How do I access a book?

When browsing shelves, click the “Look Inside” button when hovering your cursor over a book in order to open it. If you have found a specific recipe via the Advanced Search feature, click anywhere on the recipe. The book will open within a few seconds. Once a book is open, you can leaf through the entire book, starting with the front cover, followed by the back cover and the title page. The pages you see match exactly the pages of the print version of the book.

To access a book, and to continue reading it, you need to have stable internet access on your computer or mobile device. The digital version of the book is never downloaded, but instead is hosted within Cloud Cookbooks.

Why won’t my book open?

If you click on a book, or the “Look Inside” button, and it fails to open check to be sure your internet connection is working. The time taken to open the book depends on the speed of your connection, and the bandwidth of the connection.

If your book does not open after a reasonable time period, check to ensure that you are using an up to date browser and operating system. If problems still persist, please contact us through the Contact page.

What do I need to use the site?

You can access the library using current versions of Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari. Other browsers may work well too, but have not been tested.

You can use any Windows 7, 8 or 10 laptop or desktop able to run these web browsers. Earlier versions of Windows often experience minor bugs when using the app.

You can use a mobile device running Android, and iOS mobile devices using iOS version 7.1 onwards. Earlier iOS versions have been tested, but full functionality cannot be ensured on them.

How do I use the Advanced Search feature?

Often times people seek out recipes that accommodate the ingredients they have on hand, the season, the simplicity of the meal, or any number of other factors rather than going into the kitchen with a specific recipe in mind. To accommodate this, we have crafted our Advanced Search feature.

Here you can search for recipes as you would with the normal search, but you are also provided the option of selecting from specific tags to narrow down your search results. You can select multiple tags to even further narrow down your results, with each added tag bringing you closer to your ideal recipe. These tags fall under eight categories.

Recipe Type: these tags detail the purpose of the recipes. If you’re looking to whip up a hefty casserole, or maybe a deliciously decadent dessert, these are the tags that will help you weed out recipes that don’t fit the needs of the occasion.

Key Ingredients: these tags represent the focal points of our recipes. Not every ingredient you find in our recipes are present here; instead these key ingredients are those that define the dishes. If you’ve found yourself the proud owner of some fresh Nova Scotian fiddleheads and are looking for dishes to showcase them, these are the tags for you. Or, if you have a heap of ingredients but no idea what to do with them, select the tags that reflect what you have and browse to see what possible dishes await you!

Region: these tags reflect the culinary origins of the recipes. Next time you’re planning for Tex-Mex night, or you feel like showcasing specific cultural culinary delights from throughout Canada and around the world, these are the tags for you.

Prep Time: all of our Prep Time tags judge the amount of time needed to go from raw ingredients to a finished product ready to be eaten, where a short recipe takes less than 30 minutes to prepare, a medium recipe takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to prepare, and a long recipe takes 1 hour or longer to prepare.

Degree of Difficulty: not all of our recipes are tagged by difficulty, but we took special note of any instance in which the chef or author responsible for the recipe took special note of its difficulty. A recipe that one person may find easy as the proverbial pie another might find to be a veritable Herculean task, and as such we elected to leave it to the professionals when deciding how to tag difficulty. So if you find a recipe tagged easy, or difficult, know that the judgement has come straight from the source of the recipe itself!

Dietary Options: these tags are designed for those with dietary restrictions, be they health related such as nut allergies, or in keeping with specific diets like the Cleanstart diet. If you’re playing host to guests with specific dietary needs, or have specific needs yourself, these tags will save you the trouble of combing through individual ingredients to find meal options everyone can enjoy. With the many diverse variants of some diets, just as with the Degree of Difficulty we left the judgement with the sources of the recipes.

Source: many of our recipes are featured dishes of famous restaurants, or creations from renowned authors and chefs. If you have had the good fortune of experiencing one of these culinary delights in person, and wish to recreate the experience at home, take a look through these tags to see if that very recipe you fell in love with is just a few clicks away!

Why do tags keep disappearing from the Advanced Search feature?

As you add tags or search terms, conflicting tags will be removed. This way you will never find yourself in a situation where you have added a large number of tags and terms only to learn no recipe exists in Cloud Cookbooks that shares all of them. So for example if you have selected the “nut-free” tag, the nut related key ingredient tags would be removed from your tag options. It is all done to help ensure you reach your ideal recipe quickly and frustration free.

How do I search inside a book?

Once you have opened the book use the search field and magnifying glass icon you see above the book in the middle of the page display. Enter your search term in the search field. If you click on the magnifying glass icon, click twice to initiate a search. Note that this search is limited to the content of the book you have open, including the text, photo captions, and index entries.

How do I control the size of the page?

The viewer lets you change the zoom level using the slider located on the grey navigation bar above the books when reading them. Use this function to get a close look at details and small font. Typically there is a delay of a few seconds to adjust the resolution of your image, so that type and visuals are crisp and clear. Once you are zoomed in, you can click and drag to navigate the page as desired.

Can I print a recipe?

Absolutely. Once you have opened a book and are on a page you’d like to print, simply click on the print button (which looks like a small white printer) at the far left of the grey book navigation bar. Once you’ve done this, you will be given an option of which pages you would like to print. Bear in mind that you will have to note the pages as they are listed in the navigation bar, not as they appear in the book, as the navigation bar differs due to the inclusion of the covers as pages at the start of the PDF.

What about copyright?

All the books in this collection are protected by copyright. Your library’s agreement with us gives permission for all authorized library users to access, read and use these books.

The authors and publishers of these books are compensated by the subscription fee your library pays for access to this collection.

The digital versions of these books are protected from being copied in their entirety from Cloud Cookbooks. Any attempt to make a full copy would be a violation of Canadian copyright law.