Cooking for Engineers 432
gbjbaanb writes "It's not often I post about a website, but this one is different. It is Cooking For Engineers. No big deal, you'd think - a web site about recipes and cooking. But go look at how he's presented it. Most recipes are designed for women, and their funny way of looking at the world. These are very different and instantly understandable for tech geeks like us. Oh yes, although he's been affected by firefox, he blames Microsoft. :)"
Sorry, I don't see what's so special (Score:3, Insightful)
If you look at the whole recipes on his site, there's still your normail, detailed instructions. I guess it's nice having a quick synopsis at-a-glance, but I'm going to carefully read the entire recipe if it's new to me before I even begin mis en place
This is especially true with baking which is much more akin to chemistry than, say, tomato sauce.
It's a forgery (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought this was cooking for engineers.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Charts (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather than like to see a cooking book from a chemist. These guys knows the difference between concrete and whipped cream.
Re:Poor guy... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hope the site is still up in a month, and that I'll still remember to look at it by then.
I agree! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cooking v1.0 for nerds (Score:1, Insightful)
11. MOV oral_cavity, product
~~~
Re:My favorite engineer recipe. (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been working on step 1 for 35 years without much success.
Perhaps it could be factored into a. b. c.
And people wonder... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Designed for women and their funny way of looking at the world." I, honestly, can not even think of something remotely humorous to respond to this post. People wonder why we can't get laid? This statement effectively sets us back to the Stone Ages. Cro-Magna Phi Epsilon, represent!
It ain't so funny when you consider the thing you want the most, their uterus, falls under the "funny way of looking at the things" category.
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most recipes are designed for women, and their funny way of looking at the world
Is completely uncalled for. What part of
Name of Food
Ingredients
Instructions
is in any way some sort of "funny way of looking at the world"? It's not like there aren't plenty of male cooks, either. Way to be sexist, Slashdot.
art not science (Score:1, Insightful)
Weighing (Score:4, Insightful)
Not measuring by volume.
Especialy with dry good(flour, etc)
Re:Sorry, I don't see what's so special (Score:3, Insightful)
The recipie as we know it comes to us from the French school of cooking. The French follow the practice of preparing all of the ingredients first and then applying process to them.
So the list of ingredients isn't simply a list, it's a list of things to do.
Chop some foo, put it in a bowl. Now take these spices, put them all in another bowl. Dice some bar, put it in a third bowl.
Now apply process 1 to bowl 1, etc.
It's perfectly concise and understandable once you understand the meta instructions.
Frankly I find those diagrams nearly unreadable and representative of what's wrong with most engineering manuals, but then I was raised by women.
KFG
Re:Charts (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want to make Chinese food, try getting some of the recipe books by Weichuan, the Taiwanese food company. I have one of their books from the 1980s or so, which uses a nice format of grouping ingredients.
Re:Basic idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a forgery (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Cooking is truly a joy for geeks; it's a big science experiment everytime you try something new. Plus, cooking is very analogous to programming; there are certain conventions and vocabulary you have to learn, and from there out you get better the more you do it. Make something enough times, and you can spot ways to do it better/faster/more elegantly, and pretty soon you don't even need the book. Once you learn a certain style it's even easier to pick up new ones. And the GADGETS!
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree. I love to cook -- it makes people happy to serve them good food, I get to play with knives, alcohol, and fire, and I find it a great way to relax after work. Work for me is software development, and I see a lot of parallels between my profession and cooking. The way I look at it, in both you are given a set of tools and basic rules to follow -- in software the "rules" may be syntax or design patterns, in cooking it may be "rosemary goes well with tomatos" or "olive oil allows spices to soak into the chicken in a marinade". These "rules" are there for a reason, because they work. You can get a lot done following them, be they an algorithm or a recipie. However, as one spends time in either dicipline, you can begin to be more creative -- you see the overall trends, you use shortcuts, hacks, and other tricks gained from experience.
I find writing code and playing in my kitchen to be both codified and science-like, as well as being spontanious and creative.
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
What makes it sexist? Did he say the recipes were bad? That women were bad? That the recipes were dumb? That women were dumb? Anything at all that implies anything bad? ... or are you just inferring something bad, which is more a reflection of you than the original comment?
As an engineer, I'm proud of my funny way of looking at the world. Most engineers are. So, I don't see how it'd be an insult to describe someone else in the same manner.
Re:Poor guy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Poor guy... (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is, why don't the editors do it? Would it take too much time out of his busy, busy day for Michael to add nydu.net:8090 to a posting? If Perl is such a kickin' language, why doesn't Taco make links default to Coral if they are not submitted with it in the first place? That's largely what Coral was set up for - they even mention the /. effect by name on their site.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
n.
1. Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women.
2. Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.
Note in particular definition 2. The original sentence was a blanket statement with nothing to back it up and no purpose other than to say "hey, look, women are *different* and *weird*". Sexism is about more than calling people bad. If you must find an insult in there before you're satisfied, compare "funny" with "for engineers"; the implication being that the latter is superior while the former is odd and ineffective.
If there had been any context whatsoever for the statement, I wouldn't have bothered to say anything, but the fact that it was so out of place led me to speak up.
Re:Charts (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that the average person won't make an excellent chef, and that it takes more than a recipe to make excellent food. But to make good food that most people will eat merely takes a recipe and someone who can follow it.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
You're still reaching when it comes to a direct insult. Half the people that call me "funny" don't mean it precisely as a compliment, and definitely don't imply superiority. And, I'm sure plenty of the women that are excellent cooks are perfectly proud of their abilities, so I don't see why it's presumed to be odd and ineffective to refer to them as "funny" in the same manner.
The biggest generalization of the statement is the implied "women cook, men don't". That I'll agree is sexist and warrants issue.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
What, exactly, is so offensive about that statement? Men and women have very different information processing abilities. Don't let yourself get so wrapped up in political correctness. As I've already said in an earlier post, read the part about drawing bicycles. [abc.net.au] Ignoring scientific fact in the name of political correctness is for politicians, not nerds :-)
Re:And people wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
What a crock of shite.
OK, first, nearly half of my cookbooks are written by *men*. Highly successful men in their field. I can't find any difference between their books and those written by their female counterparts. I have no trouble at all understanding these instructions, nor do I have any trouble with adjusting them to my own tastes.
This isn't about male/female, it's about whether you ever learned to cook. It certainly isn't rocket-science, though I'll admit that some things require a LOT of skill and patience. Making puff-pastry requires a very skillfull hand, and 1-2 days. But this is no different than experience and learning being the difference between "hello world" and being able to code a polygon shading algorithm.
There are a lot of things around that remind me that women have different viewpoints on things than men, but cookbooks aren't on that list.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
You say you're a nerd, but you throw around meaningless trite like "scientific fact" and link to ABC TV as a source of science?
You know, when John Lennon said "woman is the nigger of the world" I thought he was exaggerating, but running into people prattling this sort of ridiculous nonsense just makes my blood boil. You should be ashamed of yourself, really. If you're going to try to convince some backwoods uneducated redneck that women are mentally inferior -- oh no, wait, they aren't inferior, it's just that they suck at math and science and are good at "social things", right? (sarcasm) -- then by all means, go ahead and give them your link.
If you're going to come onto Slashdot and do it, have the decency to respect our intelligence and provide links to peer-reviewed journals with experiments that have been repeated by people that didn't come into the equation already agreeing with the experiment's outcome. Then -- and only then -- will I begin to take this "Women have different mental strengths than men" bullshit.
You call it science, but it's just sexism. Plain and simple.
Re:My favorite engineer recipe. (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire art of homemade "convienience" foods seems to have died out, in fact the two are often considered antithetical, but the microwave oven makes them an more valid than ever.
Rice and bean dishes are also excellent for cooking in bulk.
Then when she wants to eat at 6, but you want to cook until 9, you can prepare her (or she can help herself) a quicky mini-meal with a cup of hot chocolate (or wine if her taste turns in that direction), and you're free to cook until the contentment of that wears off.
KFG
Re:Alton Brown... Is that you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Truthfully, I think Alton Brown would point to Harold McGee, as would Shirley Corriher and Howard Hillman.
Re:Charts (Score:2, Insightful)
Strange (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Poor guy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully, someone who knows a bit more about this matter will hop in the thread and explain it all.
Real engineers use standard units (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Blind! Stop being PC long enough to read... (Score:3, Insightful)
On a side note, the original site's recipe format would work very well for furniture, too.
Good riddance (Score:2, Insightful)