minoanmiss on the perils of having a food blog

[conuly]

"NEEGATIVE FIVE STARS. What a terrible recipe! I was out of flour but
didn't want to go to the store so I substituted a cup of plaster and a cup of gravel, spray margarine for the cultured butter, and stevia drops for the sugar, and then fried the batter in bacon grease instead of baking it. And I didn't give it the 24 hour rest recommended in the recipe because I'm impatient. The results are INEDIBLE and clearly you CANNOT COOK and should DELETE YOUR BLOG."

Context is tired of stupid recipe reviews.

Comments

[cygnia]

*giggles*

[lizbetann]

To the person who actually originally posted this, I'm sorry, I subscribe to the law of conservation of intelligence, and I must now immediately step away from you to preserve my own brains because you are TOO DUMB TO LIVE.

[conuly]

...you do know it's satirical, yes?

[lizbetann]

I got there eventually! :D I'm slow today. The sad thing is that it IS just an exaggeration of reality. *sigh*

[conuly]

Alas.

[magedragonfire]

Yeeeeeah. Nothing gets me more on Allrecipes when a million billion people are posting reviews about how much they changed the recipe when they made it, and yikes. If the changes worked out, why don't you just, you know, write your version of the recipe and post it instead of trying to addendum the poor original author's version? Or, if the edits worked out poorly for you, just admit that you can't follow directions?

I'm not reading the reviews to find out how much more gourmet everybody else can make a thing, I'm reading the reviews to find out whether or not the gorram posted recipe is actually any good, feh.

[conuly]

I don't mind if they say "I made it, and it didn't work out, so the next time I made this one change and it worked better". That's feedback. It's useful. But so many of them are just...!

[birke]

The part that bothers me the most, as a user of a recipe site, is when they rate the recipe based on their amended version of it. You didn't follow the recipe! Don't give the recipe stars! It makes the ratings completely unreliable!

[lannamichaels]

Yeah. I really wish there was a button, like "helpful" and "unhelpful", to be like "this person didn't actually make the thing, please remove their rating from the averaging".

[ironed_orchid]

100% true fact

[melannen]

I kind of like the reviews that are full of substitutions because if I am looking up recipes on the internet it is because I am going "okay I have some dried dates, half a can of steel-cut oats, a little bit of nutella, some trail mix and some birch syrup that I found expired in the back of the cupboard, that is clearly a recipe but for what?" So I like having some idea of how flexible a recipe is. But don't blame the author if it's not, omg!

(The date bars came out very well and probably don't resemble the recipe at all).

[sporky_rat]

YES.

Now, I will admit, I will occasionally sub out something - can't use nut butters so I use seed butters, that sort of thing. But I do make an effort to be as close as possible to the recipe the first time. After that, it's alteration city. I made the BEST sauteed spinach and smoked turkey side dish that way. It wanted cabbage and bacon, I don't like cabbage and my good dear friend is allergic to pork. So spinach and smoked turkey! (It was really tasty.)

[conuly]

It sounds delish.

[jackandahat]

The same on knitting patterns - "I used a different yarn, different sized needle, didn't swatch, and changed the increases - it didn't fit, your pattern is stupid!"

[msilverstar]

yep, there should have to be some kind of warning icon: DID NOT FOLLOW RECIPE, so other people could skim to find out the real recipe

[whisperwords]

Ha, too true! It always astonishes me when people sub out things that have no business being subbed out for something. Like it's fine if you sub a similar texture/flavor for something else, that usually works out well enough. But I've seen someone say "I didn't have fresh oregano, but I DID have fresh mint. It just didn't taste right, though." You can't do that! That's madness! And it's not the author's fault you didn't think it through!

[conuly]

I don't know, I can think of a few recipes where you can use oregano OR mint... but they're all salads, so.