Ok, while deciding what recipes I would shop for now that I’m unemployed (because obviously when you’re unemployed it is time to COOK ALL THE TIME), I decided to make a lil Python program that will let me enter recipes, and at a point in the future, probably after I learn regex, make it fully searchable. I’m already separating things out for ease of searching – like lists both with and without quantity indications.

Problems I’ve solved: a) making a new file name out of whatever the user enters, and b) setting a var for the long combination of dir, name & .txt that I’ll use in a few different places throughout the program

global new_filename
new_filename = "recipes/" + new_recipe + ".txt"
open(new_filename, 'a') # 'a' for append

Iterating through a list which adds to another list with some clever while looping

def ingredient_input():
    ingredient = 0  # is it ok to set this var to a dummy value?  it gets redefined with each loop.
    while ingredient != 'DONE':
        print "what is the ingredient?  no measurements yet, please.  type DONE"
        print "in all-caps if no more."
        ingredient = raw_input("> ")
        if ingredient == 'DONE':
            ingred_check()
        else:
            ingredients.append(ingredient)

And there are plenty of problems I haven’t solved yet. Will write more soon! Unemployed coding is fun, ha ha! “Hmm, let me chew on this juuuust a bit more… oh my god how did 3pm get here” etc etc : )