What Am I Craving?

January 25, 2008 10:19 PM

What Am I Craving? That's the question we always ask ourselves when thinking about what to eat. So we got to thinking: wouldn't it be cool to have a tool that could listen to what we were craving and then suggest something good to cook?
posted by amyms (28 comments total)

It thinks I'm typing "corn meal" when I'm actually typing "caramel". Who the hell craves cornmeal?

Still, this will be a fun toy. Thanks!
posted by padraigin at 10:27 PM on January 25, 2008

Mmm...cornbread...
posted by facetious at 10:35 PM on January 25, 2008

OMG yes yes yes I love this. Thank you amyms.
posted by YamwotIam at 10:40 PM on January 25, 2008

I'm craving...
dessert, custard, chocolate, pizza, unhealthy, meaty, worcestershire sauce, French...
Cook Steak Au Poivre!

I'm craving...
beef, blue cheese, honey, cheddar, sundried tomato, milk, red wine, macaroni...
Cook Marinated beef and Kale stew!

I'm craving...
burger, pasta, breakfast, grill, chicken, Soul food, forceful, corn meal [caramel]...
Cook Spicy Grilled Chicken Satays with Oregano!
posted by papakwanz at 10:46 PM on January 25, 2008

I'm craving... sugar... cod...

Result: Gingerbread pancakes?? Dammit, I wanted chocolate cod squares, not pancakes.

good site nonetheless
posted by crapmatic at 10:57 PM on January 25, 2008

It would be awesome if this was like Pandora, where you could say "no, this is not anywhere near what I was craving/yes, please give me more recipes like this one".

(seriously, corn meal?)
posted by padraigin at 11:06 PM on January 25, 2008

Well, I'm glad that I didn't get Goatse'd like I did with that "Judge What I'm Wearing" site, but mostly because no one has entered Goatse as a recipe yet.

I entered one of the most commonly craved dishes, "salad," and I got just one, vaguely salad-like item.

To be kind, I entered another commonly-craved food item (meat) into the search box, and all that got me was confirmation that search is not yet functional.

Nice idea, but when did people's random, unrealized whims become FPP material?
posted by freshwater_pr0n at 11:08 PM on January 25, 2008

i'm craving
pork -
olive oil -
onion -
mushroom -
parmesan -
sage -
celery -
ricotta salata -
And I get:

Porcini And Cremini Mushroom Risotto
1/4 cup dried porcini mushrooms
6 cups low-sodium broth (chicken or vegetable)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 pound fresh cremini mushrooms, stemmed and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium onion, diced
1 1/2 cups Arborio or Carnaroli rice
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 cup freshly grated parmesan

Wait. What??
posted by Floydd at 11:11 PM on January 25, 2008

Recipe for Goastse:

ingredient: strong cheese!

But it has to be a finger food!
posted by Samuel Farrow at 11:11 PM on January 25, 2008

I am craving someone to prepare and bring me a nice snack. The website does not seem to understand me.
posted by Cranberry at 11:20 PM on January 25, 2008 [3 favorites]

I crave sushi and beer. It gives me "Green Onion Beer Bread"

I think I'll go out and get some sushi and a beer.
posted by not_on_display at 11:44 PM on January 25, 2008 [1 favorite]

It is because of this thread that I remembered the delicious corn muffins sitting in my fridge.

Thanks, thread.
posted by obvious at 12:44 AM on January 26, 2008

Why do 90% of the combinations I come up with lead to Mediterranean lentil soup?
posted by redbeard at 12:51 AM on January 26, 2008

Everything I type in gives me couscous, and I fucking hate couscous.

Great idea, terrible execution.
posted by mek at 1:22 AM on January 26, 2008

I wasn't terribly specific with my parameters (wintry, beef, entree), and got Indian Style Beef and Sweet Potatoes, which sounds pretty good. I think I'll give it a try.

On the other hand, for "exquisite Neapolitan dessert" I get Lemon Quinoa With Asparagus and Feta. Guess you can't win them all.
posted by taz at 2:01 AM on January 26, 2008

avocado + indulgent = Avocado with Bacon Vinagrette. Right on!
posted by availablelight at 3:10 AM on January 26, 2008

taz, from the picture, that second dish looks like birdseed?
posted by hadjiboy at 3:16 AM on January 26, 2008

Try using it with javascript disabled. You get lovely views of some of their code:

addCravedRecipeUnit("beef", "174", "ingredient_categories", "");
showTags("ingredients");
resetFormInput("term");
posted by srboisvert at 3:19 AM on January 26, 2008

I craved "chocolate", and its tag-cloud mood-response highlighted non-dairy.

That's just wrong.
posted by honest knave at 4:36 AM on January 26, 2008

When I say I'm craving rice, it doesn't understand. Nor does it have rice in their ingredient list. Wha???
posted by evening at 5:48 AM on January 26, 2008

"Caramel" problem solved. Thanks for letting us know about that, padraigin. (At some point, somewhere, there must have been someone who craved corn meal. Right? No. Maybe not.)

Actually, you can see similar results like Pandora. When you use the tool and get to a recipe page, most of the time, there will be an "almost...show me more recipes" link just above the recipe. (We've considered adding a thumbs up/down or some other rating system so that you can rate recipes based on what you were searching for. Would you use this?)

This depends on the number of search tags you enter. papakwanz: if you can find recipes with those combinations of ingredients, we'd love to add them! In the meantime, we have to take what you've plugged in and find the closest match. Floydd, that doesn't sound so bad. We're working on some ways to allow you to prioritize your tags so that if you were mostly craving pork but have those other things in your pantry, it would lean towards giving you a pork dish first.

Another thing we're working on, mek, is the ability to "ban" ingredients or cuisine types or dishes or whatever. So if you hate couscous and never want a recipe with couscous in it, you can ban it. Or if you're not crazy about it but don't hate it, you can weight it down just a little.

In the next week or so, we'll launch the first version of our meal builder so that if you want to create and save a meal of individual recipes -- say, sushi and beer -- you can do that. You'll also be able to star recipes and reference articles so that you can get to them right away when you come back to the site.

Even then, though, we've still got a lot of holes. We're adding more recipes every day, though. We'll get recipes for babà and sfogliatelle on the site soon, taz, I promise.

If you keep using Cookthink, let me know how it goes (chip at cookthink dot com). Thanks amyms!
posted by chipbrantley at 6:38 AM on January 26, 2008

Weird, evening. Rice works fine for me. The tool's not the most intuitive thing in the world. If you type rice into the tool's search bar, you have to press the "+" key or hit return to add it to the orange "I'm craving" box. Once you've got all your search tags plugged it, press "cookthink it." (Sounds a little bit like the instructions for some Victorian parlor game, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty fun to use. I'm biased though.)
posted by chipbrantley at 6:42 AM on January 26, 2008

beef+jalapeno+lunch+american+saucy = brisket

oh, yeah. This is fun. Thanks for the link.
posted by pointystick at 7:32 AM on January 26, 2008

Floyyd-
theres actually nothing wrong with that recco given the ingredients you were "craving". you could easily work the pork into te mix. sweat a little bacon fat with the onions at the beginning of the recipe and set aside to top the finished product. you could integrate the ricotta salata similarly as a garnish. celery is a classic aromatic and part of the "holy trinity" (MIREPOIX) of cooking so you could easily juice that in with the stock for the risotto as well.
remember brother, recipes are more guidelines than rules and BEG to be played around with.

d.
posted by Escapetank at 7:44 AM on January 26, 2008

wouldn't it be cool to have a tool that could listen to what we were craving and then suggest something good to cook?

I believe this tool is called telephoning your mother.

Snark aside, this does look like it has potential to be pretty cool. However, I don't like the way it "guesses" without asking you if your ingredient isn't in the database. I put in "soba", and it tells me I'm looking for "soy" - not exactly. It should be smart enough to ask you to clarify or add a new ingredient if it is confused.
posted by falconred at 10:52 AM on January 26, 2008

It's like the Nutrimatic drink machine except with lentil soup and couscous...
posted by jedicus at 3:14 PM on January 26, 2008

I want a machine that reads my mind, and determines what I'm craving, and suggests something. Or better yet if it can even tell when I'm in that hungry not just for anything, but I'm not sure exactly what it is I want mood.
posted by gauchodaspampas at 4:07 PM on January 26, 2008

I said I was craving beer and it suggested raw turnips sprinkled with chilli.
posted by stravaig at 10:59 AM on January 30, 2008