RECIPE BUILDER 


Recipe Builder is a great way to create and calculate recipes specific to your own tastes and restrictions. Build your recipes with ingredients from your personal MY FOOD list, favorites, scanned items or use the food search.


RECIPE BUILDER IS A PRO SUBSCRIBER OPTION


To find Recipe Builder, go to the big [+] button from your Tracker, then FOOD. In the line across the top, go to the RECIPES tab.  You may have to scroll the top bar to the left to see RECIPES. This will take you to all of your saved recipes. You can search through your recipes or create a new one here. To access Recipe Builder, tap the pencil icon at the top.







CREATE A NEW RECIPE





APPLE AND ANDROID USERS - Tap the pencil icon at the top of the recipes tab.





This will take you to the main recipe builder screen.


ADD IMAGE - This can be your own image or an inspiring one you find online from a recipe site.


THERE ARE 4 REQUIRED FIELDS TO SAVE A RECIPE - Do these first to ensure it will save.

  • NAME - What do you want to call the recipe?
  • SERVINGS - How many people does it serve? Basically, this is up to you to decide unless you are using a preexisting recipe. This confuses some people. There are 3 basic methods for determining this.
    • If you are using an already existing recipe as a guide, how many servings does that one make? Unless you are making major edits to the ingredients by volume, it should be similar.
    • Measure - Making a Crockpot soup? When you remove it from the pot - do so with a measuring cup and decide how many cups you want to be a serving. Most liquid servings are 1 cup but you can create the serving size to be as much or as little as you want. Made a quiche / lasagna in a pan? How many squares do you cut it into? You can always edit the number of servings as you go.
    • Play with BITES - Some people work the other way around. Let’s say you only were willing to spend 5 BITES on this soup.
    • You can play with the servings until you get the number of BITES you want and then divide the recipe accordingly. This recipe originally served 6 with a 1 1⁄2 cup serving size. The BITES were more than 5 - so you can set it to 8x 1 cup servings which became 5 BITES per serving.
  • INGREDIENTS - You must add at least 1 ingredient to initially save. You can always come back to add, edit or delete ingredients.
  • DIFFICULTY - You can select EASY, MODERATE or HARD. If you add directions to a recipe, you MUST select a difficulty level.


Additional details can be added to a RECIPE to assist with preparation; you can also set the default meal category for the recipe to be assigned to and include a PREP and COOK time if you wish.


DESCRIPTION (Optional) - Use this space to add any minor information you want displayed at the top of the recipe. It is a good place to specify your Serving Size if you have one.


DIRECTIONS (Optional) - Add directions line by line. Copy and paste them from a recipe you are using or write your own.


NOTE (Optional) - Use this space for any additional notes you want stored at the bottom of the recipe. For example, you can use this to keep a link to the recipe if you found it online for later reference. 


TIP - It is a good idea to fill in the required fields, your first ingredient and then SAVE. At least then you have the basics created and you can then go back and flesh out the rest of the recipe. To resume work on a recipe or EDIT it, simply tap on it from your RECIPES list and go to the [...] in the top right corner. You can choose to EDIT or DELETE a recipe from here.



ADDING INGREDIENTS

You can add ingredients in a number of ways. Tap Add Ingredient from your recipe builder page, then choose either Search, Browse Recipes, or Browse Restaurants:





SEARCH: Allows you to select from your Recents list in the Results tab or from the Zero BITES, Favorites, My Food, Recipes or Brands tabs or you can search in the search bar as well. You can choose to use the barcode scanner or create a new food entirely as well.


BARCODE SCANNER - Just scan your item which will then show up in the SCANNING RESULTS listing. Set your serving size, tap the [0] BITES switch if you need to set the item to be zero on your plan, check that the nutritional data matches and ADD


CREATE FOOD - Tap the pencil at the top of the Add Ingredient page to create a new food to add into your recipe



BROWSE RECIPES: Allows you to add a recipe from the Recipe section as an ingredient in your personally created recipe. 


BROWSE RESTAURANTS: Allows you to browse the Restaurant Guide and add an entry as an ingredient in your personally created recipe. 












For this recipe you want to use 99% Fat Free Ground Turkey. First you entered “ground turkey” but this gave you listings for all fat ranges. Next, try adding “99% lean” to the search and this will give you exactly what you need. Try different search terms to get the best results for you. If you know the brand, try adding that to the search. If it doesn’t bring up what you want - simplify your search.





CANNED FOODS

There are listings for entire cans by volume and then by more standard measures like cups. Be sure you are selecting the appropriate one for what you are using.


Sometimes you will drain (and possibly rinse) a canned food and sometimes you will be using the liquid as well. This will depend on both your personal preferences and the recipe.


For instance you drain your canned corn so you would then choose the drained solids option. However, you like keeping the liquid in my kidney beans. In that particular case, it doesn’t change the BITE value, but sometimes it can. Most of the time it is just a way of indicating how to treat the item before adding it.


So with the canned kidney beans, you would choose can as the measurement + Drained & Rinsed or solids (the beans themselves) and liquids (keeping the aquafaba/liquid). You don’t have to break it down like that but the option is available if you want to.








FINISHING TOUCHES

Now that you have everything input, double check that it all looks okay, all your measurements are correct and SAVE. You’re done!


There are a few additional options you can check on.


Once you open the completed recipe and scroll down you will have the opportunity to RATE the recipe.


You will be able to see the calculated nutritional data, assuming everything you selected had nutritional data.


If you use a FAVORITE or QUICK ADD and you did not input the nutritional data - obviously this cannot figure into the calculation.





MAIN RECIPE DISPLAY SCREEN




From here you can:


1. SHARE - Tapping this option will open a list of available ways to share from your device. This will differ from device to device and what apps you have downloaded. Most common options are sharing to Facebook, Instagram or Messenger, sending it in an email or even sharing with other fitness apps if they have that option allowed.


2. FAVORITE - Tap the ★☆  to add to your FAVORITES.


3. [...] - Tap to open the EDIT / DELETE menu.


4. RATINGS - Displays the current average rating of your recipe


5. MEAL MARKER - Displays the current meal this recipe is assigned to (breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack)


6. BITES - Displays the BITES per serving for the recipe


7. SERVINGS - Displays the number of servings the recipe makes