On-line Recipe Hosting Sites

[Kim Shook]

I have a concern that I’m hoping someone can help me with.  For years I have put my “keeper” recipes at the Recipe Circus.  I love it because I can post my tried and true recipes.  I can also edit them if I need to update or correct something.  Another thing is that I can direct people to either the title page or a specific recipe.  I also use it to store old family recipes that I might not have tried yet, but don’t want to lose.  I know that there are folks here that consult it.  And my friends and family visit often to find a recipe or get some inspiration.  It has really become a family resource. 

 

Just lately, I’m getting worried about it.  It was introduced years ago by a lady who loved to cook and also managed an associated site like eG, but much smaller, called Mimi’s Cyber Kitchen.  Her husband was the “webmaster”.  She passed away a few years ago and the boards are gone, but her husband and daughter have kept the Recipe Circus running. 

 

I have experienced a few glitches over the years, but when I recently contacted him about not being able to post one specific recipe (though I can post others), his response was very nice, but basically, “I’m old, the website is old.  I’m afraid to do too much to it because I’m afraid I’ll just lose everything”.  I have over 1600 recipes there now – and put more in every week.  I am at heart a Luddite, so I also have all of the recipes printed out in binders. 

 

So, I’ve been blabbing away explaining the why.  But the what is: does anyone know of any similar websites that I could transfer to?  I really want it to be accessible to my friends and family.  Thank you so much. 

[TdeV]

I use Evernote (www.evernote.com) which is a note app. Actually I manage my notes on my computer, but I can get to them from my cell phone. One folder is called Food which has a sub-folder called Shared Recipes and I can provide that link to anyone. Here, for example, is my modification of your recipe for Maggie's Shrimp & Corn w Basil. One of the things you can't see is that the original link came from recipecircus.com.  On the other hand, here is your recipe for Grilled Chicken Thighs with Bullseye Sauce which came from eGullet.

 

What Evernote actually does is copy your local Evernote to an online database which can be accessed by any of your devices (computers, phone, tablet). You can share any individual recipe with anyone. What you can't do is give anyone a structure to walk through such as Entrées, Desserts, etc. You could, however, create one Note for Desserts which gave hyperlinks to your favourite dessert recipes.

 

Clear as mud, huh? Evernote comes in a free and paid version. I actually started using Evernote because I was moving across the country and didn't want to move boxes and boxes of recipe printouts. I bought a sheetfed scanner. That first month I ran into the ceiling on uploads for the free version, so became a premium user. I don't suppose that I would have run into that ceiling ever after but there are many things in the premium version which are better. It's about $50 per year.

Edited April 11, 2020 by TdeV (log)

[ElsieD]

Does anyone have any further info on this topic?

[JoNorvelleWalker]

2 hours ago, ElsieD said:

Does anyone have any further info on this topic?

 

I believe you can import your own recipes into Eat Your Books but I have never tried.

 

[Maison Rustique]

After using one online recipe service and losing everything I had stored there, I gave up. I now just save everything as a pdf on my pc. Easy to email to anyone or if they want, I can take a snapshot of the pdf and give it to them as an image. 

[Nyleve Baar]

After Pepperplate shut down, I imported all my saved recipes to Cookbook App. I need something like this so that I have access to my favourite repeat recipes from anywhere on my phone or iPad. Cookbook works very well, easy to use, pretty intuitive and simple to edit. You can import recipes directly from websites too, which works perfectly about half the time. You just enter the url and everything comes through, even the photo of the dish. Also it's either free or very cheap (I can't remember which, but I know I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a recipe app.) Recommended.

 

https://thecookbookapp.com

Edited December 30, 2020 by Nyleve Baar (log)

[AAQuesada]

I keep everything in Google Drive personally. It's been great, really I wanted something like Cheftec software originally but I've grown to love the versatility of Google drive. I can text a recipe in PDF format to a cook or I can share recipes with a group of cooks and if one gets let go you just remove that person from sharing. I can access it from any computer or phone so really I don't have to bring my laptop with me to work if i can access the internet from an office computer.  

[Kim Shook]

Is anyone familiar with One Note or Copy Me That?  Any opinions?  Thanks!  

[AlaMoi]

I'm not too sure I could count all the free/reasonable cost recipe sites that have done the Photobucket suicide thing or simply gone out of business.

remember Kodak's free forever photo storage?

 

I capture recipes in .pdf, or .doc or .rtf formats - as dictated by the easiest "capture."

when I do them, if it's worth keeping I translate into .txt files with my own notes.

I'd go out on the limb and suspect that .txt files will be the last format abandoned by our computer masters.....

 

now, backing up your stuff - whole 'nother issue.  Cloud/external drive/CD/DVD . . many options.

[Toliver]

I tend to keep a blank Notepad open (.txt file extension) and copy and paste from the online recipe into the Notepad file.

If the online recipe has some sort of text formatting, I will choose to "print" the recipe which usually opens a print window of the recipe without any text formatting and will copy and paste from that and then just close it out and not bother printing it.

Then just save the Notepad file to your computer.

[Maison Rustique]

16 hours ago, Kim Shook said:

Is anyone familiar with One Note or Copy Me That?  Any opinions?  Thanks!  

 

I use Copy Me That to capture the recipes and save them as pdfs on my PC. I don't use their storage.

[TdeV]

Kim, One Note is a note taking package, owned by Microsoft, and so, like other Microsoft products, more ubiquitous and less useful (for those with demanding requirements) than other software. Evernote is also a note taking package.

 

The hard part in this discovery process (software selection) is determining what's possible, determining how much effort will be required to get what you think you want, and then selecting what you actually want.

 

Many/most recipe website locations will allow you to print a hard copy of a recipe. Then you can file the paper in a binder with other recipes. If you learn how, you can save the "printed copy" as a simple file (pdf, txt) and store it on your computer. If you learn how, you can add text into a pdf with your notes about cooking that recipe.

 

Both of the aforementioned methods escape the issue of having your data in software that has reached end-of-life.

 

Either printing a recipe to printer or file has the issue of finding the recipe when you want it. It's very hard to browse through physical paper or computer files when you're trying to get an idea about something. With paper recipes, the recipe is physically filed in only one place. In a cookbook, a recipe may be discoverable through a well-constructed index. With a computer file, the recipe may be filed by title - which files may be discoverable by some rudimentary search.

 

No fancy software is required to do any of the aforementioned, just develop some consistent habits.

 

However, this surely shortchanges the power of computers.

 

Many online recipe programs will store your recipes for you (with the caveat about end-of-life software). Most give you the ability to categorize your recipes in some pre-determined fashion. Most give you the ability to look up stuff based on some pre-determined rules. Which may or may not be an insurmountable issue for you; you'd be surprised how limited many products are. For example, I was looking into Eat Your Books and wanted to look up recipes based on the cooking vessel (e.g. Instant Pot). Not possible. This was a deal breaker for me, not because the Instant Pot search was all that important, but because it illustrated how controlled was the available data).

 

Of the more general note-taking products (One Note, Evernote), you have to create your own structure.

One feature of these products are keywords (called Tags in Evernote) which can be applied to a single Note. Here are some sample keywords:

Where: Africa, America.North, Asia.South, Europe.Central, Europe.Western

Meal Course: Appetizer.Tapas, Dessert, Leftover, Lunch, Soup

Cookery Method: Bake.Roast, Braise, Brine.Brining, Boil, Grill, Pressure.Cooker, Steam.Oven

Pastry

Cheese

Jam

Sauce

Tomato

Potato

etc.

 

Many programs offer a general word search. If you type "pepper" in the search box, you'll end up with recipes including black pepper, jalapeno, and green bell pepper (sorry, @rotuts). This is one of the features of keyword (tag) search, you'll only end up with notes which you have determined belong to that categorization. And if you're looking for all  European recipes, the search would be " tag:Europe* " (not including quotes).

 

There are lots and lots of other issues. Got questions?

 

P.S. If folks want to start a discussion about developing classification systems for computerized recipe management, I will participate.

Edited January 16 by TdeV
Clarity (log)

[ElsieD]

@TdeV  Thank you for a great post.  I am interested also in this topic.  I am currently using Evernote but it no longer allows me to print recipes.  To say I find this annoying is an understatement.  I am thinking I may have to dish out a few $$$ to get what I want.

[TdeV]

Elsie, why can't you print recipes?

 

Edited to add: Can you print otherwise on your computer?

Edited January 16 by TdeV
Clarification (log)

[MokaPot]

Are you guys talking about recipes you've written yourself?

 

I write down all my recipes in Microsoft Word (for Mac).

 

Supposedly, one of the most stable / reliable formats is PDF (e.g., Adobe Acrobat). If you're wanting to save recipes from the internet, you could "print" the page and then "save as PDF." You'd then have a document that's stable and word-searchable.

 

You could also do screen shots, but I don't think you can copy / search for words on screen shots.

 

Organization would be a whole other topic.

[TdeV]

@MokaPot, I capture all kinds of recipes, sometimes articles in "notes" in Evernote. Some from eGullet, some from Washington Post, NY Times, and particularly The Guardian. And, cooking blogs too. At the moment, I have 5700+ notes about food.

 

I agree than screen shots aren't very searchable. Originally I had a lot of pdfs because I scanned paper documents to get them, but now I clip from websites. I use OCR to convert pdf to legible text. Nowadays I find text is much more editable in a "copy  and paste" from website than a pdf.

 

I also reduce the size of pictures/images because if I'm going to use the recipe to cook from, I want to be able to print a copy. I usually add my cooking "diary" notes directly onto the original recipe. 

 

And, as @Kim Shook wanted, I can provide a link to anyone for a specific recipe.

 

As previously mentioned, the difficulty is trying to browse through recipes on one's hard disk looking for not-previously-indexed combinations of butternut squash WITH goat cheese AND ground lamb AND pasta. Some organization of one's recipes is required.

 

 

[MokaPot]

Thanks, @TdeV. What OCR software do you use? My paper scanner will create a "searchable PDF." But I'm looking for something that will convert a non-readable PDF document into a readable PDF.

 

I.e., I don't want to have to print out something and scan it in order to create something readable. (Hope that made sense.)

 

[TdeV]

MokaPot, your scanner has some kind of OCR in it already (that's what makes it searchable). My scanner does too but I have long had a professional version of Acrobat which has an OCR tool in it. I feed documents into the scanner, then check the pdfs have scanned properly, run Acrobat Text Recognition tool. Then I shred the original documents! There are other (free) OCR tools which I have used for various clients but I can't remember the names of any off the top of my head.

 

Acrobat has some very fancy search abilities (but I don't know if they are accessible in the Acrobat Reader versions of the software.

 

If you happen to be using a storage/software/tool like Evernote, their servers will eventually OCR every note (file). I don't know whether One Note has such a feature.

 

If you're interested, I'd love to hear how you organize your recipe information.

 

[MokaPot]

@TdeV, I don't really have that many recipes. I was interested in OCR for work as well as recipes, haha.

 

All my recipes are in Word (which makes it easy for me to add notes & alter).

 

The Word documents are in different folders that make sense to me, personally. E.g.:

 

one-pot dishes (like chili)

salads

salad dressings

breakfast

 

No sub-folders. (Like I said, my recipes are very few.)

 

For searching, I use the Finder app in Mac. (For Windows, the finder app is called "Windows Explorer" (different from "Internet Explorer").) I just did an experiment on my work files (more extensive than my recipes). I think that you could type in (on the search bar) "butternut squash goat cheese ground lamb pasta" and find recipes that way.

 

I used to bookmark recipes on my browsers, which isn't great if they change the URL or take it down from the internet.

 

[TdeV]

In Windows, I use a product called Agent Ransack from Mythicsoft for fancy searches for files which is a bit smarter than the basic File Explorer.

 

I do think that Evernote has more sophisticated options, but I shall have to think about how better to describe them.

 

Unlike your recipe setup, MokaPot, I use Evernote for very many things, so I am searching it constantly.

[tikidoc]

I have the Paprika app on my iPad, and it’s super helpful, especially with recipes imported from the internet. You can import a web address into the app and it will automatically download and format the recipe for the vast majority of sites. For people who compile a lot of recipes from the internet, it is a fantastic tool. You can also type recipes in directly or cut and paste from other documents. They sell it for every platform - you have to buy them separately. I just have iOS, and that works for me. $4.99 for the iOS version, and I have gotten my money’s worth many times over.