Tagging Entries

I've spent the last several days having a lot of fights back and forth in my head about how I should tag my entries here. It's not that it matters especially, but it does irritate me when I want to find some thing or other I'd posted but none of my tags are useful enough to get me in the right direction.

I'm not very good at tagging things, I invariably wind up with useless designations (like "rice" with more than 50 entries, but no way of telling what is just plain rice or what is a rice pilaf or a rice salad) but then in an attempt to clarify, I wind up with even more useless designations that are so specific they'll nearly never be used (I've never made a rice salad that I can think of, and if I did, it'd probably be a one-time thing).

I think I've decided to break it down more or less like a rather comprehensive cookbook. (Appetizers, Soups, Salads, Mains, etc.) But I really do get hung up what things to mark and what to ignore. I don't think it's worthwhile to mark every side salad, since mostly they're unexceptional, or every time I eat plain rice. So I suppose I should ignore those, but then do I also ignore unexceptional sides like... mashed potatoes? Do I only mark potatoes if I've done something interesting, like colcannon? or if they're plated in an interesting way? (Like... roast potatoes are boring, but what if they're stacked up slices instead of heaped cubes?)

It seems like the only things I've really settled on are marking meals from particular chefs (chef: Gordon Ramsay, for example) and designating various grains and pulses.

I don't know. The one thing I can say for certain: if it is listed as vegetarian, that means only that it doesn't contain meat. It may contain eggs or milk products. If it's listed as vegan, it will be strictly no-animal by-products.

Anyone have suggestions for tagging? No? Okay then.