Recipes

Lunch

Pasta

Linguine with Ham

Snacks

Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Supper

Coconut Curried Chicken
Greek Style Scampi
Linguine with Ham
Navy Bean and Artichoke Casserole with Goat Cheese
Slow Cooker Barbecue Beef Stew

Pie

Creamy Lime Pie

Why Edible Experiment?

There are three reasons this web site exists. The first is to make recipe presentation better. The second was to have a spot for my own recipes. The third was to goof off with some web technology.

I've tried to improve recipe presentation by:

Eliminating scrolling

I don't know about you but I find it a royal pain to be scrolling around when I'm cooking. Scroll up to see the ingredients. Scroll down to see the directions. Scroll up to see the ingredients. Scroll down to see the directions. Does my mouse or trackpad really need to be covered in flour?

I tried to fix this problem by using the wonderful Coda Slider. Click the next arrow and you're off. By using the slider, I could present the ingredients along with the instructions at all times. No more scrolling. Still a dusting of flour on the mouse, though. Nothing's perfect.

Of course, there are some limitations. If the ingredient list gets really long, there's potential for scrolling. Again, Nothing's perfect.

The slider also has the following advantages:

Presenting ingredients logically

Specific ingredients go with specific steps. Why not label what goes where? I've never seen (not even in books) the ingredients tied to the steps you are executing. For me, it's usually a hunt to go through the list again to find out what I need.

I added headers in the ingredient list to make things easier. Ideally, I'd like to have some sort of javascript checkmark thing going when you move through the recipe but I couldn't figure out a way to do this with a CMS.

The drawback is that is that when you have to split a single ingredient (for example: use two cloves of garlic in step 1 and three cloves in step 5) it makes it harder to figure out the total amounts you need right off the bat.

Fixing Fractions

This problem appears on web sites, in software, and in (unbelievably) books. Why on earth would you use 1/4 when you can use ¼? Come on folks.

About the Recipes

There's nothing particularly fancy here. I've culled the recipes from various sources that include:

Cooking Light
Canadian Living
Cordon Bleu
Simple
Magazines
Websites

For anyone with litigation in mind, note that a list of ingredients cannot be copyrighted or otherwise protected. If I'm not swiping your directions word for word (and I don't) I'm in the clear. Attributions are generally given.

I've cooked every recipe you see on this site. Some work out. Some don't. If my wife goes back for seconds, I've got a winner. If she shrugs her shoulders, well, I might make it again but not soon.

About me

I'm just a guy who has to cook. I'm too cheap to eat out and my schedule allows me (forces me) to do most of the cooking for my wife and kid. I like cooking and baking fine but I'm not a chef or obsessive about it.

I'm a technical writer by training but I do a significant amount of work on web sites. I've done a lot of work with content management systems (ExpressionEngine, Textpattern and WordPress). I also do more than a fair bit of Flash development and, officially, do a lot of messing around with single-source documentation publishing systems.

About this site

I did the original coding in Coda by Panic who originated the slider effect you see on this web site.

Chicken icons by IconBuffet via their Free Delivery service. The package in question is Poughkeepsie Chicken.

Each recipe is actually a weblog post. The site is built using ExpressionEngine because, frankly, doing something like this in WordPress would be a royal pain the ass.

Is the site perfect? No. It's just an experiment. I fully expect to see this implementation done better by someone else. But you saw it here first folks (as far as I know).

Contact

Got a recipe you want me to try? Have a comment? Just want to say hi? Email me at my spam magnet address: