Storing, Tracking, and Accessing Favorite Recipes

[AnneN]

Eat Your Books and Evernote work well for me. I love being able to clip a recipe into Evernote and then look it up on my phone when I'm in the grocery store. Evernote is easy to search and can be setup with notebooks to help organize things.

[kalypso]

I've been using Pepperplate - http://www.pepperplate.com/ - for about the last 7 or 8 months for recipes I want quickly and for cataloging the recipes I come across on-line or in newspapers. It has an automatic import feature for some of the bigger recipe sites and blogs, for on-line recipes that can't be auto-imported, a quick cut and paste on the ingredient list, followed by the prep instructions generally does the trick. Also allows you to sort your recipe list by category (and you determine your categories), alphabetically, by date added and so on.

It will also has a feature to allow you to expand or cut a recipe, plan weekly menus or a special menu and then create shopping lists based on the menu(s). iPhone, iPad, and Droid apps available. It's been pretty handy to be at the store and have the ability to double check I haven't forgotten something.

Con...Not a lot of "help" or "how to" instructions on the site and it's not quite as intuitive as I would have like it to be. But, the learning curve isn't that steep.

[Rover]

I've got a few methods. I have a blog/website (private) of all my tried and true recipes complete with pictures, preferably my own. I laboriously transferred years of MasterCook cookbooks to my blog after finally coming to terms with its instability.

I have been slowy, but surely purging all the photocopies, clippings, pages and magazines because I simply can't house them (and their dust) any longer. In addition, I realized that I never really revisit those paper collections, they become outdated and I never do actually prepare any of those recipes.

Online, I use SpringPad to capture and save anything I think I might want to try or to remember; I stay on top of organizing my SpringPad notebooks.

I have a large collection of cookbooks and I'm one of the very early members of EatYourBooks which has made me value and use my books far more than I ever did before.

[Dave Hatfield]

Not counting the 100+ cookbooks, a loose leaf binder that's falling apart and my feeble memory I store my favorite recipes on my blog.

There are only about 60 of them & they really are favorites. Mostly either my own inventions or modified versions of standards.

[myhal]

OK, thank you! You all have reminded me of the power of Evernote, a program I have always loved, I just forgot about lately. I love that I can take a picture of a recipe without having to type it in, then tag it and put it in my "Recipes" notebook (you can set up more than one notebook on Evernote. Evernote is free and it syncs wirelessly with your phone - love that). Can't do that with eatyourbooks.com. So I will be using those two programs until they can talk to each other. I don't mind checking two sources at this point.

[Snadra]

Eat your books is brilliant! I use Evernote a bit to keep web based recipes, but am relying more and more on pinterest to bookmark Internet recipes I come across. It's not easily searchable in terms of ingredients, but it's a nice visual scrapbook of things that interest me, and I organise my boards by intended use, and repin to a 'tried this one' board with notes when I've had a go at it.

If something (from any source) turns out to be a multiple repeater I add it to my 'mini cookbook' which I edit and reprint every second year or so. It's about 120 pages, formatted to be cut into A5 pages with 1recipe per page, and originally was bound on a coil wire binder. But I'm changing that for an A5 ring binder in its next incarnation, because I no longer have access to the binding machine. It's a nice size and easy to flip through. Plus an edited version makes a sweet gift in a basket with a few key ingredients included.

[Lindacakes]

There are a couple of other threads on this topic, I believe.

I'm a crank on this subject. Here's something that backs me up:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html?pagewanted=all

I think folks aren't conservative enough on this subject. My opinions are informed by two events I read about in eGullet that really stuck with me: the person whose house was robbed and the perp took her handwritten recipe book and the person whose house burned down and lost all her recipes.

I would be very unhappy if I lost some of my recipes. My most beloved recipes are handwritten in a cute book with hand drawn illustrations. Which I have scanned. And I've copied all the recipes. And I've put a copy of the files in my safe deposit box. Paranoid or sensible, you decide.

I used to keep files of printed recipes, clipped recipes. I still have those. But I don't add to them anymore. I copy and paste and file the Word doc in the files I want it in. I might put a recipe in both "Pie" and "Lemon" for instance. I like to follow flavors and some of my most valuable (to me) files are called "Buttermilk" or "Fruitcake". My entire file is backed up and in my safe.

Even if you have a program like Evernote, you could lose your recipes. I just upgraded to Mac Mountain Lion, which ferociously ate my calendar. Ten years of notes on what I've done. Gone. I forgot to back it up before I upgraded. You can't be paranoid enough, it would seem.

Eat Your Books is an excellent program that enhances the value of your cookbook collection. I love pulling the books off the shelf and sitting with them, pencil and notebook in hand and studying. Nothing makes me happier. But Eat Your Books is much faster and more efficient. I like to proselytize: annotate your recipes, rate them, keep notes. The rest of us can see this and benefit from your experience. If we all do this, we'll all know which of Julia's recipes are not hard and real keepers or which Maida Heatter cookie is unforgettable.

[myhal]

Lindacakes, I SO appreciate your passion for this topic. I would be devasted to lose so many of my recipes. I think you pointed out what I need to remember - to always back up, maybe in duplicate, like the safe deposit box. I lost all my music in a crash once and it has taken me years to reconstruct my library - still doing it.

[Twyst]

Hi, believe it or not...I started storing my favourite recipes on my email account. This was for ease of search/access...and from anywhere in the world. For long and involved recipes, I now take a photo of the handwritten or one from a favourite cookbook using my iPhone and attach it to an email without having to type it all up.

I do the exact same, its an amazing way to be able to access your most cherished recipes from anywhere. Gmails search feature does a great job of finding exactly what I need when I need it.

[boudin noir]

Eat your books changed my cooking life. I have 100 + cookbooks. Some I wasn't using much until I got eat your books. It will also include cooking magazines and blogs that you follow. A great resource!

[Baselerd]

I don't think I've ever repeated a recipe more than once. Usually for easy things l don't even follow recipes.

[pquinene]

I have two methods: (1) I use pinterest.com for recipes that I want to try (must have a picture), and (2) I use a binder with page protectors for recipes that I print out. That binder is getting pretty thick, thus I have had to weed some recipes out (recipes that I lost interest in). I LOVE IT! Of course, I also have two cookbooks I published that contain my childhood favorite foods from Guam.

[&roid]

Another Evernote user here, absolutely changed my life.

I use it for all sorts of work/home related things but the food part is probably my favourite: pages ripped out of magazines and scanned, web pages clipped, made up recipes recorded for the first time (I used to make great things and promptly forget them before I started using evernote!). I've got a dedicated sous vide note with all my experiments detailed, its a great way of learning when I cook. Everything gets tagged (things like "Recipe Ideas" "Good Recipes") so I can find them easily. I've even started photographing the food I cook now too.

I do a weekly food plan which has links to the note for that recipe and helps me get my shopping sorted, since starting all this I've eaten more new, better food than ever before. Having everything available wherever I am: work, home, out and about, on whatever device I have on me: mac, PC, iphone, iPad is the real killer part of Evernote for me.

[Merkinz]

Another Evernote user here, absolutely changed my life.

I use it for all sorts of work/home related things but the food part is probably my favourite: pages ripped out of magazines and scanned, web pages clipped, made up recipes recorded for the first time (I used to make great things and promptly forget them before I started using evernote!). I've got a dedicated sous vide note with all my experiments detailed, its a great way of learning when I cook. Everything gets tagged (things like "Recipe Ideas" "Good Recipes") so I can find them easily. I've even started photographing the food I cook now too.

I do a weekly food plan which has links to the note for that recipe and helps me get my shopping sorted, since starting all this I've eaten more new, better food than ever before. Having everything available wherever I am: work, home, out and about, on whatever device I have on me: mac, PC, iphone, iPad is the real killer part of Evernote for me.

Hey, it is interesting to hear how you and others use Evernote. I haven't really given this a go before but I am currently looking for a new way to organize and view 'found recipes'. I might have a look into Evernote tonight when I have some time... Would you (or anyone one for that matter) mind sharing a screenshot of how you organize your recipes using this program?

I used to use MacGourmet but didn't enjoy typing everything out ... then I switched to Windows etc. etc. and generally lost interest.

I'm really interested in finding something that will help me travel with my favorite recipes.

Cheers

[Kerry Beal]

Another Evernote user here, absolutely changed my life.

I use it for all sorts of work/home related things but the food part is probably my favourite: pages ripped out of magazines and scanned, web pages clipped, made up recipes recorded for the first time (I used to make great things and promptly forget them before I started using evernote!). I've got a dedicated sous vide note with all my experiments detailed, its a great way of learning when I cook. Everything gets tagged (things like "Recipe Ideas" "Good Recipes") so I can find them easily. I've even started photographing the food I cook now too.

I do a weekly food plan which has links to the note for that recipe and helps me get my shopping sorted, since starting all this I've eaten more new, better food than ever before. Having everything available wherever I am: work, home, out and about, on whatever device I have on me: mac, PC, iphone, iPad is the real killer part of Evernote for me.

Hey, it is interesting to hear how you and others use Evernote. I haven't really given this a go before but I am currently looking for a new way to organize and view 'found recipes'. I might have a look into Evernote tonight when I have some time... Would you (or anyone one for that matter) mind sharing a screenshot of how you organize your recipes using this program?

I used to use MacGourmet but didn't enjoy typing everything out ... then I switched to Windows etc. etc. and generally lost interest.

I'm really interested in finding something that will help me travel with my favorite recipes.

Cheers

I use MacGourmet and find that it's clippings function lets me import just about anything without having to type anything out.

[AlenChris]

I write them in my cooking notebook. Or sometimes bookmark the webpages.

[AnneN]

Would you (or anyone one for that matter) mind sharing a screenshot of how you organize your recipes using this program?

Cheers

The way I use Evernote is pretty straight forward. I created a notebook named recipes and store all recipes in it. Evernote allows tags so I always tag each recipe with multiple tags based on ingredients. Their search function is excellent so I haven't had any issues finding recipes. I am thinking of splitting up my recipes notebook into more detailed notebooks like appetizers, mains, sides, etc but I'm not sure if it's necessary.

The web clipper is great when I come across a recipe I want to keep since it allows me to immediately put in into the correct notebook and tag it.

[DiscoJeff]

I use Evernote for interesting looking recipes I may want to try out, and the winners end up in MacGourmet. It is nice to have both synched with my phone so I can look up ingredients when shopping.

Evernote also indexes text in photos, so if you take a picture of a recipe, you should be able search for names, ingredients, etc.

Jeff

[toolprincess]

Has anyone used the Cook'n recipe organizer software?

[jdmark]

  There are quite a few software solutions, one of which being MasterCook v14.  What I need is a Microsoft Windows and Android combination that has an easily exportable recipe option, preferably with an Open Format which allows other applications to import my recipes in case I decide to change software or the software itself is no longer supported and under development.  I do not want my recipes locked into a proprietary file format, that seems to be the trend with software development companies these days.  I also need to be able to edit and add my recipes using a keyboard and mouse otherwise inputting them with my phone is going to take weeks.  

 

 There also cannot be a monthly fee.  The solutions I have looked at not only lock your recipes into a proprietary file format but they also charge you a monthly fee, that seems pretty arrogant.  I wouldn't put it passed them to state in their EULA that they retain the rights to my recipes as well.

 

  Any input or suggestions would be great.  I can use a cloud syncing service to sync the actual files to my Android phone if need be.  Thank you.

[feedmec00kies]

Honestly, jdmark, after looking into options a while back I stuck to storing recipes as documents in Google Drive and organizing them into folders. If I'm preparing to use a bunch of them for something (like we're having people over) I copy the relevant documents into a folder for that meal/party/whatever. At some point I'd like to add details to files like when something is suitable for a particular special diet (we have a friend who has Celiac and others who are vegetarian) and maybe some other information, though right now I just put acronyms in the file names. But it's easy to edit on my computer and I can access everything on my phone, so it's what I've stuck with.

[Lindacakes]

Can an Evernote user tell us if the recipes and other data are exportable?

 

I once spent two full weekends pulling data out of a Palm Pilot and I'm not doing that again.  I keep all my recipes in Word.  Everything I take from the web I put in a Word document.  I don't keep any recipes in files anymore, I can't space the file cabinet space.

[Volition]

Evernote Mac and PC clients have options to export. Whole lot, notebook or single entry.

Export format is PDF or HTML.

[Shel_B]

I put all my recipes into Word files, and they are searchable on my computer by title or even words within the file.  I have more than 10,000 files (collecting recipes since 1967) and have always found what I needed.  The drawback is that they are not searchable if I'm away from my computer, but I've solved that by having duplicate copies of the files on flash drives and SD cards, which can be used on any computer.  Since I rarely need the recipes when not at home, and when I do it's only at one of two other places, this works very well for me.

[cyalexa]

I also use Word files, created by cutting and pasting. I format them to increase the font for easy reading. In addition to being on my hard drive and on a flash drive I email myself any recipes that are keepers so I can access them from any device that allows access to hotmail and attachments.