1. What is this F.A.Q. for?

Gourmet is intended to be as intuitive to use as possible. If
you find something in gourmet counterintuitive, confusing, or
hard-to-use, I'll consider it a bug and try my best to fix it.

Although Gourmet is intended to be intuitive to use, it is not always
so. Rather than write a complete manual, I've put together a brief
list of pointers in the form of this F.A.Q., trying to focus on those
elements of Gourmet that are not as transparent to the user.

2. Getting recipes

2.a Where can I get some recipes for Gourmet?

Gourmet can easily import mealmaster and mastercook files. There are
large archives of these files available on the web -- search for the
kind of recipes you're interested in an "mealmaster" or "mastercook",
and you should find them.

Gourmet can also import recipes from websites. A very few websites
have support for automated import. In most cases, Gourmet will pop up
a window asking you to identify the title, source, ingredients,
etc. from the text of the recipe on the webpage. Then Gourmet will ask
if you want to choose any images from the webpage to associate with
the web page.

2.b. What is that funny dialog about "encoding" that comes up when I import?

There exist many different ways to "encode" the same characters. When
a recipe includes accented characters or symbols (like the degree
symbol), it is important that Gourmet choose the right encoding to
read the recipe, or all of these characters will come out wrong.

When Gourmet encounters a file with unusual characters, it limits the
possible encodings to as few choices as possible and then presents you
with a choice, showing you the file with different encodings. The
lines where the different encodings result in different characters are
highlighted yellow, so you can quickly scroll to them and see which
encoding looks right.

3. How do I do complicated searches?

Using the "Limit" button, you can combine any of searches Gourmet
offers. For example, you can first search for Category "Salad", then
press "Limit", and then search for Jícama, in order to find all Salads
with Jícama in them.

Using "Advanced" searching (on by default), you can also use "or" to
search for e.g. something with a category that is category or
appetizer.

Gourmet also supports regular expression searching. If you know what
that is, you'll find it very useful. If you don't know what it is,
know that searches with punctuation in them may not work as expected
(not that there's much reason to search within a recipe for
punctuation).

4. Shopping lists

4.a. How do I create a shopping list?

There are two ways: Click on the "Add to shopping list" button from a
recipe card, or, click on the "Add to shopping list" button with one
or more recipes selected in the recipe index view. You can also type
"C-L" from either view to add to the shopping list more quickly.

4.b. What is the "pantry" for?

The idea of the "pantry" list is to record ingredients that you do not
want to shop for. In my kitchen, for example, I almost never need to
buy any of the basic spices, or staples like flour, butter, sugar,
etc. So I put them in my pantry list.

The reason these are added to a list rather than simply deleted from
your shopping list is so that you can always see what ingredients a
recipe calls for -- for the rare cases when you've run out of a staple
that's usually in your pantry.

4.c. So how can I delete recipes from my shopping list?

Drag them to the pantry list. Or use the "remove from shopping list" button
on the toolbar. Or type "Control-D" while the item is selected. The idea of
the "pantry" is just a metaphor -- you should put anything you don't want on your
shopping list into the pantry list, regardless of whether you actually have those items.

4.d. So how can I move something from my pantry back onto my shopping list.

Drag the item from the pantry list to the shopping list. Or use the
button on the toolbar. Or type "Control-B" ("B" for Back) while the
item is selected.

5. Entering and Editing recipes

5.a. How do I edit recipes

When you create a recipe card, you open a window with multiple
tabs. The first "recipe card" tab displays the recipe and allows you
to multiply your recipe.

The other tabs are for editing different aspects of the recipe:
"Details" includes the title, image, category, cuisine, preparation
time, cooking time, etc. The other tabs are self-explanatory.

When you open a previously created recipe, you'll see an attractive
"Recipe Card" display. If you want to edit any part of this display,
click on the "Edit" button next to the relevant section. For example,
next to the "Ingredients" header, there's a "Edit ingredients" button
which will open the edit window on the ingredients tab.

5.b. There are two many fields; I don't care about X.

If you know that you never want to enter information about "Cuisine"
or "Preparation Time", you can remove the field from the "Details"
view to make recipe entry quicker for you.

To remove fields, open a recipe card, then select "Preferences" from
the "Edit" menu. You will then be able to hide the field you don't
like.

5.c. What are ingredient "key"s?

Ingredient "keys" are the standardized name for an ingredient that
will go on your shopping list and, in future versions of gourmet, be
used to look up nutritional information.

An ingredient like "Tomatoes, seeded and finely chopped" should be
keyed as "tomato" or "tomato, red" -- whatever you want to appear on
your shopping list.

Standardizing keys means your shopping list can properly combine
ingredients from various recipes, understanding that "Tomatoes, seeded
and finely chopped", "ripe tomatoes", and "3 tomatoes, in slices", are
all the same thing. If this doesn't matter to you, don't worry about
making your ingredient keys standard.

5.d. Is there a fast way to fix up ingredient keys?

Yes. The "Key Editor" under "Tools" allows you to browse and search
all the ingredient keys in your database. This way, you can search for
all instances of "pepper" and standardize "pepper", "pepper, black"
and "black pepper" to one key.

You can also see what recipe different keys are used in, so that if
you see something is obviously wrong, you can go correct it.

Finally, the Key Editor allows you to easily change amounts and units
as well, either for individual instances or en masse. Using the Key
Editor, you can easily change all instances of ts. to tsp., or you
could tell it that for water, you'd like to change all instances of 1
kg. to 1 liter.

5.e. How do I convert units?

Just edit the unit by clicking on the "unit" cell in your ingredient
list. Gourmet will then offer you a choice between simply changing the
unit and converting the item.

If you select 1/2 cup milk, for example, and change "cup" to "g.",
Gourmet will ask you whether you want to convert it (121.69 grams) or
simply change the unit (1/2 g.). Although Gourmet does know the
density of milk (allowing it to calculate this example), it can't
always to weight-to-volume conversions!

Gourmet also includes a unit converter under the "Tools" menu to let
you do any conversions you like.

5.f. What if about OR ingredients - this ingredient OR that?

Gourmet doesn't yet support this, because I haven't figured out a way
to make it work easily from the interface. If you have an idea about
how entering "X or Y" should work, please submit a feature request.

In the mean time, you can create the basic functionality of "OR" by
making both of the ingredients you want to choose between
optional. When you go to add the recipe to a shopping list, you'll be
given an option of which items to add, and you can choose. This isn't
perfect of course, because it allows you to add both or neither
ingredient, which is not what the recipe calls for!

6. How do I save recipes in a menu?

A frequent request is to have gourmet support saving collections of
recipes as a menu or daily/weekly/monthly plan. I hope to implement
some formal support for this feature in the future -- if you have
ideas what it should look like, please submit a Feature Request at
sourceforge.

In the mean time, Gourmet supports adding recipes as ingredients by
pressing on the "Add recipe as ingredient" button in the "Ingredients"
tab of a recipe card. Using this feature, you can create a menu by
creating a "New Recipe" and then adding as many recipes as
"ingredients" as you like.

7. Can I calculate nutritional information with Gourmet?

Yes! Gourmet includes a copy of the USDA nutritional database, which
has thousands of items. For now, Gourmet doesn't know about any
ingredients by default--unless you tell it about your ingredients,
Gourmet will always say it is "missing nutritional information" for
the items in your recipe. If you care about nutritional information,
click "Edit" and a new window will pop up and ask you to give it the
information it needs to calculate nutritional information, either
using the USDA database foods or entering nutritional information by
hand if necessary.

8. What if I have a good idea for how to improve Gourmet?

Please submit a feature request at the following website:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=649655&group_id=108118&func=browse

9. What if I find a bug?

Please submit a bug report at the following website:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=649652&group_id=108118&func=browse

10. What if I have a question not answered here?

Post your question in the Gourmet Help Forum here:
https://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=371768
Or, if for some reason that won't work, feel free to e-mail me at:
Thomas_Hinkle@alumni.brown.edu
