Now You're Cooking! Tips

1. Download the latest version from our website (www.ffts.com/download.htm).
2. Install it into a different folder than your prior version (use the default folder in most cases).
3. Run the new version and use File... Upgrade... to bring over/upgrade user files (including your reg info) from your prior version.
4. After a few weeks, when you are comfortable you have all your user files, you can remove the old version. To uninstall your prior version of NYC, run (cbl-click) the "unwise.exe" in its folder to uninstall it.

If you are upgrading from v4.x to v5.x, you will not be able to bring over your v4 registration info. Registered users should request an upgraded registration code from sales@loginetics.com (provide your name and registration number to receive your upgraded code).

Searching For Exact Phrases in Recipes

Need to find all recipes with an exact phrase in the name? Here is an example.

1. Press the Recipes toolbar button.
2. Click the "all recipes" radio button.
3. Press the Search... command button.

To I find all recipes with "rice pudding" in the name

4. Enter a comma at the end of your phrase in the search keyword list, like:

rice pudding,

When NYC sees a comma in your search string, it assumes commas are delimiting rather than spaces, so it will find all recipes with the string "rice pudding". To find recipes with multiple phrases, separate them with commas like this:

rice pudding, orange juice, sourdough bread

I would not eat a recipe with all these things in it, so this is a bad example, perhaps, but you get the idea.

In NYC v5, you can also delimit strings with quotes. Accordingly, the string:

"rice pudding" "orange juice" "sourdough bread"

would produce the same result as the comma-delimited string above.

Printing Recipes In a Search List to a File

After a search across cookbooks, you can print selected recipes from the search to a file
using the following steps:

1. Select File... Print...

2. Check the print-to-file checkbox, select recipes... radio button, then press the Print
button.

3. When the recipe selection window for the print appears, press the Search
button, perform your search across cookbooks.

4. From the search results list, select recipes to print and press the Apply button (NOT the
Print button on the search window) to get the selected recipes into the print queue.

5. Now press Print on the recipe select window, and you should see a confirmation message
that your text file has been created.

Working With NYC Category Limit During Importing

If you bump up against NYC's 200 category limit while importing large Meal-Master files, try these useful work-arounds:

Before importing...
1. Delete empty (Recipes...Categories...Find Empty...Delete) categories in your cookbook .
2. Delete meaningless categories in your cookbook from previous imports (e.g., "my stuff", "Aunt Em's", "new ones").
3. Create a new cookbook (File...New Cookbook...) and import into it, rather than into your main cookbook.
4. Use a text editor to break the import file into smaller files, then import each file into a new cookbook.

Avoiding Failed Imports of Meal-Master Recipes

When you import recipes into NYC, always use the Details... button on the import status window to determine the reason for
any imports that failed. From this same window you can also quickly edit a text file containing only those recipes that failed, so
that you can touch them up and reimport.

When a MM recipe fails to import into NYC, it is usually because one or more of its ingredients exceeded NYC's 35 character
limit on ingredient descriptions. Keeping the ingredient description short is a key to successful importing.

Often an ingredient is too lengthy because the author of the recipe put preparation-type adjectives in front of the ingredients
or used commas to separate an ingredient description from its preparations. For example, some ingredient descriptions
look like:

"peeled, sliced, potatoes" -OR- "potatoes, peeled and sliced"

which creates unnecessarily long ingredient descriptions when imported into NYC. The format that NYC expects, is:

"potatoes; peeled and sliced"

When NYC sees the semi-colon in this imported ingredient, it treats "potatoes" as the ingredient and "peeled and sliced" as
the preparation. A similar situation often occurs when a MM ingredient appears when "3 large potatoes" is formatted as

qty unit description
3 large potatoes

In this situation, it is more appropriate to format "large" as a unit of measure, rather than an adjective on the ingredient, as shown
here:

qty unit description
3 large potatoes

In this way, the imported ingredient description is kept to a minimum by proper use of the unit and preparation fields.

Checking For Duplicate Recipes With NYC

1. Kill Dupes button on the recipe selection window (Recipes... Recipes...).

Finds duplicate recipes within your open cookbook. You have the option to use a) recipe name; or b) recipe name, #ingredients, and #lines of directions for the dupe check. Duplicate recipes are deleted from the cookbook.

2. Kill Dupes Across Cookbooks data management tool (Tools... Data Management... Cookbooks tab).

Finds duplicate recipes across all cookbooks in the same directory as your open cookbook. You have the same options as above. Duplicates within each cookbook are deleted first, then duplicates found in different cookbooks are deleted from the larger of the two cookbooks.

3. Importing recipes (File... Import Recipes...).

Only recipe names are compared during this dupe checking, to avoid a huge penalty in import performance that would occur if more detailed dupe checking were combined with importing.

Tip:
1. If you want the fastest importing you can get, combined with the most rigorous dupe checking, select the FAST! (no dupe checking) option button on the Import window before you press the Import button. Then, after importing is complete, check for duplicates within your cookbook using the Kill Dupes button (detailed check) on the recipe selection window.

Organizing a large number of recipes with NYC

With NYC, you can maintain an unlimited number of cookbooks (up to 32,000 recipes in each), giving you capacity to handle an unlimited number of recipes. With NYC's ability to search, meal plan, dupe check, and print recipes across cookbooks, there is really no need to keep all your recipes in one cookbook.

In fact, there are many advantages to using smaller, multiple cookbooks. Large cookbooks use lots of RAM for cookbook indexes and this slows NYC performance. Also, the number of recipes per category can be very high with a large cookbook, even with 200 categories in use, making it difficult to find recipes. About 5,000 to 10,000 recipes per cookbook is a reasonable maximum size for good all-round NYC performance on a modern PC (say, 300 MHz and higher).

Multiple cookbooks also give you more flexibility in hierarchy and organization. For example, if you kept all recipes in one cookbook called MYCOOK, you might have a category called “desserts” with cookies, cakes, and pies in it. With multiple cookbooks, you could have a cookbook called DESSERTS with separate categories for “cookies”, “cakes”, and “pies”. If you are one of those power users with a collection of 100,000 recipes, you might even want an entire cookbook dedicated to COOKIES, with categories like “chocolate chip” and “oatmeal”.

Transferring NYC cookbooks to a new computer using floppies

If you have no backup medium except floppy disks, and you want to transfer a large cookbook onto a new computer but find it too large for a floppy, try this. Break your large cookbook into temporary smaller cookbooks that will fit on a floppy. First create several new cookbooks (File...New Cookbook...) and import about 400 recipes from your large cookbook into each small cookbook. Zip each small cookbook using File... Zip Cookbook... and use Explorer to copy the .zip file for each small cookbook onto one or more floppies. Copy the .zip file(s) from each floppy to the NYC \user directory on your new computer and unzip them. Then use NYC to open one of the small cookbooks you just imported and import all the others into it. You have now restored the original cookbook on your new computer.

Assign all imported recipes to a category

Create a new cookbook (File...New Cookbook...), then import recipes into the new cookbook. Tag all the recipes in this cookbook (Recipes...Recipes... select all recipes and press the Tag button). Then open the assign recipes window (Recipes... Categorize Recipes...) and select the category to which you want to assign the recipes. Press the tagged recipes radio button and select all recipes in the tag list. Then press the << button to assign the tagged recipes to the selected category.

Index recipes in your hardcopy cookbooks with NYC

Want to use NYC to index your favorite hardbound recipes, without entering them into NYC? There are many different ways to do this with NYC, but here is our suggestion. Create a new category named "hardcopy index" (use Recipes... Cookbook Categories...). Open a new recipe (Recipes... Recipes... New button). Name the recipe as it is named in your hardcover cookbook, then type the source cookbook name and the recipe's page number in the "Contributor" field. Press the Categories... button and select the "hardcopy index" category for the recipe, and any other categories you wish. Save the "recipe". Repeat for all your favorite recipes in those legacy cookbooks, and you now have a highly useful index. Use NYC's search feature to find all your favorite recipes by cookbook name (search for cookbook name with the contributor box checked in the search dialog box), or browse for recipes in the "hardcopy index" category.

Exclude categories during import

There is no explicit command for this, but there is a simple way to accomplish it. If you want to omit import categories, import the recipes into a new cookbook. Then use the Unassign All feature (Recipes... Categorize Recipes... Unassign All button) to remove all categorization from the imported recipes. Prior to importing, you may also want to uncheck "Transfer New Categories" in Tools... Options..., to avoid any new import categories showing up in your cookbook's category list.

Create a cookbook index

Create an index for a cookbook's categories and recipes using File... Print... Categories... NYC will prompt you to specify whether or not to include recipe names assigned to each category. To send the index to a file rather than to the printer, check the "print to file" checkbox before pressing the Print button.

Automatic recipe categorization

Assign recipes to categories manually if you like, but you can save considerable time and effort by using NYC's auto-assign capability. To auto-assign recipes to multiple categories, select Recipes... Recipes... and use the Auto-Assign feature. Customize how NYC categorizes recipes by modifying keyword strings that NYC uses for categorizing. This can be accomplished using Tools... Data Management... Categories tab and the Customize Auto-Assign... button.

Which recipes use a wok?

To find all recipes in a cookbook that use a certain cooking utensil or device (e.g., wok, pressure cooker), search for the device as a keyword, limiting the search to the recipe directions area.

Quickly add items to a shopping list

You can quickly add an item to your last used shopping list by double-clicking items in your price list (Shopping... Prices...).

Back to Now You're Cooking! Recipe Software

Last Updated: 3/14/2008 2:37 PM

Now You're Cooking! Tips

Food-for-Thought Software techsprt@loginetics.com