Mangia!  lets you tag any recipe with up to 63 labeled Ratings which describe everything from the recipe’s “Kid Appeal” to its “Spiciness.” You can use these Ratings when Searching for Recipes to find recipes with a particular Rating (or Ratings). This is a two-step process:

• Using the Full Finder window, select the appropriate Rating(s) from the pop-up menu that appears when you click on the Pick Rating button. Adjust the resulting scale to your liking (you can specify a range of Ratings values by holding down the Shift key when you click on the scale).

• In the Recipe Browser Window or any Recipe File Window, check off List Only Matches to reduce the list of recipes you see to those which match the Ratings you provided.

After you provide a set of Ratings and check List Only Matches, the list will only show recipes that match the values shown in all of the scales you have selected. Specifically, a recipe only passes if: 1) it includes a Rating for every one of the specific scales you selected, and 2) the value of the Recipe’s Rating for each scale falls in the range you gave in the list. As an example, if you include the “Spiciness” and “Kid Appeal” Ratings in your search list, and set the “Spiciness” Rating to the bottom of the scale and the “Kid Appeal” Rating to the top of the scale, you will get only recipes which specify both “Spiciness” and “Kid Appeal” Ratings, and which are rated as low and high, respectively.

A small note of warning: When you want Mangia!  to search for matching recipes, you don’t want to go overboard in your use of Ratings, or you run the risk of not finding any recipes which match your criteria.