MN Lisa’s Comments (group member since Sep 23, 2021)

MN Lisa’s comments from the Nothing But Reading Challenges group.

I made some changes to the Round 2 Books. I added a column at the front to track which items have been used.

If you look at it, you can see that its in red. When we use an item, say Chicken on pg 206 of Prophesy, that would be entered into the Items used and removed from the original square.

I also grouped items together, so Vegetables is listed with their page counts and then also specific ones in the same cell to keep these together.

I also added some names up top starting in column V for things we should check for that we may need based on Sept.

Rankings are up. We are in 5th place for the voting. This means:

4-7: You're now on the list of places to try for young singles and DINKS. Keep up the great work, but perhaps get a bit more creative in round 2 to increase popularity.

Meals with the word "pistachios", "abalone", or "balsamic" in the text or title, or used as a spell-it-out will attract more adults for round 2

Meal 92: Changed Milk to Potatoes - Same Book

Meal 124: Switched out Butter for Milk - Same Book

Meal 134: Switched out Milk for Carrots - Same Book

I think I like your plan Susan.

I started doing the move the item I used to a new cell, but not towards the end. I'll try and be better next time.

Susan A wrote: "MN Lisa wrote: "We are currently in 1st place."

Really? I still feel like I only half understand what's going on."

Ya, but there are at least 2 teams who have not entered anything. We are only up by about 30 points and I assume it will change after we feed the hoard about to descend on our restaurant.

Susan A wrote: "For October...do we make and find the same stuff?"

For the most part. I think the special changes each month. And depending on where we end up, meals with specific words will attract specific people to serve.

I noticed that books are worth different ingredients in round 2. 2, 4, 8 and 12 was round 1 and it looks like 2, 5, 10 and 12 for round 2 and 3

And we can read more, I think the limit is 90 for October.

I'll take some time on Saturday to create the Shop Front and Meals for the basics like 7 salads, 7 sandwiches, 7 curries, 7 fish and chips, 7 fish and chips with vinegar, 7 specials, 12 coffee, 12 tea so we can start filling those in on the planning spreadsheet after a week or so. I won't add the drinks until I know we have books over 500 pages.

That was totally it. Steph - You did read that right?

I transferred this to the official spreadsheet, but I can't figure out why its only counting 79 books instead of 80. There are 80 books there.

We are currently in 1st place.

Sounds good. I'm out all day tomorrow, so I'll plan to copy over the information from the planning document to the official one at 7am CT tomorrow. Deadline is like 4pm CT and I won't be available then. Sound good?

I started adding some books I know I'm going to read in October to the spreadsheet and will get the meals and shop front started as soon as they are available in the official document.

I did a bunch of work on this today. I removed books we haven't used yet and moved to the overflow. We have about 78 ingredients we could still use to make meals and stuff. I can look again when I get home from bowling at 10pm tonight.

Ok. Added Descriptions for ALL meals and then listed the corresponding ingredients on the meals page. Now we just need to go through and find the books and items. Hopefully we can find them all. I even did the curries.

I think we have a few meals left, mostly quiche and curry, so we can always change those out for something else if we want.

I tried to remember to do the description when I finished the meal, but I didn't always get to it.

I gotta check my team's SH posts and do those for my books still. I should get back to it later tomorrow.

I agree to not wait. I think it might be good to start with the meals like I did earlier this week to have a basis for what we want to be searching for and then fill in as we find items.

Like I want to make a Salmon BALT sandwich. I add that to the meals created and shop front and then work to find the items among the books....That's kinda what I did with the "Meal Options" tab in the spreadsheet.

Ok. I set the Meals Page with the lines for minimum ingredients based on what I was thinking above. There are 426 lines, so we have room to make more as needed. I'm going to go through tomorrow and try and complete some more meals.

We could probably use someone to look at the completed meals and add a description to the store front. That's the piece i'm not so good at.

You are right it has to meet the minimum letters.

Spell out whatever you want as long as it is a salad, or sandwich, etc, and you fit the letters allowed for the meal

I still think we should track and use more Spell next month. If we spell "Ravioli" we can give it a description of "Mushroom ravioli in lemon cream sauce", without having to find mushrooms and lemon in the books.

Susan A wrote: "Are you sure? I would have thought we could spell pasta, which counts as 5 ingredients, but then we’d need to spell something else, like ham, in order to meet the minimum

Or spell a type of pasta ..."

HMM. Thought so, but let me check again.

Susan A wrote: "Why 200 pages? Books from 161-300 pages are worth the same. Why not move the books with ingredients we dont need?

Also, I though we were supposed to make as many meals as possible?"

This just gives us a starting point to make our restaurant well-rounded with meals. If we are working through and need an ingredient we can check the overflow and move as needed. It's just to give a starting point.

Once we create that if we have more stuff to use we can create more to maximize the ingredients we found.

I'm also thinking next month we need to make sure to track the initials. We can spell PASTA with 5 letters, but if we want to create a pasta dish we need 7 ingredients. That works for PASTA, QUICHE (6 vs 7), and CURRY (5 vs 7).

Ok. I moved books with less than 200 Pages to the overflow. I'm thinking of doing the following.

12 NA Drinks
12 Drinks
24 Desserts
12 Coffee
12 Tea
7 Fish and Chips with Vinegar
7 Fish and Chips
10 Specials
7 Salads
7 Pasta
7 Quiche
7 Curry
7 Sandwiches

This will use between 400 and 600 items and if my calculation is correct, we currently have 509 items available.

What do you think?

**I'm saving a re-read of the Confessions series to October since Julian is a cook and they talk about food a lot. Should get some good ingredients for that.

Steph wrote: "I’m dumb and forgot about this game. I haven’t been tracking items but just finished a 700 page book. I have time to go back in and search for drinks/desserts if needed. Let me know 😊"

We have 4 books over 500 pages so that gives us 48 items for drinks/desserts. I think that would be enough?

I'm going to work on it on Wednesday to give time to review before I move over to the offiical sheet.

I think we will be good and can just make meals with what we have, unless something you are reading has a really cool ingredient or something I'd say not to worry for the rest of the month.

At What the Fork, we wish to offer our personal rendition of gourmet cuisine with an innovative gastronomic take on traditional cooking methods, locally sourced produce and the legacy of our shared food heritage. Moreover, we regard it as a personal challenge to provide an eclectic menu and let its distinctive flavors and particular regional character brighten up the world.


This is on our official spreadsheet.