What're you eating? Part 2
Normally when I start a project I run out and buy all the things and then when I inevitably buy unnecessary stuff it all starts to unravel - but not this time! This time I’m going to try to just use what I already have (from the project graveyard) if I can help it. So what do I have? I have a Raspberry Pi Zero W (Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)) and a PC - I should be set (that was suspiciously easy) so now the fun (read: pain) can begin!
Now I know enough about computers to know that any good website needs a webserver, and my Pi is already a Pi-hole (I’m still trying to work out if it’s worth it since the ad companies are quite good at still displaying their ads) so it should be a simple matter of dropping some files into the right place. I write up this spiffy lil’ number:
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <body> <p>This is a test</p> </body> </html>
and I go make a new folder under /var/www/html/ called ‘recipes’ and drop test.html in and am quite pleased with myself that it’s been so easy.
Should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy
So my first snag - this is going to take a bit of digging. My guess was that the Pi-hole application didn’t have the functionality to allow file access - but that’s an easy enough fix. I downloaded and installed nginx but that’s where I ran into the next problem.
It was here that I realised that of course, the Pi-hole app owned port 80 and wasn’t about to share (thank goodness for that) so I needed a solution. Luckily, someone had already encountered this problem and had a guide to give the Pi a second IP that I could send traffic to. Once this was up and running (welcome to the family 192.168.0.88), I was able to see my test file - success!
Now I was on a bit of a roll so I decided to keep going instead of stopping for the day and try to get a recipe on there. I have half a million screenshots/photos/books/handwritten notes of recipes and so it’s a job for another day to automate getting those digitalised, but in the meantime I chose just one.
First one I found was a simple one - Easy Flatbread. While Nagi’s website is top-notch, this recipe was actually just a photo I took of her cookbook - I needed to test how easy/good text recognition is from photos. So I uploaded the following photo to Online OCR:
Not a clean photo containing just the recipe - there’s extra text and it’s not straight on the page with different lighting
And got this:
EASY FLATOREAD
00K: 15 IVIINUTES
MAKES: 6 I PREP: 15 MINUTES I C m knew you could make such incredible flatbreads so easily. And no yeast either! 1Jse for
You never a your fl Chicken Shawarma (page 46) and lunch wraps. I also u atb aftibriraed n4,9ds, m including Greek Chicken Gyros (page 24), these
a for dunking into curries when I don't have the time to make naan the proper way with yeast.
50 g unsalted butter 3/4 cup (185 ml) milk 2 cups (300 g) plain flour, plus 2-3 tbsp extra for dusting 1/2 tsp cooking salt*
S as naan
Put the butter and milk in a heatproof jug and microwave for 1 minute or until the butter ts melted. (Or do this on the stove over medium heat.) Put the flour and salt in a bowl and pour in the milk mixture. Mix with a wooder.-4,00n unt it mostly comes together into a shaggy dough. Sprinkle a work surface with half the extra flour, then turn the dough out. Knead for 3 min until it becomes a smooth dough. Add extra flour if it's too sticky (but try to keep theflourto a minimum, otherwise the flatbread will be dry). Shape into a ball, put back in the bowl, Cow° withplastic wrap and leave on the counter for 30 minutes. Sprinkle another work area with a bit of extra flour. Cut the dough into six pieces and roll into balls withyour hands. Roll each ball out into 20 cm wide circles, about 2-3 mm thick. Heat a medium non-stick frying pan over high heat. Cook one flatbread at a time for 1 1/2 minutes on the first side until it puffs up dramatically and the underside has lots of golden splotches. Flip and cook the other side for 45 seconds to 1 minute until the underside has golden spots and it puffs up again. Transfer to a clean tea towel and loosely wrap the flatbread to keep it warm. This also makes the flatbread soft (rather than crispy), which is what we want. Repeat with the remaining flatbreads.
CORNBREAD MUFFINS MAKES to
Look, not the best, but almost the entirety of the directions/ingredients made it through! I’m still going to search for alternatives (wait to see a blog on it) but for now I just decided to tidy it up. After the tidy and a little (a lot) of help from W3schools, I was able to mock this together:
And now I have my first recipe live! And with a fancy collapsible ingredients list to boot! I’m going to call it for today - but tune in for the next one!