Adding instructions in manually entered recipe?

janalo55 wrote: »

Darn. I was hoping there was at least a place for notes. Thanks.

As a work-around, after creating the "recipe" in the recipe builder, you could copy and paste the ingredients to the blog space that MFP allots you and add your directions and notes there. Not great, as it would just be listed chronologically, but you could search it when you wanted to make a particular recipe again.

I did this early on in my MFP life for a few recipes I made up and didn't want to forget.

janalo55 wrote: »

I can't figure out how to add the instructions in a recipe. If I upload one, it puts the link to the website, which I don't really want because I often make changes and want those listed. But if I enter it manually, I can't even see where to put them. This particular one I tried to upload but it said "no recipe found" probably because people blog so much the recipe is lost as far as MFP detecting it. That's OK if I could add the instructions!

When you enter a recipe manually on a desktop computer, at the bottom there is an option "Would you like to submit this recipe to the MyFitnessPal recipe database?"

That's where you can add instructions

If you add it as a meal instead you can add the ingredients and instructions to it. at least in the app.

And we are in 2021, but MyFitnessPal still have not added the option to record instructions for recipes, only for meals... Ridiculous!

So, our current options are - for recipes you get ingredients automatically from the website with a recipe, but you are not able to add instructions, nor are you able to share the recipe with friends or other users. Or, you can create a meal where you have to manually add ingredients and search for them in the database one by one, and then you also have an option to add instructions, and share the meal with friends/public. This does not make sense at all.

Why is it so difficult to just merge these three functions (i.e. automatic scrapping of ingredients, ability to record instructions, and sharing with friends) together either in recipes or meals? I am not getting this, really...

Two comments:

1) For the last two months at least, I've been unable to get MFP to parse any online recipe. (Android app). And even when I copy and paste it makes the craziest guesses. (Like 2 Tbsp chili powder = 27 servings of 1 cup chili.)

2) I really like the Whisk app (free) for recipes! I can add both online and my own recipes.

Here's an example of a recipe that was saved to my Whisk:

https://whi.sk/an0Om

bold_rabbit wrote: »

Two comments:

1) For the last two months at least, I've been unable to get MFP to parse any online recipe. (Android app). And even when I copy and paste it makes the craziest guesses. (Like 2 Tbsp chili powder = 27 servings of 1 cup chili.)

2) I really like the Whisk app (free) for recipes! I can add both online and my own recipes.

Here's an example of a recipe that was saved to my Whisk:

https://whi.sk/an0Om

I can import recipes via desktop. (I only do this for the link to the recipe and the thumbnail.) It does make the craziest guesses, EVEN WHEN I USE SYNTAX THAT I KNOW EXISTS IN THE DATABASE.

I put in syntax from the USDA, MFP "matches" them all incorrectly, then I use Replace, copy and paste, and THEN it finds the right entry.

Last time, the importer got 6 of 6 ingredients wrong, but all but one of them were in fact in the MFP database.

janalo55 wrote: »

Darn. I was hoping there was at least a place for notes. Thanks.

That’s a great feature to suggest to MFP, there’s a forum for suggestions

ExBrooklyn98 wrote: »

This website is a bit of a nightmare! I'm coming off 12 years with SparkPeople which is shutting down next month. I had to create PDF files of the almost 500 recipes I created over the course of that 12 years because they offered NO way to export them! Now I decide to try MFP and I cannot even enter instructions for a recipe???? That is INSANE!!! That is something that should be standard for every site like this! I cannot import the recipes from Sparkpeople. It simply doesn't work. Says the page doesn't exist. ARRRGGGHHH!!!!!

In your situation I would save the pdfs in Google drive.

theonlyandyt wrote: »

The first post about this was way back in September 2018. It's now January 2024 and we STILL cant add a note to a recipie.

I suggest you get a notebook and create your own recipe book. You also could create documents in a word processor like Microsoft Word and then if you're really inspired create a database that linked to recipes so you could easily search for them.

The recipe feature on MFP is strictly a way for you to easily log the calories and nutritional information in recipes that you make frequently or from time to time. It's not an instruction book.

What kind of notes do you want to add?

@AnnPT77

Nice try, but you're going to have to try harder if you want me to retract my statement.

Recipes. Hmm. Here's a note:

I made more black bean soup yesterday. I put two cups of beans in a half-gallon jar the night before and covered with water. Then yesterday I drained them, put them in my pressure cooker, and put some water to boil in the kettle.

While I waited for the water to boil, I added the following to the pressure cooker:

• I don't know, maybe five carrots cut into two or three inch lengths
• A half yellow onion cut into four pieces
• A glove of garlic, peeled and each clove cut in half
• An amount of salt that looked right in the palm of my hand
• Eleven dried Chiles de Arbol
• Seven bay leaves from the tree outside that have been sitting in a basket from being decorative indoor greens I cut down to put alongside a plate full of cornbread I took to a gathering last month.
• The correct amount of cumin.
• A tiny splash of sunflower seed oil for the sole purpose of preventing foam.

I added the boiling water, but it wasn't quite enough so I added some more.

I put the lid on the pressure cooker, let it come to pressure, turned the heat down, and set the timer for five minutes.

When the timer was done, I took the pressure cooker off the heat and went for a nice walk.

When I got home an hour or so later, I opened the pressure cooker, went on a search mission to find all seven bay leaves. It was driving me crazy because I could only find six of the damn things. Then I went and looked in the compost and counted seven. I actually had removed them all but missed counting one. How annoying.

I spooned out a cup or maybe less of beans, and I returned any vegetables that came out with them to the pressure cooker.

I used the immersion blender to puree the soup, then added the whole beans back for texture.

Low calorie. A little protein. A little fiber. A lot of delicious. I sprinkle on some nutritional yeast when I serve it to add protein (all nine essential amino acids) and more fiber. It's damn good. I have two quarts left.

Next soup will be butternut squash soup again, and maybe after that some vegetable barley miso mushroom soup if I get the right ingredients.

Super easy. You should "Make a note of it."

Soak beans. Cook five minutes. Blitz. Eat.

I probably shouldn't NOTE the Japanese sweet potato. I sliced it into quarter-inch rounds, tossed it in hazelnut oil, sprinkled with hot chile, salt, pepper, powdered ginger, powdered turmeric, and powdered cinnamon, then put in a convection oven at 425F for 20 minutes, turned over and cooked another eight minutes and. Mmmmm.

PAV8888 wrote: »

28 minutes?!?!?!?!?! That's like FAMILY MEAL NUKE TIME LEVEL!

You're a person after my own heart! If it takes more than 10 minutes total or requires the use of something besides an air fryer or a microwave, it might as well not even exist! Frozen vegetables are one of the greatest inventions of all time, I'd probably starve without them.

PAV8888 wrote: »

750g bag (transferred in a glass container) percolates in the microwave for 5 minutes while coffee brews and then goes in the fridge for later use 😉 sometimes I cry when I run into 500g shrink-flated bags. Or have to deal with the horror of re closing a 2kg bag to put back in the freezer!!!🤣 I believe I am shocked every time I discover that veggies have to be washed and cleaned when not in their natural individually frozen state! 😱

I admit, however, that I was making my own purple yam brownie-likes while losing weight!

If I eat non-frozen produce, I just buy it pre-washed and cut. Takes even less time than frozen! Cucumbers are pretty much the only thing I peel and cut myself and that's just because I like to snack on cucumbers marinated in rice vinegar and chile flakes.