How Do You Feel About Buying and Using e-Cookbooks?

ChocoMom · January 4, 2016

On 8/29/2013 at 11:04 AM, annabelle said:

To me, hand-written notes are a charming aspect of used books. It tells me that the book has been loved and used enough by the previous owner to have been important enough to her to annotate. I have my great-grandmother's handwritten notes in her one and only cookbook that are my only link to her as a living woman. While my handwriting is not nearly as elegant, I can only hope my own children and future grandchildren will see this the same way in my heavily used and splattered books: I cared enough to cook meals to please my family.

This. I've inherited hundreds of cookbooks, and many of my mother's and grandmothers' handwritten recipes. To preserve them, I've put them in a scrapbook, which I use from time to time. (Amongst those, I have recipes written on newspaper coupons and the back side of a flour bag. My Grandmas were classic.)

And, I've nearly ruined the screens on enough electronic devices while trying to cook. The only things I really miss about it, and liked, was that I could enlarge the font on the computer, and do calculations for increasing the recipes...but I don't have much in the way of counter space in my home-kitchen to set an IPad or any other computer while cooking. Plus, with a hardcopy cookbook, I can set it on a bar stool next to my cooking station, and if I knock it over, no big deal. With an IPad, that doesn't go over so well. My favorite recipes are mostly handwritten out, and taped to the inside of various cupboard doors.

MelissaH · January 4, 2016

I travel enough and I have my family's curse of being a fast reader. For me, ebooks have huge benefits over paper books.

I don't bring my cookbooks into the kitchen. Instead, I copy the recipe onto a sheet of paper (or print a copy, if it's from an ebook), which I then use to cook from and make notes. If it's a keeper, I type it into my computer with my notes.

For those of you who like to cook from an iPad or other tablet, I'll just note here that touch screens work very nicely through a plastic ziplock bag.

Martin Fisher · January 4, 2016

8 hours ago, ChocoMom said:

I've inherited hundreds of cookbooks, and many of my mother's and grandmothers' handwritten recipes. To preserve them, I've put them in a scrapbook, which I use from time to time.

Same here.

I keep the hard copies in a safe place.
I've recently started digitizing the irreplaceable stuff and archiving it on M-Discs (1000 year archival discs.)

I'll store those in a very safe place as well as distribute copies to family.

Edited January 4, 2016 by DiggingDogFarm (log)

**Smithy** · February 5, 2018

I'm bumping this up to get an update and to see how others deal with a problem I'm having.

First, the update: if you participated in this topic before, has your attitude changed since then? If so, how? (Folks who haven't participated before are welcome to join in to the original question, of course.)

Second, my problem statement. Thanks in large part to the Crazy Good e-Book Bargains topic, my cookbook collection has burgeoned to the point that I have trouble deciding among several recipes that I'd like to try for a particular food. With dead-tree books I can pull all out the candidates, flip through them, find and mark the best-looking recipes, and keep them all open together until I make my selection or, more likely, come up with a hybrid. With e-cookbooks I seem able to have only 1 open at a time. I open one, look through the recipes, bookmark the likeliest candidate(s). Maybe I take a screen shot. Then I have to close that book, open another, repeat the process of looking and bookmarking. I can have anything open at any given time, but I don't have a good way to compare. I find it much more cumbersome and less satisfying than having several physical books open at once to compare recipes and photos. A printer is not an option at present, nor is the use of multiple tablets.

Has anyone else found this to be a problem, then satisfactorily solved it?

FauxPas · February 5, 2018

@Smithy, I use Calibre to manage my ebooks and it does allow for more than one book to be open at the same time. I sometimes have two books open together side by side on the screen to compare.

You can read about Calibre and see a demo here, if you are interested:

https://calibre-ebook.com/

Edited February 5, 2018 by FauxPas
to add link (log)

Martin Fisher · February 5, 2018

33 minutes ago, Smithy said:

Has anyone else found this to be a problem, then satisfactorily solved it?

If you have a PC or Mac, you can open the cookbook in Kindle for PC (or Mac) and copy the recipes into a word processor or the like.

You can also do something similar by highlighting the text on the Kindle, app, or Kindle Cloud Reader, then viewing the highlights in "Your Notes and Highlights."

https://read.amazon.com/notebook

Edited to add: On the right in "Your Notes and Highlights" there's an option drop-down menu with an option to open each highlight in Kindle.

Edited February 5, 2018 by DiggingDogFarm (log)

**Smithy** · February 5, 2018

47 minutes ago, DiggingDogFarm said:

If you have a PC or Mac, you can open the cookbook in Kindle for PC (or Mac) and copy the recipes into a word processor or the like.

You can also do something similar by highlighting the text on the Kindle, app, or Kindle Cloud Reader, then viewing the highlights in "Your Notes and Highlights."

https://read.amazon.com/notebook

Edited to add: On the right in "Your Notes and Highlights" there's an option drop-down menu with an option to open each highlight in Kindle.

Does the "Notes and Highlights" allow notes from more than one book at a time? I've seen the "Your Notes" section and the "Flashcards" but maybe I haven't experimented with them enough.

Martin Fisher · February 5, 2018

4 minutes ago, Smithy said:

Does the "Notes and Highlights" allow notes from more than one book at a time?

Yes, they appear in "ANNOTATED BOOKS FROM YOUR LIBRARY (Most recently accessed shown first)" on the left.

JoNorvelleWalker · February 5, 2018

On ‎1‎/‎4‎/‎2016 at 2:32 AM, Anna N said:

Yes. That is the version I have purchased quite some time ago for a very good price.

I don't see any way to purchase it?

Porthos · February 6, 2018

@DiggingDogFarm Thanks for the information on doing the "highlight- copy the highlight" technique. It sure beats screen grabs.

Porthos · February 6, 2018

I'm liking my e-books so far. I don't cook from recipes regularly, but I like using my e-books. I also try to remember to add e-book titles that have been indexed to my "library shelf."

Edited February 6, 2018 by Porthos (log)

Anna N · February 6, 2018

5 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

I don't see any way to purchase it?

I believe this is where I purchased my copy (which I no longer have). I might still be able to access it but I haven’t tried.

JoNorvelleWalker · February 6, 2018

7 minutes ago, Anna N said:

I believe this is where I purchased my copy (which I no longer have). I might still be able to access it but I haven’t tried.

That copy looks pirated though to me. Are there any MC staff on here who could comment?

rustwood · February 6, 2018

16 hours ago, DiggingDogFarm said:

If you have a PC or Mac, you can open the cookbook in Kindle for PC (or Mac) and copy the recipes into a word processor or the like.

You can also do something similar by highlighting the text on the Kindle, app, or Kindle Cloud Reader, then viewing the highlights in "Your Notes and Highlights."

https://read.amazon.com/notebook

I have done this extensively and find it useful; however, I am glad that I have used it to copy recipes to the recipe database app I use (Paprika). I say that for a couple of reasons. The first is that I just find it much more convenient and useful to have them in the apps since I can easily do things like create shopping lists, scale the recipes, take notes, and sync it all between my phone, tablet, and PC. In response to @Smithy's recent inquiry, I also find it makes it easier to search recipes and flip between them for comparison.

The second reason is that I just discovered an issue with my Kindle notes. Some time last year Amazon revamped their notes page/tool. When I just went to the current notebook page, I had no entries. I then opened a book to check for highlights and they were still there. Eventually I discovered that if I created a new highlight, all of my old highlights would appear on the notebook page, but only for that title. I also think the old kindle highlights page allowed you to search all of your notes, but the new one only seems to search the titles and author info.

Of course it takes some effort to copy highlighted text from a kindle book into a recipe database. There are tools that can help (e.g. bookcision), but I also find that once I have identified a specific recipe that interests me, it is often fairly easy to locate a copy of it on the web. It is then very easy to import it into a recipe database. Also, I often learn a lot about other variations when I search for a recipe on the web. I frequently end up saving a different recipe for the same dish instead of the original. The time this process takes also helps me to resist saving countless recipes that I will never use. I have many recipes in my database that I haven't made, but I do my best to keep them curated. The app also makes it easy for me to browse and search just the recipes that I have made.

FWIW, I have done the same sort of thing with physical books via scanning a recipe into a PDF file and then using OCR to capture the text. If you have the right tools available, it is surprisingly easy once you get the hang of it. As you might imagine, I have come to the point where I generally prefer e-books to physical books. There are many reasons for that, but one of them is that "piles" of un- or under- read e-books just don't weigh on me the way that piles of physical books do.

Anna N · February 6, 2018

11 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

That copy looks pirated though to me. Are there any MC staff on here who could comment?

I am not sure why you would think it was pirated. The application is available on iTunes and I believe at the time that I purchased it The Modernist Team promoted it.

Martin Fisher · February 6, 2018

1 hour ago, rustwood said:

FWIW, I have done the same sort of thing with physical books via scanning a recipe into a PDF file and then using OCR to capture the text. If you have the right tools available, it is surprisingly easy once you get the hang of it. As you might imagine, I have come to the point where I generally prefer e-books to physical books. There are many reasons for that, but one of them is that "piles" of un- or under- read e-books just don't weigh on me the way that piles of physical books do.

Yes, I prefer PDF ebooks.

I store recipes in Gmail, Google Drive and Google Keep—easily searched/sorted via keywords and tags/labels.

Adobe Scan: PDF Scanner, OCR

Edited February 6, 2018 by DiggingDogFarm (log)

JoNorvelleWalker · February 6, 2018

4 hours ago, Anna N said:

I am not sure why you would think it was pirated. The application is available on iTunes and I believe at the time that I purchased it The Modernist Team promoted it.

Does Ileana Imbtu, the person who uploaded Modernist Cuisine at Home to Scribd, own or control the copyright?

Anna N · February 6, 2018

4 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Does Ileana Imbtu, the person who uploaded Modernist Cuisine at Home to Scribd, own or control the copyright?

http://modernistcuisine.com/2013/11/introducing-the-modernist-cuisine-at-home-ebook-edition/

This in fact is the version that I downloaded. I can’t account for copyright issues with a recognized and still available application sold by iTunes. Though I seriously doubt that the team would tolerate copyright infringement. I was merely trying to confirm that I had an electronic copy at one point.

Edited February 6, 2018 by Anna N (log)

JoNorvelleWalker · February 7, 2018

7 hours ago, Anna N said:

http://modernistcuisine.com/2013/11/introducing-the-modernist-cuisine-at-home-ebook-edition/

This in fact is the version that I downloaded. I can’t account for copyright issues with a recognized and still available application sold by iTunes. Though I seriously doubt that the team would tolerate copyright infringement. I was merely trying to confirm that I had an electronic copy at one point.

This was the link I followed where I could not find the way to purchase. I agree I can't see @nathanm and company letting intellectual property infringement go unpunished. However I still think that the scribd.com copy looks fishy.

Why do you no longer have your copy?

Anna N · February 7, 2018

6 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

This was the link I followed where I could not find the way to purchase. I agree I can't see @nathanm and company letting intellectual property infringement go unpunished. However I still think that the scribd.com copy looks fishy.

Why do you no longer have your copy?

I suspect it was on my computer which is long gone but I also suspect one needed a copy of Inkling in order to use it. It is quite possible I could still get access to it if I was so inclined.

Thanks for the Crepes · February 7, 2018

On 2/5/2018 at 1:40 PM, Smithy said:

I'm bumping this up to get an update and to see how others deal with a problem I'm having.

First, the update: if you participated in this topic before, has your attitude changed since then? If so, how? (Folks who haven't participated before are welcome to join in to the original question, of course.)

Second, my problem statement. Thanks in large part to the Crazy Good e-Book Bargains topic, my cookbook collection has burgeoned to the point that I have trouble deciding among several recipes that I'd like to try for a particular food. With dead-tree books I can pull all out the candidates, flip through them, find and mark the best-looking recipes, and keep them all open together until I make my selection or, more likely, come up with a hybrid. With e-cookbooks I seem able to have only 1 open at a time. I open one, look through the recipes, bookmark the likeliest candidate(s). Maybe I take a screen shot. Then I have to close that book, open another, repeat the process of looking and bookmarking. I can have anything open at any given time, but I don't have a good way to compare. I find it much more cumbersome and less satisfying than having several physical books open at once to compare recipes and photos. A printer is not an option at present, nor is the use of multiple tablets.

Has anyone else found this to be a problem, then satisfactorily solved it?

Smithy,

I don't understand why you wouldn't be able to open multiple tabs with up to ten or more recipes at a time from your bookmarks? I have Time Warner cable (now Spectrum in this area) which is enough bandwidth to stream video in realtime. Of course you'd have to tab between them, but that is doable.

That said, I'm like you, in that I prefer a physical book. I especially love "Deep Run Roots" although it's one of the most unwieldy in my collection.

**Smithy** · February 8, 2018

11 hours ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:

Smithy,

I don't understand why you wouldn't be able to open multiple tabs with up to ten or more recipes at a time from your bookmarks? I have Time Warner cable (now Spectrum in this area) which is enough bandwidth to stream video in realtime. Of course you'd have to tab between them, but that is doable.

That said, I'm like you, in that I prefer a physical book. I especially love "Deep Run Roots" although it's one of the most unwieldy in my collection.

I'm referring to bookmarks in my Kindle books, not to bookmarked recipes that I can open on the web. I agree that it's easy to have multiple tabs open, each with a difference recipe, in the browser. (However did we manage, back in the day when browsers had one - and only one - tab/window?) With the Kindle app there doesn't seem to be a way to have multiple books open at once. If I've missed it, someone should let me know.

I'm still working on the helpful Kindle instructions above, and may have more questions after I've played with it a bit.

Toliver · May 30, 2019

Host's note: this post and the ensuing discussion were moved from the Crazy Good e-Book Bargains topic.

On 5/30/2019 at 2:38 PM, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Nope, not for me. I clicked on the hardback copy instead.

Hardback copies are a thing of the past for me. I have no room for anymore physical books in my apartment. I will make an exception for hardback books that won't make it into the ebook world because they're too old (for example, I recently bought a used copy of Shirley Corriher's "Cookwise").

I bought an Amazon Fire 10 and read my ecookbooks on it. The photos in the cookbooks look great and because it's a larger tablet, it makes it easier to read them (as opposed to reading them on my Kindle Papaerwhite which doesn't offer color). The other nice thing is wherever I go, all of my ebooks go with me so if I get bored of one book, I can quickly switch to something else to read.

Edited June 2, 2019 by Smithy
Added host's note (log)

JoNorvelleWalker · May 31, 2019

1 hour ago, Toliver said:

Hardback copies are a thing of the past for me. I have no room for anymore physical books in my apartment. I will make an exception for hardback books that won't make it into the ebook world because they're too old (for example, I recently bought a used copy of Shirley Corriher's "Cookwise").

I bought an Amazon Fire 10 and read my ecookbooks on it. The photos in the cookbooks look great and because it's a larger tablet, it makes it easier to read them (as opposed to reading them on my Kindle Papaerwhite which doesn't offer color). The other nice thing is wherever I go, all of my ebooks go with me so if I get bored of one book, I can quickly switch to something else to read.

I have no room for more physical books in my apartment. I wish that could stop me. However I am more apt to read a physical book, and far more likely to cook from it.

**ElsieD** · May 31, 2019

I too prefer hard copies. I have a bunch on my Kindle, 99% of which I bought on sale for $1.99 and I flip through them when I buy them but I tend to not look at them ever again. On the other hand, yesterday I was looking something up in my ice cream book put out by Bi-Rite Creamery and before I knew it a good half hour had passed.

Sign In

How Do You Feel About Buying and Using e-Cookbooks?

Recommended Posts

Similar Content

Recently Browsing 0 members