Don’t be sorry. I applaud you for wanting to work this through in your own way.
And my solution does include something you said you specifically wanted to avoid: a proliferation of tiddlers. I think it’s justified, but there’s no reason for you to agree with me on that. As Lindsey Buckingham said, go your own way!
But I have to admit that in answering this, I also had two ulterior motives. First, I try hard to push a certain data approach in discussions here, and this looked to me to be another case where this approach makes things easier.
Second, and more importantly, a few months ago, I started work on a problem that’s been a thorn in the community’s side for far too long: how to create and manage commonly needed editions of TiddlyWiki. My first step was to create a Recipes edition. I’m happy with how that came out, but it was only meant to be a first step. The important bit is the editions management piece for that, but I feel I need to get some more useful editions under my belt before I approach that. And this sounded like a right-size problem: something clearly useful to a lot of people, and maybe slightly less involved than the Recipe one.
So my approach was to start this as though I might build it into a community edition. The techniques used here match well with skills I already have, so I was able to do this quickly. To be a real useful edition, I think it would need a lot of work, but I feel it’s designed to allow that work without a lot of rework.
So please, continue on your path, ask questions when you want – or when you feel you must! – and if anything from this version is useful to you feel free to borrow, steal, fold, spindle, or mutilate it.