title: Designing a recipe database that needs to include ingredients as well as sub-recipes
body: <p>I am designing a recipe database that needs to be very flexible as it is going to be communicating directly with our back-of-house inventory system.  This is what I have so far in regards to the tables:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Recipe: this table will contain the recipe date: the name, steps needed to cook, etc.</li>
  <li>Ingredients/Inventory: this is our back of house inventory, so this will have the information about each product that will be used in our recipes.</li>
  <li>Recipe Line Item: This is the tricky table, I want to be able link to the ingredients here as well as the quantity needed for the recipe, but I also need to be able to directly include recipes from the recipe table (such as marinara sauce that we make in-house), and that is why I am having trouble figuring out the best way to design this table.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Basically, the recipe line item table needs to be able to link to either the ingredients table or the recipe table depending on which line item is needed and I want to know what would be the most effective way to handle that.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you so much in advance!</p>