Comments on: The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Recipe Research Edition

By: Janis

Janis — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 15:30:52 +0000

For anyone inclined to track recipes electronically, I heartily recommend a site called Mealfire (dot com). While it’s a wonderful way to track your own recipes, it really shines as a “recipe aggregator” – letting you collect favorite recipes and images from other big recipe sites such as All Recipes, Epicurious, Martha Stewart, etc. at the touch of a bookmarklet button. If the site isn’t compatible with Mealfire, you simply copy and paste the ingredients and directions into their appropriate boxes. No more having to remember which site has which recipe that I’m looking for. I like using it to easily track modifications I’ve made to various recipes in my collection.

Mealfire lets you tag recipes for easy retrieval, print them, edit them, create grocery lists and schedule meals on a calendar. You can share the calendar with your iCal, Google calendar, Cozi, etc.

Mealfire is free – and, no, I have no affiliation with them other than being a most enthusiastic user of the service.

By: Gert

Gert — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 19:30:43 +0000

Trying out the barely soup you posted last week tonight. From the smell of it, it will be a big hit. I added some diced left over herbed beef roast I had, a pint jar of home made beef stock (from making roasts actually), 1/2 bottle white wine and a can of tomato sauce for the stock. I also added a bit of Lee & Perrin’s Worcestershire sauce and a bit of ground coriander to taste. We also added a carton of sliced mushrooms to give it that rich taste without making it mushroom barely soup. Everything else I left the same.

As we have a funeral for a neighbor to go to tonight this will be a nice late dinner I can put on a back burner for a couple of hours while we are gone and it made enough for a couple of families to enjoy together after such an unhappy event.

By: Fawn

Fawn — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 04:26:56 +0000

I would love another meal series!!!

By: Julia

Julia — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:17:32 +0000

On power outages:
One of my funnest memories as a child was the time the power went out for about a week following a major statewide storm.

School was out the whole week. We had “slumber parties” every night (i.e. sleeping in sleeping bags in the living room where the fireplace was. the rest of the house was too cold.)
Cooked food on (or in) the fireplace using whatever methods my parents could come up with.
And we kept food like milk out on the back porch where it was about 30 degrees in the daytime.

My parents were always well prepared for power outages (if nothing else) so I always thought they were fun :)

By: Johanna

Johanna — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 18:34:53 +0000

@David: If you want to be a pedant, why don’t you go and finish your Christmas puzzle? They’re very worried about you over there, you know.

By: David

David — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:48:22 +0000

Strictly speaking, to wish someone a happy holiday is to assume that the day is holy. To wish someone a happy row of lamps, by contrast, is a relatively inoccuous thing to do.

By: Carmen

Carmen — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:29:14 +0000

I’m excited about the Dinner with Family series! Always looking for new ideas.

By: Johanna

Johanna — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:13:49 +0000

@Adam P: It’s not the same. Christianity holds a position of privilege in Western society, so to say “Merry Christmas” to someone you don’t know well is to say “I assume you celebrate Christmas, which in any case is more important than other holidays that people might celebrate as well/instead.” Wishing an obviously non-Indian person a happy Diwali doesn’t carry the same implication.

What *I* don’t understand is why anyone has a problem with “Happy Holidays.” “Holidays” just means “whatever holidays you celebrate.” If you celebrate Christmas, then consider it a short form of “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.” What’s wrong with that?

By: Adam P

Adam P — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:00:52 +0000

I work with a nice woman of Indian descent, and she brings in samosas and other delicious Indian food for Diwali every year for her co-workers to share. She will often tell us “Happy Diwali!” at that time of year. Is anyone offended? No. I don’t understand why saying “Happy Christmas” or “Merry Christmas” could possibly offend anyone, Christian or not. Christmas is so secular in any case at this point, who really cares? “Happy Holidays” is so 1990s.

By: valleycat1

valleycat1 — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:46:05 +0000

Trent – when I started trying to weed through all my saved recipes & cookbooks, I used 2 smaller-sized photo albums (the kind with slip-in sleeves) for the first basic sort. One is labelled “to try” & the other “faves”. Once I try one out, it’s either discarded or moved to the ‘faves’ book, as appropriate. Now I’m working on getting the ‘faves’ retyped to upload to one of the sites for creating your own cookbook. It’s great to be able to go to the one for a sure-fire recipe – & to have all our favorites in one place instead of finding the right cookbook or file – , or to the other if we’re experimenting!