Eco Festival

Today is the Eco Festival which, for Kate and I at Local Dish, is the final culmination of the work we have been putting into Local Food Week. It has been a lot of effort with software development, marketing, news announcements, sponsorship, gathering of recipe ingredients, contestant judging, etc. All worth it, of course, now that we can announce the winners of the recipe contest.

So if you are in the city today and have time to swing by Rock Ledge Ranch (at the base of Garden of the Gods), please do. Kate and I will be on stage between 12pm-1pm announcing the recipe contest winners as well as cooking and providing free samples of the two top recipes (because the results were very close). Just look for us, wearing these shirts:

See you at the Eco Festival today!

Tags: Local Dish

Local Dish (Alpha)

I haven’t talked much about Local Dish on this site and I thought I’d shed some more light on the project for those interested.

Local Dish is a new web site, service, and Ruby on Rails application that is about fresh food and healthy eating. Whether you are a cook, wanting to be a cook, or just looking for alternative ways to eat better then Local Dish is for you. We are initially tapping into the local scene which means we are hyper-local and definitely a niche service. That said, the recipe database and articles related on how to cook should be applicable to all no matter where you live. Plus, you should find the shopping list generator handy as well. Here is a high level breakdown of features we’ll be deploying:

• Recipe Database - The heart of this app is the use of the recipe database. You’ll be able to quickly search for and find recipes that might be of interest to you.
• Recipe Sharing - Members will have the ability to share and rate recipes.
• Recipe Management - Members will be able to mark recipes as something they have tried, have yet to try, tried and didn’t like, etc. You’ll be able to categorize and mark recipes as favorites, etc.
• Recipe Import/Export - Capability and support for quickly importing a collection of recipes or exporting them out to a different application will be supported as well.
• Shopping List Generator - Based on your recipe choices and how you configure your daily, weekly, and/or monthly menus this tool will allow you to generate shopping lists easily which gives you back more time to do the things you enjoy.
• Technical Merits - The app is being built on top of Ruby on Rails which in and of itself is pretty sweet. We’ll also be using HTML5, CSS3, and the latest JavaScript technologies. This also means that support for legacy browsers will be not supported initially. We’ll see how this works out. The technical purist in me wants to drop support for Internet Explorer all together and only support Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, and possibly Google Chrome because the stuff you can do with the latest web technologies in these modern browsers is impressive.

We think it is perfect timing since the current economy is in the dumps, people are looking for easier ways to cut grocery costs, and eat healthier without sacrificing taste. We are also scratching an itch to a problem that both Kate and I want solved as well. So bookmark the site and subscribe to the site and twitter feeds. We are very focused on community, so your input is welcome. Eventually, we’ll be opening up the site for Beta invites so that you can manage your own recipe collection, share recipes with others, generate your own shopping lists, etc.

We’re excited about this service and hope you will be to. See you on Local Dish!

Tags: Local Dish