Creating Data model for mahout recommendation engine

I am trying to build an item-item similarity matching recommendation engine with mahout. The data set is as in the following format ( attributes are in text not in numerals format )

name : category : cost : ingredients

x : xx1 : 15 : xxx1, xxx2, xxx3

y : yy1 : 14 : yyy1, yyy2, yyy3

z : xx1 : 12 : xxx1, xxy1

So in-order to use this data set for mahout to train, what is the right way to convert this in to numeric (as CSV Boolean data set) format accepted by mahout.