The recipes in Mangia!  are stored in files. You can think of a recipe file the same way you do a cookbook: it is a convenient collection of recipes that normally (but not always) share something in common. Like many cookbooks, a recipe file may also include suggested meals, or collections of recipes that fit together to form a coherent meal. The recipes tell you how to fix a dish; the meals suggest ways of grouping the recipes together.

To open a recipe file, use either Open or Open Easy under the File menu. The former uses the usual Macintosh file selection dialog to let you pick out a file anywhere on your disk. The latter is a hierarchical menu which lets you directly open any file that Mangia!  has looked at recently.

The recipe file will open in a recipe file window, and you can then:

• Open any recipe onto the Recipe Card by using the View Recipe button or the Show Recipe Card item on the Recipes menu.

• Change the heading of a meal by either double-clicking or selecting it, then clicking on the Modify... button.

• Create a new meal or recipe with the appropriate button. The former asks you to provide a textual header for the meal (be it a title, notes, or whatever); the latter creates a new recipe and lets you go on as described in Editing Recipes.

• Rearrange either list by clicking and dragging.

• Sort the recipe list by titles or sources (page number within publication) or not at all.

• Remove either a recipe or a meal by using the Delete key or Cut or Clear on the Edit menu. (Deleting a recipe is an unusual act, and you will be asked to confirm that that's what you really want.)

• Select and print either recipes or meals using the Print command on the File menu.