurity, and I started using AllRecipes.com for my cooking needs. (And, FWIW, AllRecipes.com remains a pretty good, if hard to navigate, site.)

But today I chanced across Snacksby, a recipe site that gives you options based on the ingredients you enter in a field at the top of the screen. It looks to be a fun site, with different recipes tagged with "snackonomies" like vegetarian and low-calorie, and even provides ingredient substitutions if you're out of cloves or something. It also knows about measurements, so it won't pull up a recipe requiring a dozen eggs if you've only got two.

There's a link on the front page from comments to a review at LifeHacker:

Great idea but completely worthless at the moment given that they currently have less than a dozen recipes in there and are relying on users to fill the database.

Fair enough; but as another commenter posted, user-edited content is pretty easy to get. And once this does fill up, it'll be just what I'm looking for!

Update: check out this great message letting me know that they couldn't find a recipe for me!

SNACKSLET
You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot
so inoculate our old chicken stock but we shall eat relish of
it: I found you recipes not.

YOU
I was the more decieved.

SNACKSLET
Get thee to a grocery. Why wouldst thou be a
cooker of nothing? I am myself indifferent honest,
but yet I should accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
gluttonous, revengeful, ambitious, with more recipes at
my beck than I have cards to write them on,
imagination to give them shape, or time to cook them
in. What should such gourmets as I do crawling
between earth and heaven? We are arrant chefs,
all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a grocery.
Where're your cookbooks?

YOU
At home, my lord.

SNACKSLET
Let the pantry doors be shut upon them, that they may play
fruitless nowhere but in'r own kitchen. Farewell.

YOU
O, help him, you sweet heavens!

SNACKSLET
If thou dost cook, I'll give thee this compost
for thy dinner: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as
snow, thou shalt not escape famine. Get thee to a
grocery, go; farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs
cook, cook for a fool; for wise men know well enough
what illusory meals you make for them. To a grocery, go,
and quickly too. Farewell.

YOU
O heavenly powers, restore him!

SNACKSLET
I have heard of your garnishes too, well enough; God
has given your dishes one face, and you make them
another: you salt, you drizzle, and you accent, and
put ketchup on God's creatures, and make your wantonness
your diet. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath
made me hungry. I say, we will have no more meals:
those that have already, all but one, shall
eat; the rest shall starve as they are. To a
grocery, go.

Exeunt

Oh, Snacksby!
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.

Link

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