Kitchen Notebooks - "I'll show you mine..."

[Kerry Beal]

The return of the 'show us your ladles' (not ladies) thread, and rotut's comment over on the Sous Vide: Recipes and Techniques thread about red notebooks being the best - got me thinking.

Do the rest of you keep a kitchen notebook or two?

I have dozens - I tend to start one with any new interest or project - I don't recall if I started one for the Big Easy up north - but I know I've got a couple of Big Green Egg one's buried around here somewhere - I know there's one or two based on the Thermomix trials.

I dug through the pile of stuff beside my chair and the top of the bookcase in the bedroom where old course notes go to their repose and came up with a few -

The prenotes to the second Niagara Chocolate Workshop, my Wybauw course at the French Pastry School, the Showpiece course last year at FPS, current recipe trials for a fellow's new chocolate business.

My original Beta testing book from the Sous Vide Magic trials, some booze I'm playing with.

Potential - must always have empty books around for the next thing.

Time to show me yours...

[FrogPrincesse]

Mine is a Moleskine notebook. I use it to keep track of menus and prep lists for dinner parties, notes from conferences, etc. When I have a cocktail party I like to write down recipes that I will be making so I have everything in one place.

Here is a sample page.

And Kerry, we need to see a few pages from yours, not just the cover!

[Franci]

Oh my, PF, I can see you are precise, a scientist, I'm the most disorganized person... I do have a foodblog which is cleaner than my handwriting and easier to search. And food forums! I have a very good memory for this, I remember which forum and more or less when so I can use search engines :-)

I'm trying to keep a book for sous vide.

Edited January 28, 2014 by Franci (log)

[Kerry Beal]

Ah yes, totally forgot my 'good copy' cocktail notebook - if a recipe gets through the 'want to try notebook' and is any good - it makes it into this one.

A few random pages - sorry for the iPhone quality.

You'll notice I tend to write on only one side - if I have forgotten details and they need to make it to the same general page - I might write on the other side!

[Anna N]

Ah yes. Kerry is surely the Notebook Queen.

Here's the thing about my notebooks, of which there are hundreds, once I have made a note, perhaps tried a recipe I ALMOST NEVER, EVER CONSULT IT AGAIN.

[rotuts]

Excellent !

I like this best:

do not believe for a second that this was from "2009"

this was from the '70's

you know, *** various stuff *** and those light balls and those bell bottoms.

it just has a 'tape' saying 2009

recent stuff ....

of note:

" paper lasts, disks crash "

my motto.

I do have other stuff but way before SV

after all ...

J.Pepin has more notebooks than any of us might ever create ...

just saying ...

some of my best stuff is on the back of Computer Cards.

few know what this is

I have boxes of this stuff

labeled I.B.M

Edited January 28, 2014 by rotuts (log)

[rotuts]

Yar ...

... "" ALMOST NEVER, EVER CONSULT IT AGAIN. "" ...

but deep down you Know Its There ....

SV is a bit different ....

its Time Constant is a bit different ...

I could show you a few IBM cards .....

Edited January 28, 2014 by rotuts (log)

[&roid]

Sorry guys, the books look nice but it's all about the Evernote for me.

I'm yet to find a better way of collecting recipes, notes, pictures, ideas - I'd be lost without it!

[rotuts]

for example:

from the Secret Kitchen SV files:

sorry the CIA made me " blur " this

they are after all watching us ...

Edited January 28, 2014 by rotuts (log)

[rotuts]

good luck w the H.D. ....

&roid

[Pam R]

I only use notebooks when I'm working on recipes for books or articles, not when I'm cooking for myself (or friends/family), but I have stacks of them. These are a few that I've brought from home and are hanging out in my office at work right now. The top one is a project I'm trying to finish up ASAP. I once collected all sorts of cute ones and then decided I was spending way too much on them, so switched to the inexpensive composition notebooks that I pick up in bulk when all the school supplies are on sale.

I went to the cheaper ones, because as you can see, I kind of abuse them! (Pages folded in half tell me that I've already typed the recipe into the recipe software I use. Pages with the corner folded down mean I'm happy with the final results.)

[rotuts]

Of course, bringing up the '70's there were these CompCards:

there are at least a dozen stapled for each stack.

the statue of limitations cover this. and, F.D. i gave it all away as it really didn't interest me as a 'product' the

'Early Girls' and 'Big Boys' which I studied at the same time , those were a lot more interesting.

I have more card on those

No Bugs on the 8th floor of a S. facing balcony in BOS at that time

I could teach a few folks in CO or WA a few things. ....

the tomatoes were much better. i kept those.

however, it was the '70s folks loved this stuff.

not so much me.

[FrogPrincesse]

Sorry guys, the books look nice but it's all about the Evernote for me.

I'm yet to find a better way of collecting recipes, notes, pictures, ideas - I'd be lost without it!

Evernote_Premium.jpg

Don't get me wrong. I also use Evernote, iPad/iPhone Notes, Eat Your books, eGullet, etc, etc, to record my cooking notes. But when I am in the middle of a cooking project, I prefer to have a physical notebook next to me. I later transcribe the notes elsewhere as necessary.

[rotuts]

"" I tend to write on only one side ""

exactly the way it should be.

secondary and tertiary notes on review are then always then placed on the Left blank page.

just saying ....

[rotuts]

these are the Best NoteBooks:

the ones that 'Sponge-Out'

of course, well, red might have been better, but we must start any way we can ...

i have several like this ( wine labels, restaurant menu's etc pasted in )

from a trip to France in '80's to visit my parents for 3 weeks ...

BTW FF at the time 11 to the USA dollar

a 100 or 150 FF meal came down to 10 or 15 USA bucks.

table cloth stemware. to die for.

could not talk my patents to taking a train to

http://www.auberge-de-l-ill.com/V2/index.html

and at the time I could have afforded it

3 stars ...

[quiet1]

Just for @rotuts - I got a kitchen notebook.  (Actually, I put it together from bits I had already which is why it isn't a red lab notebook.)

 

Hopefully it will help me keep track of things to try and notes from things I read here.

Edited December 31, 2016 by quiet1
Forgot photo! (log)

[Okanagancook]

Recently I bought a couple more notebooks for specific appliances/cooking methods as well as my 'everything else' notebook.  At the back of my EE notebook I have listed the recipes which we really like and make on a regular basis. 

Notebooks:

Sous Vide Cookery

CSO

IP

Dehydrator

BGE (Big Green Egg)

 

[quiet1]

47 minutes ago, Okanagancook said:

Recently I bought a couple more notebooks for specific appliances/cooking methods as well as my 'everything else' notebook.  At the back of my EE notebook I have listed the recipes which we really like and make on a regular basis. 

Notebooks:

Sous Vide Cookery

CSO

IP

Dehydrator

BGE (Big Green Egg)

 

 

Mine currently has dividers - so far I've only labeled one section for the Instant Pot and one for SV but I'm going to use another for recipes that are word of mouth from family or that I've made up, to keep track of them, probably another for ideas and recipes to try from cookbooks (just recipe name and book and page number, I'm not copying the whole thing out until I know it is good.) With the disc binding, which I have bits and pieces of kicking around because I use a smaller size disc bound book for my planner, I can always swap in bigger disks or pull a section out to make a separate notebook, so it seemed a good way to get started.

 

I am currently waiting on dot grid pages for it, though, which I much prefer but only have in half page size. Right now it has some spare sample ruled pages from Levenger so I could get started using it. (I considered printing my own dot grid pages but my printer is being cranky so I decided not to fuss with it.) But I like dot grid because you have much more flexibility in how you organize things and it helps if you want to make a chart, but my writing doesn't end up going drunkenly down the page sideways as happens when I use blank paper.

 

I'm considering a recipe binder also (recipes typed in or copied and put in page protectors in a 3 ring binder) for other people in the house to use, but we will see if that materializes. I'm not giving them my notebook for sure, I'll never get it back.

[liuzhou]

I do keep this small notebook on my desk to note things that pop into my head or that I think I may want to keep. It has a few recipes and things like safe temperatures for different foods etc. To be honest I don't use it that much.

 

 

 

I'm more inclined to look things up online and if something really takes my fancy, print it out and keep in this folder.

 

 

It too has a few recipes and things like this Fahrenheit to Celcius converter for those America recipes which insist on using antediluvian measuring systems.

 

 

More often, I'm inclined to scribble down a list of ingredients and perhaps a highly abbreviated method on one of these 9cm square pieces of paper which live in a box, also on my desk, then hang it from this hook above the counter. Yes, they do get a bit splashed sometimes. So, do I.

 

All that said, I seldom cook from recipes,so I mainly just note down little things like say, a temperature and timing for roasting quail.

Edited January 1, 2017 by liuzhou
Removed duplicate image; fixed typo (log)

[Anna N]

@liuzhou

 

You are not the only Society member who jots things down on bits of paper!   When @Kerry Beal and I are up north on Manitoulin the kitchen is awash with little pieces of paper with ingredient lists and quantities. I am never sure how important they are so frequently stick them under a magnet on the fridge until I am sure that they are no longer needed.  I guess it amuses me that two people continents apart have similar kitchen note making habits. 

[Martin Fisher]

I'd love to show it — if I could find it! 

 

 

#WorldsMostDisorganizedPerson

[paulraphael]

I've been all digital for many years. Nothing fancy—mostly text files and pdfs. I keep it all synced via DropBox, so I always have access by phone or web.

 

Here's a screen shot, drilled down to some folders that happen to have lots of stuff.

 

 

[shain]

I keep all my recpies as local web pages on my computer, so that I can open them on my phone from anywhere.

Makes it really easy to search and make changes in them.

 

The ever growing list of concepts and recipe ideas yet to be made, I save in Evernote. 

 

Here's a sample page: (sorry, everything is in Hebrew...)

Edited January 4, 2017 by shain (log)

[Anna N]

The efficiency of various digital notebooks is unquestionable but oh how I miss the character of hand written notebooks!  

[paulraphael]

1 hour ago, Anna N said:

The efficiency of various digital notebooks is unquestionable but oh how I miss the character of hand written notebooks!  

 

You wouldn't miss it so much if your handwriting looked like mine