How to use this website

Finding a recipe

Type anything into the search box at the top — a recipe name, an ingredient, or the name of the person who added it — and press Search. On the main page you can also tap the buttons for a course like Breakfast, or a kind of food like American.

Doubling or halving a recipe

Open any recipe and look above the ingredients. Press × 2 to double it or ÷ 2 to cut it in half, and every amount changes for you. If the recipe says how many servings it makes, you can also press + and − to set the exact number of servings you need. You never have to do any arithmetic.

Press As written to put the amounts back the way they were.

Adding your own recipe

Press the + Add a Recipe button at the top of any page.
The first time, you will be asked for your name and email address. We email you a link; click it and you are signed in. There is no password to remember, and this website will remember you for about a year.
Fill in the recipe name, the ingredients, and the directions. Everything else is optional.
Write one ingredient per line, exactly how you would say it out loud: 8 ounces of cream cheese, 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla, powdered sugar to taste. A panel beside the box shows how the website read each line, so you can see it got the amounts right.
Press the big button at the bottom to save it.

Recipes that are not your own

Every recipe is shown as Recipe Name à la whoever it belongs to — Stuffed French Toast à la Barb Valentine.

If you are typing in somebody else's recipe, fill in the box marked Whose recipe is it? with their name. The recipe is then credited to them, and underneath it says Typed in by you. That way a recipe from a grandmother who never used a computer — or who is no longer with us — still carries her name.

Leave that box empty for your own cooking, and the recipe is simply à la you.

Adding photos

Every recipe can have up to 5 photos. On the add or edit page, scroll to Photos and press the button to choose them. On a phone you can take a picture right then.

There is nothing you need to do to a photo first. Pictures straight off a phone are usually far too big for a website, so this one shrinks them for you, turns them the right way up, and removes the hidden information a phone attaches — including the location where the photo was taken.

To take a photo off a recipe, open Edit this recipe, tick Remove this photo underneath it, and save. You can remove one and add another in the same save.

Fixing a mistake

Open your recipe and press Edit this recipe. You can change a recipe you added at any time. If you spot a problem in somebody else's recipe, leave a note at the bottom of it instead.

Leaving a note on a recipe

Scroll to the bottom of any recipe and write in the box. Notes are the place for the useful details: bake it 5 minutes longer, we use half the sugar, this doubles well.

Notes are checked automatically before they post. If something is written unkindly, the website will ask you to rewrite it. Nobody reads your notes before they go up — the check is done by the website itself.

Printing a recipe

Press Print this recipe at the bottom of any recipe. It prints large and plain, with the amounts set to whatever you scaled them to.

Making the text bigger

Press A+ in the top corner of any page to make everything larger, or A− to make it smaller. The website remembers your choice.