It’s the Recipe’s Fault

VizChef Interview with IMI TechTalk Radio

On June 11, 2011, VizChef founder Tom Crawford was interviewed by Tom D’Auria on IMI TechTalk Radio which is “educating the masses one byte at a time”. During the almost 30 minutes, Tom & Tom cover common recipe problems, eating local, current & future kitchen technology, and, of course, the app.

Check it out here:

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VizChef on TechSmith’s The Forge

Yesterday, we had the privilege to be featured on The Forge which is a screencast by TechSmith, an awesome company that is the leader in screen and video capture. At VizChef, we use SnagIt to capture screenshots for all of our presentations, and Camtasia to record all of our “How To” videos on our FAQ [...]

It’s The Recipe’s Fault – Boiled and Mashed

Cooking is fun. Finding new ways to use ingredients or, better yet, leftovers can be invigorating. Deep fried macaroni and cheese sticks? Tasty. Chili from left over beef roast? Mouth watering. Potato cakes from left over mashed potatoes? Delicious. In fact, many recipes and cookbooks try to bring new life and excitement to leftovers. Knowing [...]

It's The Recipe's Fault - Divided

Ingredient lists were a huge and important innovation to the recipe format in the early-to-mid 1800′s. They solved the problem of ingredients buried in the middle of paragraph descriptions, making shopping and preparation easier and more efficient. In some recipe’s though, that goes too far. Pies are a frequent example since they often have two [...]

It’s The Recipe’s Fault – Compound Steps

This mistake started about 3,600 years ago with the first recipe the experts have found. It was written in paragraph form. That makes for easy reading, for sure, but it also makes it easy to lose your place. Have you ever stepped away from the recipe to take care of something on the stove, then [...]

It’s The Recipe’s Fault – Dredge

So what were recipes designed for in the first place? Well, best we can tell, it seems they were designed for a chef to remember how they made something. Later, the format became a great way for one chef to tell another chef (maybe an apprentice) how to make a dish. It wasn’t until the [...]

It’s The Recipe’s Fault – Ignite Ann Arbor

If you’ve liked our It’s The Recipe’s Fault series of posts, this quick 5 minute video gives an overview of the story. It was recorded on February 9, 2011 at Ignite Ann Arbor. Ignite is a fun, fast moving format with 20 slides that automatically advance every 15 seconds. Check out the video and let [...]

It’s The Recipe’s Fault – Loosely Packed

Sure, 1 Cup is a decent measure for water, chicken stock, or other liquids. After that, it starts to get progressively worse as a measuring device. It can even be okay for fine grain solids such as sugar and table salt, though sugar and salt can vary widely in grain size making this a less [...]

It’s The Recipe’s Fault – Halved Lengthwise

What is lengthwise on a Roma tomato? or any tomato for that matter.

It’s the recipe’s fault for not being more clear with it’s instructions. Certainly more words might have been helpful…top to bottom? stem to base? There are probably others. But easier than words are pictures or illustrations which could have easily solved [...]

It’s The Recipe’s Fault – Imbedded Process Steps

From an information design standpoint, this may be one of the recipe’s biggest flaws (though it has many). Things you need to do to ingredients (chopping, dicing, slicing, shredding, boiling, pulling, mashing, etc) are placed nowhere near the rest of the things you need to do (the process) for the rest of the recipe.

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