symbol marking it as a recipe.)
When you're creating a new item in the Recipe Box or revising an old one, here's how to fill in the blocks:
Food Name
Try to name recipes by the same rules Diet Power uses¾it will save you trouble later. See Naming New Foods and Recipes.
Categories
Diet Power has assigned every food in its original dictionary to at least one of its 72 food categories, and some to several categories. (Brownies, for example, are categorized under both Cookies and Cakes.) Each recipe is automatically placed in the "User-added recipes" category, but you can also put it into one or two other categories. (You can also place it in some other category instead of User-Added Recipes, but then it won't show up in User-Added Recipe category searches. Nevertheless, it will still retain the symbol marking it as a recipe.)
To place a recipe in additional categories, click any of the blank category buttons at the bottom of the page you're using to create or edit the recipe. This will open a list of the categories. Then scroll to the category you want, and click it. Diet Power will replace the button with a little text window containing the category name.
To place the recipe in a second additional category, repeat the procedure on the other blank button.
If you change your mind about any category you've chosen, click the category name and the list will appear again, ready for you to select an alternative. (To restore the button to no category, click the blank space at the top of the list.)
Number of Servings
Key in the number of servings the recipe makes. Remember that this will determine the size of the serving that appears whenever you begin to record the recipe in your Food Log. If the recipe makes four cups and your usual serving is half a cup, for example, enter an 8 in the Number-of-Servings block, to make the single serving come to half a cup. That way, you'll seldom have to adjust the serving when logging the item.
Recording the Ingredients
Put the cursor in the Find block. Then, for each ingredient, follow these steps:
1. Find the ingredient in the dictionary (the largest window, near the top of the screen), by either scrolling or using the search techniques described under Dictionaries, Searching the.
2. Double-click the found ingredient with the left mouse button, or drag and drop it into the Ingredients List (the middle window) with the right mouse button. Either action will open the Portion Editor, showing a standard amount of the ingredient.
3. If your recipe calls for a different amount, type that in place of the standard amount.
4. Click the Portion Editor's OK button. The Portion Editor will disappear and the proper amount of the ingredient will show up in the Ingredients List.
If the recipe is to be cooked¼
¼then you must decide whether to enter raw ingredients or cooked. Each offers one advantage:
· Cooked ingredients will make the nutrient profile more accurate. If your recipe is for scalloped potatoes, for example, entering raw potatoes would exaggerate its vitamin-C content¾because an ounce of raw potato flesh contains 5.5 milligrams of vitamin C, while an ounce of boiled potato flesh contains only 2.1 and an ounce of baked potato flesh only 3.6. (Which of the two cooked varieties should you enter? Probably the baked. It's true that scalloped potatoes are cooked in a boiling sauce¾but the sauce isn't thrown away, as when potatoes are boiled in water.)
· Raw ingredients will sometimes make the recipe easier to understand when printed out for friends and relatives. In this case, if you enter baked potatoes in order to represent the nutrients accurately, your printout will imply that the potatoes must be baked before being added to the other ingredients¾which isn't true.
In general then, it's better to enter cooked ingredients if the recipe is for yourself only, and better to enter raw ones if you're printing the recipe for other people.
If the recipe is to be frozen¼
¼it will still end up fairly close, nutritionally, to the sum of its ingredients. Hence, you should enter frozen versions of the ingredients only when they are actually frozen before their use as ingredients.
To create an ingredient that you can't find in the dictionary¼
¼click the tab labeled "Quick Food." For details, see Quick Food.
To check the recipe's nutrient profile¼
¼click the tab labeled "Nutrient Profile." (You can do this at any time¾even before the recipe is finished. To come back and resume working on the recipe, just click its tab again.) For tips on interpreting nutrient profiles, see Nutrient Profile, Viewing a Food's or Recipe's.
To revise the amount of an ingredient:
1. In the Ingredients List, double-click the ingredient. The Portion Editor will reappear.
2. Type a new amount over the old.
3. Click the Portion Editor's OK button.
To delete an ingredient:
1. In the Ingredients List, highlight the ingredient by clicking it.
2. Click the button labeled "Delete This Ingredient." When asked to confirm the deletion, click Yes.
To write or edit the directions¼
¼click the Directions pad to put the cursor in it. Then type away. The pad will accept between 200 and 700 words, depending on the number of ingredients in the recipe. (The limiting factor is the recipe's printout, which must fit on a single 8-1/2-by-11 sheet.)
For editing, the pad has a built-in word processor that works much like Windows Notepad, except that the commands on its Edit Menu (used for cutting, copying, pasting, and deleting blocks of text) are not listed on the screen¾you open them by clicking the right mouse button anywhere on the pad. For detailed instructions, see Word Processor, Diet Power's.