In this section, you'll learn about most of the LargoRecipes features you use every day. We'll use these features to plan and shop for a brunch.
If you haven't used LargoRecipes before and you haven't completed the first section of this tour, please do that first. In this section, I assume that you've mastered the tasks in the first one.
Remember, if you're restarting after a break, you need to pick Demonstration from the LargoRecipes menu to set up the data for this demonstration.
In this section:
Entering a list
You learned how to enter recipes in the the previous section, and the demonstration database includes some recipes we'll use in our brunch. In addition to the ingredients for the recipes themselves, we'll need to buy some more items to have a successful brunch. We collect these into a list so we don't forget to shop for them. (We could reuse and edit this list the next time we make brunch, since we will need at least some of the items again.)
To begin entering the list, click Recipes and choose New, then List. You get this:
This should remind you very strongly of the recipe frame you typed into in the previous lesson. In fact, it's exactly the same, except that there is no instructions area. Since you've already learned to enter titles and ingredients, I'll just give you the title, "Brunch Extras", and the list of items to enter:
Don't forget to click the Save button, the one that looks like this:
. Close the frame when you are done with it.
Combining recipes and lists into a plan
Gathering together all the recipes for brunch, as well as any lists containing non-recipe ingredients, makes it a snap to find all the items you need. Further, you can use the LargoRecipes shopping list feature to generate, edit, save, and print a list that shows everything you need to buy at the store to make your brunch happen. You use the Plan frame to do all this.
To create a new plan, click Recipes and choose New, then Plan. You see this:
Again, this should remind you of the recipe and list frames. The only big difference is that there are two items per line, a label and a recipe or list name. Use the label to describe each recipe or list in your plan - for instance, I often use labels like "Monday dinner" or "first course".
Call your plan "Largo Brunch" and give it these recipes and lists:
Save your plan with the save button .
For a clever way to make
plan creation even easier, see this tip below.
Using toolbar buttons
Notice that recipe, list, and plan frames have several little pictures around their top and right-hand sides. These are toolbar buttons you use to do useful things with your recipe - just click on the one you want. You already used two of these buttons in the previous section. Here's a summary of what each one does:
New. Appears on all frames. Wipes out what you've done so you can start
again. You might do this when you've saved one recipe, list, or plan,
and you want to start entering a new one. If you click this button
and you haven't saved your changes, LargoRecipes warns you that you
are going to lose your changes and you have a chance to change your mind.
Save. Appears on all frames. Saves your recipe, list, or plan. The button is disabled,
and the picture changes to a dimmer version, when you don't have any new
changes to save.
Print. Appears on all frames. Prints your recipe, list, or plan. You use the standard
system Print dialog to pick a printer. A typical recipe will look something like this
when printed:
Delete row. Appears on all frames. Deletes the current row. You used this button
to correct any errors you might have made in entering the pancake recipe.
Like the edit button, this button is disabled when you are not
using the list of ingredients - click on the row you want to delete
to enable the button.
Export. Appears on recipe frame only. Exports your recipe using RecipeML.
You'll learn all about this in the section called
Sharing recipes over the web.
Edit. Appears on recipe frame only. Edit an ingredient using a special frame to
enter each component: the quantity, measurement, and ingredient,
and any adjectives. You will practice using this button in the
next section, under the heading
Using the edit button and frame.
This button is disabled when you are not using the list of
ingredients - click on the row you want to edit to enable the
button.
Sort. Appears on list frame only. Sorts the ingredients in the list
alphabetically.
Shopping list. Appears on plan frame only. Creates a shopping list.
You will practice using this button in the next section of the
tour, under the heading
Making a shopping list.
View. Appears on plan frame only. View the recipe or plan
in the current row.
Searching
So far, we've entered plans, recipes and lists - but I haven't shown you how to retrieve what you've entered!
LargoRecipes uses a snazzy fetch
frame to find plans, recipes, and lists that you've typed in. You can look for a specific
recipe or for all recipes that contain a certain ingredient. To see the frame, click Recipe,
then Fetch. You see this:
Let's start with a simple search: we'll find the recipe called "Simple Huevos Rancheros". Tick the box next to the word "Recipe" and the picture of the pan of bacon and eggs.
Notice that all three lines -- Name, Ingredient, and Instructions -- become active. This is because it makes sense to use any or all of these items to search for recipes. We'll just use the name. Type "Simple Huevos Rancheros" in the box next to the word "Name", then click the Fetch button. The box below now contains a list of all the matching recipes; in this case, there is only one match. Double-click it, or click its name and then the Open button, and you see a new Recipe frame with the recipe you wanted.
Your search might return no results if you misspell the name of the recipe. If this
happens, type the name again, very carefully, and click the Fetch button. Another reason you
might not get any results is that you forgot to start the demonstration - you know this happened
if you don't have a warning on the screen explaining that LargoRecipes is using a special
demonstration database. Click LargoRecipes, then choose Demonstration, to fix this.
OK, time for a more complex search. Close the Recipe frame. Untick the "Recipe" box and tick both the "Plan" and "List" boxes. Notice that only the Name and Ingredient lines are now active, because plans and lists don't have instructions. We'll look for plans and lists whose names include the word "Brunch". To do this, look at the word in the box next to the label Name; it should say "contains". If it doesn't, click it and pick "contains" from the list that appears. (Notice you can also search for an exact match by picking "is exactly".) Now type "brunch" in the box and click Fetch.
The results now include both a plan (Largo Brunch) and a list (Brunch Extras), each identified by a nifty icon. (If you forget which icon means which thing, just look at the tick boxes at the top of the Fetch frame, where each icon appears next to its corresponding object.) Notice that the capitalisation didn't matter - it's "Brunch" in the items we found but "brunch" in what we typed.
Try some other searches to practice. For example, find the recipes that use eggs (you can search using exact match for the word "egg" or the word "eggs" -- either will work). What happens if you click the Fetch button when all the criterion boxes are blank?
You can drag and drop the recipes
and lists you fetch. Just click on one of them, hold the button down, and drag where you
like. You can drag the item to a text application like Microsoft Word, where it turns into
the name of the recipe or list. Even better, you can drag it to the right-hand column of
a plan frame. This is how I plan my recipes for the week: fetch the ones I want and drag
each one into the week's plan.
Last updated 28 October 2002
LargoRecipes source code, program, and web site copyright 2001-3 D.
Squirrel
This product is RecipeML compatible.