Welcoming all foragers
The birth of Forage, the app.
Stirring pots and dodging bullets
[Spoiler alert: If you haven’t seen Ratatouille yet, what are you waiting for?]
When I first launched this newsletter, haphazard in scheduling and structure, rife with philosophy and emotion, many people asked me why this, why now, and why “forage”? Well, to answer that, we have to go a little back in time.
My relationship with cookbooks brings me much comfort. In the early unknowing days of the Covid pandemic, when I had no more furniture in my new apartment than a bed and mattress, my cookbooks became a symbol of normalcy, of safety, and of the furniture, I would hopefully be able to buy soon.
This was literal in fact, as those cookbooks literally propped up my laptop, and more often than not, they a sturdy stack became my makeshift dining table for one.
But my relationship with my cookbooks was also a complex one, and my primary source of FOMO — the heavy feeling that comes with the fear of missing out. Beautiful and bountiful, the pages between the covers held what I imagined were the secrets to life. But with over forty books perched on various surfaces, where would I even start?
Months later, a towering bookshelf now installed to house them, I would often stare at them, rearranging them, sometimes deep-diving into one, usually several, and all the while imagining the vast spreads I would put out, and the elaborate dinner parties I’d host.
Lost in these thoughts, I would soon find myself surrounded by my books, open at seemingly random pages and without any idea of where to start. Those evenings, which were filled with inspiration and hope in the early hours, became overwhelming by midnight.
But that didn’t stop me from buying and loving my cookbooks. Over time, I would open them less and less, daunted by the volume of recipes, and embarrassingly overcome by an impostor syndrome that the collection on my shelf would never suggest.
On those late nights, sitting on the hundred-year-old rug in my living room surrounded by my books, I could hear the words of Auguste Gusteau, the famed fictional French chef from the Pixar movie Ratatouille,“Anyone can cook!” ringing in my head (as I imagined myself the small rat sitting in the cave of a tall hat, manipulating a well-meaning but inept chef to stir the pot).
When, in the movie, Remy dodges literal bullets to grab Gusteau’s cookbook, he displays a deep understanding that having this book was imperative, a non-negotiable, so much so that we knew he is willing to risk his life to have it, regardless of whether or not he would ever make any of the recipes within it.
That book represents a lifeline of another kind, and would come to represent his calling and destiny in life: to cook in the very same kitchen which had been the home of the late Gusteau.
Meet Forage: the cookbook experience we deserve
Tired of feeling lost in my sea of cookbooks, and wanting to reconnect with them, I turned to the one person I knew could help. While I frantically flipped through numerous books in search of the best recipe for something I had decided I just had to make, I shared my frustrations and wished out loud for an app that would be able to search the index pages of all my cookbooks. That’s all I wanted. “Is that too much to ask?” I had said with an exasperated sigh, giving up on my search for the recipe I knew was nestled somewhere in one of the many many books on the shelf.
(I ended up googling that recipe instead and with a feeling of resigned failure, settled on an internet recipe I had stumbled upon. I had felt deflated.)
For a while, I had forgotten about my wish, but a couple of weeks later, it was manifested like a wish from a genie in a magic lamp in the form of an offer to build the very app I had dreamed of!
Over the next few weeks, I gave my little dream a lot of thought, and started to distill the problem I was facing. In a nutshell, this was what I knew for sure:
Cookbooks are generally hard to navigate, with complicated index pages and no clear table of contents, which are intended to drive discovery and curiosity instead of prioritizing finding what you need in an instant (which is what impatient me wanted).
Counterintuitively, a library of cookbooks becomes less usable the more you grow it. There are just too many more options with every new addition.
Because cookbooks are analog, search-powered digital libraries like blogs and recipe sites and apps feel like the much easier option because you can search, filter, and share, even when you have a beautiful library of cookbooks to choose from.
After many many many months, and probably hundreds of hours of talking about Forage, testing Forage, telling people about Forage, and writing hundreds of lines of code for Forage, the app was finally born!
Some important things about how we decided to make the app
We decided to launch it for iPhone first (and only for now!) and make it available for free to everyone.
We also decided not to track any actions anyone took in the app, and to have the maximum level of privacy, depending instead on the feedback of the people who use it to help us improve it.
We don’t have any ads in the app.
And to answer the obvious question, no, we don’t make any money from Forage today.
It’s a labour of love. We hope you love it too.
What is Forage?
Forage understands the index of any cookbook and makes it instantly searchable.
With Forage, you can organize, search, and bookmark every entry of every index of every cookbook you own.
How Forage works
To add a cookbook, scan the barcode of your cookbook using the in-app scanner. (You can also enter this info manually.)
To make the index of your cookbook searchable, take a clear photo of every page of the index of your cookbook. (This may take a few minutes but you only have to do it once!)
That's it! You're now ready to use Forage.
Tips for searching
Once your cookbook’s index has been added and processed, you can search your library for recipes by entering the name of a recipe or the main ingredients for what you feel like cooking.
If you know which book you want to cook from, you can also search within just one book.
Bookmark a recipe to find it easily when you need it again.
Get in touch! Forage is made with love by two people who have fallen back in love with their cookbooks and want other cookbook owners to fall back in love with theirs.
Forage is proudly ad-free and we don’t track any actions you take in the app. To make sure we’re offering you the best version of the app that we can, we welcome your feedback and ideas on how to make Forage better. Email us! app@foragebooks.com
Let Forage do the searching, so you can do the cooking!
This is one of my favorite Apps on my phone! Thank you for helping my rediscover my cookbooks! The app definitely feels like it was created with passion and user experience at it's core. xxx