Hey folks!

My name's Clark and you've just stumbled into Chowdown, a plain text recipe database for hackers. Over the years, I've tried dozens of recipe apps and services in an attempt to eat better and get more organized. With each app came a new format and recipe lock-in, neither of which got me excited.

Chowdown is my attempt at fixing recipe app burnout, by moving my recipes out of closed services and into plain text. For example, here's a recipe in plain text that I've been working on for a while. It's a broccoli beer cheese soup inspired by Gourmand's, one of my favorite spots in Austin. Crazy delicious.

Here's that same recipe processed with Chowdown. It's a simple layout with a photo, ingredient list, and directions.

The magic comes behind-the-scenes, with recipe microdata via schema.org. This process adds special tags around each bit of content, which is what let's other apps (list coming soon) read your recipes. Data portability!

Chowdown is definitely a work in progress. Active development is taking place. I'm new to Jekyll. Things might break. The recipes, however, are here to stay.

Go cook something rad,

Clark
@clarklab