Next Stop -- Padded Room

Yesterday, I finished quite a project. I completed the input on a large recipe database. The database contains over 8,900 records. Yes, folks, 8,900. I've been working on this for about a year and a half. I had a large pile to input and had a goal of getting it done by the end of September. It needs cleaning up but that is actually fun compared to doing the actual input which, at certain times yesterday, was close to sending me over the proverbial edge.

You are, no doubt, wondering what this is all about?

It started out with wanting to learn as much about a particular subject as possible. After purchasing a number of books, I started to see some patterns and themes emerging..."oh, so, to be good at this, you have to have this dish in your repertoire". So, I reasoned, if I built a database, I could better capture these patterns and hone in on what is essential about this cuisine. And, I started building and it started getting big and I continued to find authors whose work appealed to me. Some 80 authors later, I have 8,900 records in hand.

Yes, it takes a certain level of whackiness to fashion a vision of something like this. I'm not unaware of that. But, didn't people think Edison was nuts as he was trying to invent an electric lightbulb for the umpteenth time??? Ok, I'm no Edison, but it makes me feel better to make the comparison.

Honestly, the outcome is saleable, but only with changing it a bit to make it less specific to my needs/wants. I'm not sure I want to do that and I never intended it to be for anyone but me. I just thought it would be cool and useful to have.

I have other recipe databases -- I have one that's for recipes that I want to try (almost 3,000) and one for recipes I've tried (over 1,500). This gives me the ability to sort very quickly for something like all the gazpacho attempts over the past ten years. Or, I can run a list of the recipes I've clipped from magazines or printed off the internet for the past three months to give something a try. Another interesting application has been to sort through tried recipes from a particular cookbook and see, on average, how they passed my taste test.

Can you see how badly I wanted to be a researcher at one point in my life? Yes, as I was finishing my undergraduate degree, I thought graduate school was the next stop. In fact, I was well-prepared as I had worked four years straight in various labs for fun on top of going to school and working. But, I looked at the graduate students in their ripped Goodwill sweaters, eating loads of Ramen noodles and rejected that life for the thrill of high heels, high-end hairdressers and high gloss lipstick.

Yet, that need to explore, capture, and quantify information is intrinsic to my nature and emerges in the oddest ways -- like this crazy database.

Last night my mind was whirling with different questions this information will answer. And, then, comes the most exciting part: the information will translate into action -- I will begin to experimenting with the recipes in a directed and purposeful fashion. Blog posts about all of this are surely in the offing.

Food & Kisses, GiGi