One of the important focuses for us at Cucumbertown is to make the experience of recipe writing delightful. How can I write my recipes faster? What craving do I get when I look at it? What will make me forget my afternoon siesta to write a recipe? To answer this we embarked upon a journey trying to make every step of writing recipes easier. Making it better than the best way possible.

Stay with me as I add my favorite recipe in the most delightfully simple way possible, and in the process highlighting the features that we have at Cucumbertown.

I start by typing in the title in the Post Recipe page, which prompts me with related recipes. I scan through them to understand if there are similar recipes.

I then write the description followed by the ingredients.

After writing the top three ingredients I realize I need to write more. You can click the ‘add ingredients’. But there’s a better, faster way. Press “alt + r”. And there – just like that – it adds three more rows automagically. Bliss!

I press tab and then go on to add the next set of ingredients. If you want to add more, repeat the “alt+r” step again. 

The only catch here is that you should try doing this only when you are in the add ingredients textboxes or in the preparation methods.

I move on to preparation methods.

I start writing the preparation methods. As I keep writing, I realize I’ve forgotten to type in one of the ingredients. At this point, instead of going back I can just press ‘ctrl+i’.

A box shows up, allowing me to insert the ingredients at that place itself, without disturbing my flow. I  can add it and then continue.

Notice that I’ve added the ingredient to both the prep method & to the top list of ingredients. This, to us is one of the most important simplifications. Because we all forget what we want

I continue. I use the “alt+r” trick to add preparation methods too.

At step 10 I need to “mix ginger, garlic, oil etc.”. Now, instead of typing all the ingredients or writing “mix 1-4” I now type @. This allows me to pick up the ingredients from the top list.

So I write Mix @g.. gin.., @tu..turmeric, @cur..Curry leaves and complete. The @ symbol is a very very useful trick that will help you write very fast. It makes that experience of writing so helpful that I sometimes deliberately press @ just to see the ingredients I have on top.

With a mix of all these tips & tricks I complete the recipe in a much shorter time and without any mistakes.

If you want a gist of these tricks, press “?” while you are browsing. You’ll see the trick associated with each page.

Blissfully simple & delightfully smarter.

BTW, this recipe I just wrote, is Kerala Shrimp Pickle

We hope you’ll love these improvements as much as we’ve strived our best to make it naturally useful. Give us a heads up if you need help or you hit a wall. We’d love to hear your stories & feedback.