Week 3: More Than Ingredients

Last Sunday, I wrote that I wanted to build something people could use to connect through food.

Well, it’s Saturday.

Introducing More Than Ingredients

My expectations for this week were modest. I wanted a basic site where people could enter or import recipes, save them, share them, and use them in the kitchen.

I hoped thwe might get versioning working.

Instead, thwe built nearly every feature from my original vision. And then some.

More Than Ingredients is a digital recipe binder with friends.

You can add a recipe manually, import one from a website, save recipes from other members, follow chefs, and see what they have shared.

Recipes can be public or private. Private recipes can be shared through revocable links. Public recipes can be viewed through a direct link without forcing someone to create an account just to find out how much garlic goes into dinner.

You can mark recipes to try, add private notes, record that you’re making something, and answer one simple question afterward:

Would you make it again?

That still feels more useful to me than averaging star ratings.

Recipes have histories

Versioning was important to me from the beginning.

I copied Mr. Prisk’s pumpkin cookie recipe by hand when I was a teenager. I added chocolate chips and the missing baking instruction: Bake 20 minutes @ 350°. My mom changed the quantities, reduced the cinnamon, and added nutmeg to serve more than one Rob.

Which one is the recipe?

All of them.

More Than Ingredients lets someone create their own version while preserving its connection to the recipe that inspired it. Versions can have versions. Notes and contributions can travel through the family while still respecting who created, discovered, adapted, or contributed what.

The model underneath became surprisingly sophisticated.

The experience shouldn’t feel that way.

That became one of the themes of the week: elegance.

Not merely visual polish. Design, user flow, simplicity, and features that surprise and delight.

One of my favorite examples is the recipe editor. Paste a block of ingredients or instructions, and the system turns it into a structured, editable list. You can rearrange items, add headings, or make corrections without typing everything into separate fields.

Manual entry is still there if you want it.

The complicated part happens behind the curtain.

When something goes wrong

Importing recipes from the internet is messy. Some websites provide beautiful structured data. Others provide incomplete information. Social-media posts can be even less cooperative.

When an import fails, More Than Ingredients creates a temporary card in the member’s binder and sends the recipe to an administrator or moderator queue.

The member sees that it is coming soon. Someone behind the scenes repairs it, and the member receives a notification when it’s ready.

I think that is one of the most important things thwe built.

A failed import shouldn’t become the user’s technical problem. It should become our promise to finish the job.

Is anybody getting in?

The lowest point of the week was silence.

Joining a brand-new invitation-only recipe community is a big ask. When people didn’t immediately sign up, and Sherry wasn’t receiving invitation or password-reset emails, I couldn’t tell whether people were uninterested or the front door was broken.

Was the core mechanism of the entire site completely FUBAR?

Then Cole successfully created his account. So did my former boss at AdAdapted.

The front door worked. 😅

Cole also caught details thwe had missed. Separate username and display-name concepts made registration more complicated than necessary. He also suggested that choosing a different generic user icon should change its color.

Small changes, but they made the site feel more elegant.

There’s that word again.

Process leads to production

I’m shocked by how complete this product became in one week.

The process improvements carried forward from the first two projects helped me raise the stakes and accomplish more in less time.

Clearer briefs led to better builds. Testing created better requirements. Actually using the site exposed things planning could not.

Process leads to production.

The weak spot was UX feedback. The punch list became enormous, and describing visual problems through text is difficult. Screenshots and wireframes helped considerably.

Next time, significant UX changes need to become visual earlier: show the screen, mark the problem, and review the interaction before writing the code. Otherwise, one improvement can create three hotfixes and another opportunity to say “final final final.”

Image manipulation remains its own category of funny and frustrating. I’ll spare you the seventeen-version Made in Michigan logo saga. You can read that story instead.

Some scars deserve their own post.

It’s alive, so the list is growing

Using something naturally produces feedback.

I already have 10 post-launch improvements recorded.

That does not mean the product missed the finish line.

It means the more you use something, the more refinements you want to make.

More Than Ingredients also includes a suggestion box so members can tell me what isn’t working, what feels awkward, and what they wish it could do.

I expect the list to grow.

Always more things.

Now I need some people

More Than Ingredients is live, but invitation-only.

I want to grow it deliberately while I learn what happens when people other than me begin adding recipes, following each other, creating versions, and cooking what they find.

If that sounds interesting, request an invitation.

Once you’re inside, try one of my recipes. The Chicago Hot BBQ is REDONKULOUS!

Then share one of your own that you’re proud of.

Maybe it is a family recipe passed around for years. Maybe you created it yourself. Maybe it came from a friend, an index card, a binder, or a social-media post you were afraid you would never find again.

Add the recipe.

Credit the person behind it.

Tell us why it matters.

The goal was never simply to build another place to store ingredients.

It was to create a little more honest human connection over food.

Three weeks down. Forty-nine to go.