Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
We’re back to continue our series on Linux Help this month, as previously promised.
Recipe Management in Linux
Hang in there, what we’re discussing this month is relevant to Help, but it’ll be a bit of a journey to get there. One of the things I use a computer for is recipe management. Linux has a recipe manager that is part of the K Desktop Environment, or KDE, the KRECIPES application. Don’t worry, even though it’s a KDE application, you can still install and run it under the GNOME or Unity desktop environments. You can install krecipes using the Synaptic Package Manager or from a terminal command-line, using the command:
sudo apt-get install krecipes
For more on how to install software, refer back to the Everyday Ubuntu column in Full Circle Magazine #130, page 36. You also might want to install the krecipes-doc and krecipes-data packages while you’re at it.
Buttermilk Biscuits for Two
I wanted to add new recipes to the existing samples, so I decided to use a recipe I adapted from YouTube, that I found on Ken Click’s channel. Ken has some great recipes for one or for two, something the world does not have enough of, if you ask me, and I really like his ‘flaky biscuits for two’ recipe. Check out Ken’s YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4bgbP1BW74_DE8loU45i6Q. Ken also kindly granted permission to use not only the recipe in Everyday Ubuntu this month, but also to use his biscuit thumbnail picture. So, here is the adapted recipe (you can find Ken’s original, that uses whole milk, on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy_dqphsakU):
Buttermilk Biscuits for Two
Ingredients: • Just over 1 cup all purpose flour • 1/2 teaspoon sugar • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder • 1/4 teaspoon salt • 3 tablespoons cold salted butter • A little under 1/2 cup buttermilk
Instructions: • Mix all dry ingredients with a wire whisk. • Cut 3 tbsp COLD butter into small pieces and incorporate into dry ingredients. This can be done by fingers, fork, or pastry cutter. Incorporate butter thoroughly until mixture is uniform, with a texture like wet sand. • Make a well in the center and add a little less than a half cup of buttermilk. Slowly and gently start pulling flour into center with a wooden spoon or a spatula. Continue until all flour is incorporated. • Turn onto a well-floured surface, dust dough ball with flour, and flatten out with hands or rolling pin. • Fold over halfway, rotate a half-turn, and fold over again, re-flatten. Repeat about 4 or 5 times, but do not overwork the dough. That said, some folding is necessary to make the biscuits come out flaky. • Cut the rolled out dough into equal halves, roll each into a ball and flatten until about 1 to 1 ½ inches thick. • Put into a pan sprayed with non-stick cooking spray and place in a preheated 400 degree oven for 10-12 minutes, until lightly browned.
Yield: Two biscuits
Adding a New Recipe
Okay, so now let’s add our new ‘buttermilk biscuits for two’ recipe to krecipes. Invoke the Dash (top icon in the launcher, that looks like the Ubuntu wheel logo) and search for krecipes, then click it to launch. In krecipes, go to New Recipe in the top left. You’ll get this screen:
Type in a recipe name, then click the + next to ‘Authors’. Click the + sign in the Authors dialogue box and type in (or select) the name of the recipe’s author, then click + again to add. Repeat if needed for multiple authors. Click OK when done.
Back on the main New Recipe screen, click the + next to Category. We don’t have a ‘bread’ category by default, and that would probably be a useful category, so let’s add it by hitting +, in the dialogue box clicking + New Category, and typing in ‘bread’. When done, click OK to return to the main New Recipe window and type in the yield amounts/measurements, then use the spinner control to adjust prep time. Prep time maxes out at 23:59. I initially took it to mean minutes:seconds, but it seems obvious now it means hours:minutes. Of course, preparing a proper pate de faisan en croute may take well over 24 hours, but how often do you make that?
Once that’s done, click the Ingredients tab up top. Add the ingredient name, amount, unit of measurement, prep method (optional), then click the ‘Add’ button (top one on the right side, looks like a dog-eared page), repeat as necessary until all ingredients are added. Amounts have to be decimal (e.g., 1/2=.5), and standard abbreviations like ‘tsp’ will work fine for units of measurement:
Now click ‘Instructions’ at the top and enter the recipe directions.
All right, we’re DONE! Well, almost, and here’s where we get to the Help portion of this month’s column. Go back to the ‘recipe’ tab. See the (default) picture of Tux in a chef’s hat (or ‘toque blanche’)? That’s a placeholder for us to insert a picture of our dish. I downloaded the thumbnail of a plate of biscuits from Ken Click’s site and tried to insert it by clicking the ellipsis button (…) underneath the Tux placeholder and navigating to the location where I saved the file (in jpeg format as ‘biscuits.jpeg’), then inserted it. And everything looks fine:
Save the recipe (‘Save’ button at top), click ‘Find/Edit Recipes’, locate and reopen it, and … the picture still looks like a toque’d Tux,
Additionally, our Instructions have vanished! What is going on here?
Help! I Need Somebody….
Well, that will be our focus next month. How do we get help with this problem? And I’ll be candid with you, we may not get a solution, but there is definitely still value in going through the process as a learning experience. And, it’s a good thing to have the resourcefulness to come up with new ways to achieve our end goal even if we find we have to tackle the problem from a new angle.
Next month: Getting Even More Help in Linux (or Even More Getting Help in Linux, I suppose). Fingers crossed in hopes of a solution….