ottawa foodies

Greetings from Toronto. (stop booing!) :)

Does anyone here store their recipes online? If so, where do you store them, and what's your experience been?

My wife and I gave up, so we created our own recipe site. Our inspiration came from our recipe scrapbook, which holds not only recipes, but also stories. I think we were also getting frustrated with the way recipes are treated on the big recipe websites. Why do the recipes have to be in font size 2 and surrounded by advertising for stuff that is in no way realted to food?

Anyway, I'm hoping some of you can check out our site and let me know what you think. Would you use it?

www.deadgrandmacookies.com

Don't worry....no Grandma's were hurt during the creation of this site. :)

Thanks in advance!!!!!

Lee

Beauty design!
Also, I like the name.

My boyfriend's business is called Tossing Cats Carpentry. Similar to yours in the way that he doesn't hurtle cats off buildings.

i checked it out. i like your site, like the design and love the simplicity. i loathe most recipe sites online, yours is definitely much better.

personally, i probably wouldn't type up and enter recipes of my own onto the site. for my own cooking, i print off recipes and stick them in a photo album (easy to read, keeps them clean and you can fit a lot in). for online, i love to find recipes, then i tend to bookmark the ones that look good and i eventually want to try. i think your site is based on the hopes that people want to share their tested recipes online with the general public?

Yessi, Hipfunkyfan;

Thanks for checking out the site and giving me your feedback.

There are only two ways to add recipes. You either have to type/copy-paste them in (which takes time), or if you come across someone else's recipe you like, just click to add it to your scrapbook (which is as easy as...well..pie).

I'm hoping people will take the time to enter their recipes for a few reasons. First, as you mentioned, so they can be shared. Second, so they can watch as others add stories to their recipes (imagine reading that your cake recipe made a little kid happy after he lost a pet). And third, I think this is as close as you can get to putting your kitchen scrapbook online. I know it's not exactly the same....but hey, you do get unlimited pages! :)

Ingredients should be hotlinked after entered, so I can click on "oatmeal" and then see a list of all your recipes with that ingredient.

Also I found the drop down at the left about type of recipe to basically serve the same purpose as the tick-box tags at the bottom. So I found that confusing at best.

You might want to eventually add a tags search like this site has, where you can search on one tag and then add tags to narrow down your search.

Yessi, Hipfunkyfan;

Thanks for checking out the site and giving me your feedback.

There are only two ways to add recipes. You either have to type/copy-paste them in (which takes time), or if you come across someone else's recipe you like, just click to add it to your scrapbook (which is as easy as...well..pie).

I'm hoping people will take the time to enter their recipes for a few reasons. First, as you mentioned, so they can be shared. Second, so they can watch as others add stories to their recipes (imagine reading that your cake recipe made a little kid happy after he lost a pet). And third, I think this is as close as you can get to putting your kitchen scrapbook online. I know it's not exactly the same....but hey, you do get unlimited pages! :)

love the name

The name is very polarizing. The people who love it, really love it. The people who hate it, really hate it!

I'm quite torn about. I really like the name, but I'm worried it will turn many people away.

Other names I'm considering:
food scraps
beetroots
cabbage tales
bitter pear
beef cookies
the broccoli chronicles
food baby
grandmas cookies
my grandmas cookies
old grandmas cookies

Like I said...I'm really torn.

I'm also torn on the name. Made me laugh, but kind of made me wince uncomfortably at the same time, since both my grandmothers were good cooks and are definitely dead. I like that name better than the alternatives you're considering though. And I like the way it works too.

the current name is cute, but it doesn't tell me anything about what you are promoting. if your brand was dead grandma cookies, and you were selling the actual cookies, i would put the two together, but for a recipe website, i'd think about some alternatives. you could have a catchy name, with a tag line to promote what you are actually selling here (recipe sharing).

you can start off by making some lists. you want traffic to your site, you want people using your site. who is your target audience? who are the people currently sharing recipes? what demographic are they in? don't spend more time trying to come up with catchy names in lieu of building a user friendly, useful and original website.

what about changing "cookies" to "recipes" or "stories"? or just adding recipes or stories to the name?

grandma recipes?
grandma tales?
grandma stories?
dead grandma recipes?
my grandmas recipes?
old grandma recipes?
food tales?

The site reminds me of a millenium project we did within our family. One of my friends lamented that her mother, an amazing cook, had died young and ALL the family recipes died with her. No family celebration had been the same since. We decided to visit all of our aging relatives and get them to contribute their popular family recipes, bound them into a collection and gifted them back to everyone. It has proven to be a great legacy, especially since many of them have now passed on. Maybe something about the "legacy" aspect would work. Better to celebrate that in the name than the fact they are dead perhaps.

NOT Food Baby!!!

DEFINITELY Food Baby. By far my favourite name. Dead people do not make me want to eat.

Great design. I will definitely look into using this. Thanks for sharing.

How about www.likegrandmausedtomake.com?

Of course, www.likegrandmausedtomakebeforeshedied.co is funnier...

...

...

I am a horrible person.

I'm horrible too, because if I were baptist I might suggest:

whatgrandmawouldbemakingifshehadn'talreadygonetoherreward.

at least there's no dead or death in that title.

www.tastesofgrandma.com

Quirky name...

Keeping in line with your current theme, the catch phrase on the opening page can be "grandma might be dead, but her recipes live on"

Quirky, somewhat weird, but has a certain humour and fun feel to it, at least in my opinion.

You guys are awesome. Thanks for all the feedback.

HipFunkyFan: Thanks for the advice. I think you've hit the nail on the head. You mentioned concentrating on functionality more than the name. I completely agree. I developed this site as follows:

1. Designed a recipe site using my families recipe scrapbook as inspiration
2. Half way in I solicited feedback through feedbackarmy.com. Got some great advice and direction.
3. Added new functionality and new design elements.
4. Now I'm at the stage where I need feedback from foodies, and so far the feedback has been very positive....except of course....the name.

I'm feeling it's difficult to continue at this point until I nail down the name.

Blubarry: Your legacy story really touched me. You've got me really thinking about this and how it could translate into a name

OSoloMeal: I think we have the same sense of humour.

So here is my shortlist of names as it stand now (in no particular order)

These Try To Incorporate The Meaning Of The Site
------------------------------------------------
mygrandmasrecipes
foodscraps (a play on scrapbook)
foodmemories

These Are Fun Names That I'll Have To Build A Brand Around
----------------------------------------------------------
foodbaby
hipposoup
peanutdynamite
beetroots

Oh, and if you're interested in knowing when the site is officially ready to go, fire me an email to lee.hulsesmith@gmail.com, and I'll add you to the list.

Keep the original name. It's awesome. It's catchy. And it's funny. (And the interest in this thread is proof of this.)
C'mon, now. You've stumbled onto something great. Just my two centavos.

Love the site and the layout! I just signed up.
Thanks,
Lucie

You guys kill me! :)

Thanks for signing up Poutine! Let me know what you think!

So for the name, I'm still debating what to do. I'll let you know how it pans out.

Otherwise, the site will be in beta testing for the next four weeks. So please try it out and let me know if anything breaks, and what you would change to make it better (deadgrandmacookies@gmail.com). Only foodies like you guys are going to get this site tweaked correctly.

Thanks so much in advance!!!!!

Lee

Hello Fellow Recipe Scrapbookers!

Dead Grandma Cookies has been live for less than a month now, and I want to thank you again for the feedback. This forum has by far been the most engaging.

I'm writing to you because of one specific issue. The name "Dead Grandma Cookies". Here are some of the comments we received:

(1)That title makes it sound to me as if dead Grandma is an ingredient.
(2)The only thing I dislike is the word 'dead' in the name as it makes me creepy as if I am interacting with a dead person.
(3)It's too morbid for my taste.
(4)The name is depressing, so sad. Makes me not want to visit this website.

Overall, our stats showed that about half of users were so turned off by the name, they didn't want to explore further!
We knew the name was quite quirky, but we didn't expect this.

So after much debate, the search for a new name began, and with it has come a completely new look. After much work, I'm happy to say that this new name and new look just 'feels' right.

If you could have another look and let me know what you think, I would appreciate it sooo much!

www.mylifethroughfood.com

Thanks in advance Ottawa!

Lee
Toronto