aem@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (a.e.mossberg) (10/27/90)
Contents: INTRODUCTION HEADERS RECIPE FORMATS MEASUREMENTS SUBMITTING AN ARTICLE FOLLOW-UPS TO ARTICLES ARTICLES FROM OTHER SOURCES WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ALT.GOURMAND DIGEST VERSION OF THIS GROUP INTRODUCTION Hi, Welcome to the monthly posting for Rec.Food.Recipes. This posting is designed to tell you a little about our newsgroup, and some suggested guidelines. First off, let me say that this is a moderated group. An utterly thankless job, but one which hopefully will keep a high-quality level of posting here (what's called a high signal/noise ratio on USENET). This group is designed for the dissemination of recipes. It was created early in 1990, when rec.food.cooking had more and more postings of both recipes and non-recipes. It was ultimately decided that a separate group for recipes was a *real good idea*, and a successful vote was held. (Net historians: the final vote was 233 for, and 116 against. The guidelines at the time specified that a successful vote was yes votes at least 2x no votes, and at least 100 more yes votes than no votes.) HEADERS This group, while primarily for recipes, also allows requests for recipes. I, as moderator, set up headers to reflect their content as unambiguously as possible. The Subject line consists of a uppercase keyword, followed by the actual message title. For example, Subject: PORK: Grecian Pork Chops Keywords are picked to be self-explanatory. Here are some typical ones: VEGAN PORK OVO BEEF OVO-LACTO LAMB LACTO DRINK REQUEST CHICKEN To head off the two or three questions I get every time this article is posted, OVO means the the recipe contains eggs, but not meat or milk products. LACTO means that it contains milk products but not eggs or meat, and OVO-LACTO means that it contains eggs and milk products but not meat. These are standard designators. Really. If an article contains multiple recipes which would normally get different keywords, I try to use the keyword which will get the largest readership for that article. For instance, if an article contains two OVO-LACTO recipes and one BEEF recipe, I will probably use OVO-LACTO rather than BEEF. Ovo-lacto vegetarians can ignore the BEEF recipe, but if I used the BEEF keyword they could miss the two OVO-LACTO recipes. RECIPE FORMATS Recipes can be any format. If you're interested in the late alt.gourmand and Brian Reid's USENET Cookbook Project, you may want to try to use that format. Details later. The important thing is to make your recipe clear. Don't depend on brand names being available elsewhere in the world or even in the same country or region. If you're using specialty ingredients, please give a brief description of what they are. I won't reject a recipe because of its format. Generally I won't reject anything sent to me. If it's not a recipe, I'll redirect it into one of the other rec.food sub-groups, usually rec.food.cooking. MEASUREMENTS Most, but not all, sites on USENET are located in the US. Hence most measurements you'll see will be in the customary US system rather than in the metric or UK systems. If you're out of the US, please remember this when following the recipes. Below is a conversion table that was submitted by foster@jumbly.enet.dec.com (Fruitbat): Fruitbat's guide to converting between UK measures and US measures ------------------------------------------------------------------ The measurements below provide simple conversions between imperial (UK) measures and metric (US) ones. The measurements given are approximate for convenience in recipes, and care must be taken when making cakes or pastries, when more accuracy may be needed. Conversions into cups are provided, and some of the differences in language noted. The format is UK = US. Measuring conversions (liquid) Measuring conversions (solid) ------------------------------ ----------------------------- 1 teaspoon = 1 teaspoon 1lb butter/margarine = 2 cups 1 tablespoon = ~1 tablespoon 1lb flour = 4 cups 2 tablespoons = 3 tablespoons 1lb caster sugar = 2 cups 3.5 tablespoons = 4 tablespoons 1lb icing sugar = 3 cups 4 tablespoons = 5 tablespoons 8oz rice = 1 cup 1 pint (20fl oz) = 16fl oz Pints to cups and litres ------------------------ 1.75 pints is approx 1 litre. ------------------------- | pints | cups | ml | ------------------------- | 0.25 | 0.667 | 150 | | 0.5 | 1.25 | 300 | | 0.75 | 2 | 450 | | 1 | 2.5 | 600 | | 1.5 | 3.75 | 900 | | 1.75 | | 1000 | | 2 | 5 | | ------------------------- Ounces to grammes (recommended nearest) --------------------------------------- 1kg is about 2lb 3oz. -------------------------------------------------------- | Oz g Oz g Oz g Oz g | -------------------------------------------------------- | 1 25 | 6 175 | 11 300 | 16 450 | (16oz = 1lb) | 2 50 | 7 200 | 12 350 | 17 465 | | 3 75 | 8 225 | 13 375 | 18 500 | | 4 100 | 9 250 | 14 400 | 19 550 | | 5 150 | 10 275 | 15 425 | 20 575 | -------------------------------------------------------- Oven temperatures ----------------- --------------------- |Gas Mk | oC | oF | --------------------- | 0.25 | 110 | 225 | Very cool | 0.5 | 120 | 250 | | 1 | 140 | 275 | Cool | 2 | 150 | 300 | | 3 | 160 | 325 | Moderate | 4 | 180 | 350 | | 5 | 190 | 375 | Moderately hot | 6 | 200 | 400 | | 7 | 220 | 425 | Hot | 8 | 230 | 450 | | 9 | 240 | 475 | Very hot --------------------- SUBMITTING AN ARTICLE Most news systems are set up to automatically forward any article posted to rec.food.recipes to the recipes submission address recipes@mthvax.cs.miami.edu Unfortunately, not all systems are properly set up, and some will reject a message posted to the group, give you an error message, or just toss the article away. If your news system exhibits this "feature", you should first notify your system administrator so they can do something about it. You can submit articles directly to the submission address by mailing them to recipes@mthvax.cs.miami.edu and bypass the local problem altogether. People receiving the digest version of this group should also mail their articles to that address. FOLLOW-UPS TO ARTICLES Follow-ups in rec.food.recipes are automatically set as appropriate. Regular recipes have follow-up set to rec.food.cooking, vegetarian (i.e. the OVO, VEGAN, etc. keywords) recipes are set to follow-up to rec.food.veg, drink recipes to rec.food.drink, and recipe requests are set to followup to rec.food.recipes itself. ARTICLES FROM OTHER SOURCES In general, individual recipes from copyrighted sources may be submitted, provided they are credited to the original source, and modified in some way. If a copyrighted source specifically restricts publication of any recipes, please don't submit them. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ALT.GOURMAND This group is not a renamed alt.gourmand, nor does it replace alt.gourmand. The alt.gourmand newsgroup is an on again/off again project of Brian Reid. Mostly off. It has had no postings since the creation of this group. The idea of alt.gourmand was this: You mailed your recipes to Brian. He would sift through them, and laboriously convert them into a special format (using a set of macros for troff called "recip") for The USENET Cookbook_. The recipes which make up _The USENET Cookbook_ and the software for manipulating and printing out the cookbook are archived on gatekeeper.dec.com. If you're interested in Brian's project, you may want to ftp the software and recipes from gatekeeper.dec.com. If you submit your recipe in the alt.gourmand format, I'll try to remember to cross-post it to alt.gourmand so if Brian resumes his project it may be included in the USENET Cookbook. If you want to retrieve recipes or the alt.gourmand software from gatekeeper.dec.com and don't know how, talk to your system administrator. You may have to use the mail archive server archive-server@gatekeeper.dec.com to get the files through e-mail. DIGEST VERSION OF THIS GROUP There is a digest mailing list of postings to this group. During the initial discussion for this newsgroup, several European usenetters said they couldn't get rec groups, so I have simple digesting software and mail them out when the file has around 10000-15000 bytes in it. If you'd like to get on the digest mailing list, send me a note at aem@mthvax.cs.miami.edu and I'll be happy to add you to the mailing list. The digest formerly tracked submissions to rec.food.recipes, but now consists of articles as posted to rec.food.recipes. Made it this far? Good. Back to our regularly scheduled articles.