Collection of Tips for First-Time Users

stevemur — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 19:15:49 GMT

What's BigOven all about? In a nutshell, BigOven for Windows lets you do lots of things with recipes, like:

Find virtually any recipe
Create meal plans
Share your best recipes with others, even get tips and variations for them that you might not have thought of
Create shopping lists
Rate recipes
Build your own favorite recipe collection
Email recipes to others
Set up private recipe swaps with your friends and family
Import recipes from other websites
Analyze recipes for their nutritional content
Add images... remember your favorites... and much more.

In BigOven's world, recipes reside in collections, called "recipe boxes", on your local PC. BigOven ships with a very small sample set of recipes, just to get you going (and to keep the initial download size conveniently small), but the trick with BigOven is to search the archive, view the recipe(s) you want, and make frequent use of the "Import!" button at the top of this window to bring it over into your recipe box.

You can see your current recipe box's content by looking at the left-hand window. Click on any recipe to see it in the view on the right. You can click on the Edit tab to edit any recipe in your local recipe box.

With the registered version of the program, you can create new recipe boxes, and keep an unlimited number of them on your PC. (There is no limit to the size of recipe boxes, other than your own hard drive.)

1) Quickly find recipes in our archive !

Want to import more recipes into your recipe box? It's easy.

Click the "Find" button in the toolbar, and type in a word or phrase that you might find in a recipe title, like "Grilled Chicken". You can tell BigOven to look in your current recipe box, or on BigOven.com, which contains over 150,000 recipes. You can click the "Import" button in the View window to import your recipe to your local recipe box. Adjust the serving sizes by clicking on the Scale button at the bottom of the "Edit" window.

Watch a demo of how to find recipes and add them to your shopping list.
(2 min) Requires Flash Player

Once you've found the recipe(s) you'd like, simply click the "Import!" button at the top of the "View" tab. This will import the recipe into your local recipe box. You may wish to mark this as a "Try Soon" recipe. If so, simply right click on the recipe, and choose "@Try Soon!" from the menu. You can quickly come back to the recipes you'd like to try soon with BigOven's easy filtering buttons at the top of the recipe results window.

2) Create your shopping list ! Once you find recipes you like, and you've adjusted the serving sizes to suit your needs, select them and click "Add to Shopping List" (or drag them onto the shopping list in the "Shopping" view). As you add multiple recipes, the items can be combined. Ingredients are automatically grouped by department. Not sure what ingredients go with what recipes? Simply click on each recipe in the Shopping View, and items will be highlighted by recipe.

3) Plan upcoming meals for the week ! Just click "Calendar". Simply find the recipes you want (see Step 1) and drag them onto the calendar.

4) Get nutritional information for your recipes ! Simply find the recipe you'd like, then click "Edit". Double click on the scale icon, and link each ingredient to the USDA nutritional data already included in BigOven. Then, click the View tab to get Nutrtition Facts.

5) Post your three favorite recipes to BigOven.com ! Why not? Join the fun; it's free. Enter a favorite recipe of yours into BigOven for Windows, and click the "Post Recipe" button, and follow the instructions. Who knows? You may have the next Five Star Recipe!

6) Import Recipes from Other Websites or Documents ! Copy any recipe to the clipboard, then choose "Screen Import" from the edit menu. Then, you simply highlight the title and click the button marked "Title". Highlight the ingredients and click the button marked "Ingredients". Etc. When done, press "Import". BigOven will instantly create a recipe in your local recipe box.

7) Share recipes with your favorite newsgroups or email lists easily ! You can copy recipes to the clipboard by highlighting the recipes in the results window, then choosing "Copy Recipe Text to Clipboard" from the edit menu. Then, post it to your Weblog, a newsgroup, or email it to friends. Cooking newsgroups you might be interested in exploring include rec.food.cooking and other rec.food newsgroups.

BigOven Tips

Collection of Tips for First-Time Users