Cephi Systems Software and Contract Services

Cooking with your iPad and iPhone

I don’t actually recommend cooking your favorite iDevice. I don’t believe it is edible or tasty. Also, it should also be noted that your devices do not emit enough radiation to really cook anything.

What can be done however is using your iPad, iPod, or iPhone to help you cook, mainly having your recipes at hand while cooking.

So today I have two tips on using your iDevice in the kitchen:

Tip number #1: Protect your device

iDevices are a high-end item with a high-end price tag, and the carriers do not give them away in two-for-one specials. Also, if you are like me, you have some emotional attachment to your device, and you would be upset if it was mutilated, lost, or destroyed.

The main hazard to your iDevice in the kitchen are liquids. Splattering your device with some tomato sauce or batter may not hurt it, but it will soil your device. No one wants a sticky, yucky phone.

The real liquid threats are things like things like knocked-over cans of liquids, pouring accidents, or dropping the device into a filled sink. These mishaps have the possibility of shorting your device and earning it a trip to Apple for repairs or possibly may require total replacement.

So what is the solution? I use zipper storage bags to help protect my devices in the kitchen.

The one gallon bags I have just fit the iPad, and any old little bag will fit an iPod or iPhone. You can still use the touch screen though the baggy so you can select and scroll around your recipe.

Now these are not 100% water-proof, and I would not submerge them. Also there is always the chance something will go terribly wrong and your device will get wet, but a zipper bag will go a long way in protecting you device from splashes and insidious expanding puddles from spills.

If your baggie does get wet or soiled, dry it off with a dry dish cloth before removing your device. I typically reuse my baggies several times at least.

Tip number #2: Gmail

There are a million ways to store your recipes on a computer or smartphone. I use a dedicated Gmail account to store mine. Just email your new recipes to your dedicated recipe email address, and soon you will have a long list of digital recipes. The iOS makes it easy to have multiple email addresses. You can also name the email account something easy to remember like BobJRecipes@gmail.com.

Why use an email account?

Because:

• For dedicated recipe apps, the software developer my discontinue support of the software you use to store your recipes. This could result in your recipes being isolated on your iPhone and inaccessible when you upgrade to the next iDevice.
• A Gmail account is easily accessible from PCs, Mac, your spouse’s iDevice, your computer at work, and other mobile devices.
• Gmail does not discard your old messages, and has built-in searching. So, for example, you could search for every recipe that has the word chicken in the title.
• It is easy to share recipes. Having your recipes on an email account makes it easy for them to be sent to other people.
• If you ever decide to switch to another electronic form of storage all you have to do is copy and paste the recipe text from your email.

Free apps that include cloud storage like Evernote would probably be good for this too. For recipe development I use RapidTask to store and edit the recipe then when I am happy with the final product I use the built-in email function to email the recipe to my recipe email account.