Recipe Storage

[Huevos del Toro]

Most of my recipes are on computer. When I need one I print it out and tack it to the ventilation hood with a magnet. I often make notes on the printout to transfer back to the original on the computer. Then the paper copy goes in the trash. It's not elegant but it works for me.

[Marlene]

I use DVO Cookin software to store my favourite recipes. I print out the recipe and throw it out when I'm done. Also of course RecipeGullet, same concept. If the recipe is in a cookbook, I'll just take the cookbook into the kitchen with me.

I don't have a computer in the kitchen for the same reason I don't have a TV in there. It's a kitchen, not an office or TV room. The kitchen is where we all gather to chat, and catch up on the day's events.

My office is directly across from the kitchen so it's easy to get a recipe.

[Kim WB]

I'm a Neanderthal..I keep binders with recipes in plastic page savers. I make any notes about hte recipe directly on the page, with a Sharpie. I also add when we had it: "CB leaving for Italy tomorrow, Dillon at play practice, just Bob and I , had with Basmati and spinach" for example..not necessarily major major events..but I love reading the notes that are even two or three years old..little snapshots of life.

I also got the idea from egullet to add a page to the "beef" binder, say, that has references to recipes in cookbooks I own, with page number and brief description.

Edited December 2, 2003 by Kim WB (log)

[bloviatrix]

Like Kim, I'm a luddite. I keep recipes in binders with plastic sleeves. So I bring the needed page in and hang it off the side of the refrigerator with a magnet. If I use a cookbook, I leave the book on the counter.

We went 2 years without hooking up our printer and I just found out it doesn't work, so when I want to use something that's online, I handwrite it on a piece of paper - there are slips of paper with recipes all over.

[Busboy]

I just call mom.

[stevea]

We get most of the popular cooking magazines, which take up a lot of space in the basement bookshelf. We've gotten into a rhythm of marking the interesting recipes in each new issue with sticky notes. Then, when I have a pile of magazines cluttering up the kitchen, I record the type (main dish, veggie, etc), name, important ingredients, magazine name, month and year, and page number into an excel spreadsheet, and move the magazines down to the basement (keeping the issues in order of course).

I keep a printout of the entire recipe list, organized by category, so we can browse through it and figure out what we'd like to make, then go down and grab the issue for reference. The printout is also good for notetaking (hated it, would make again, needs more salt, etc) that I can add to the spreadsheet when I have time.

[halland]

I'll throw in what I'd like to do, though I haven't gotten there yet.

Wall mounted flat screen monitor with touch-screen and pen capabilities. No keyboard would be required. Would provide access to the internet for recipes (why keep old magazines when most of the recipes are online -- epicurious, saveur, food&wine, egullet, etc). Other personal recipes stored in simple HTML format. Also would provide access to all MP3 files for cooking/dining/mood music as well.

Hal

[lorea]

I'll throw in what I'd like to do, though I haven't gotten there yet.

Wall mounted flat screen monitor with touch-screen and pen capabilities. No keyboard would be required. Would provide access to the internet for recipes (why keep old magazines when most of the recipes are online -- epicurious, saveur, food&wine, egullet, etc). Other personal recipes stored in simple HTML format. Also would provide access to all MP3 files for cooking/dining/mood music as well.

Hal

If you have money to spend, there are refrigerators that have this capability now. Makes it easy to update a shopping list!

[Cusina]

I just call mom.

I like this one

Man, I'm a wreck, I do all of the above. I use mastercook, and print recipes from there, taking notes afterwords. I also have a binder with plastic pages full of family recipes. I guess I like having them in the original handwriting and can't seem to part with that system.

My grandmother was a model of efficiency (some of you remember this from my blog). She had an index card box separated by category. The most used recipes have little plastic sleeves on them. I own this now and the simplicity of the system appeals to me. Sometimes I'm tempted to reverse my ways and just buy a stack of index cards, but then I think of all that illegible handwriting and the dozens of one time only recipes...

Nah.

[nanuq]

When I'm using a recipe found on the internet or typed into my recipes database (Filemaker), I take the computer into the kitchen. In other words, the wireless laptop gets my vote.

Remember to set the screen to not sleep - nothing like having to wake up the thing with flour or chicken on your hands.

I do print ones I make often, but always feel guilty when I can't find the printout and print it again, and again...

[Big Bunny]

Another old-fashioned approach.

For years, I have used 240-page, 3-subject notebooks.

I *can* improvise, but I am not good at it.

It is a bit time-consuming, but I reformat each recipe to my liking,

usually putting a menu together, then each time I cook the rx I

add notes to it. The cookbooks stay pretty(usually), and the rx

improves.

Some authors have great ideas about food, but I find it difficult

to follow their layout - hence developing my own system.

Special recipes are copied onto 3-ring paper, and put in a

binder, with a sheet protector.

"Special" means that I think I've "got it" and it's good

enough for company.

BB

[Lawen]

Some ideas:

• Computer in the kitchen - The idea of pecking at a keyboard with messy hands doesn't make much sense to me but perhaps with care this could work.
  

Sounds like you need a water/dust proof keyboard. I've been playing with a similar idea myself. A keyboard like that with a touchpad or even just a cheap mouse, and an LCD monitor hinge mounted to fold under the cabinets. It's a neat idea if a little over the top.

[howard88]

I use the curse-scream-yell in frustration method at not being able to find the recipe I need;and then ask my girlfriend to find it.

[FistFullaRoux]

As far as geeky strategies (I have not been able to do this yet, but it seems like a good idea to me)...

I'd like to get one of the big (8x10) digital picture frames and load it with scans of recipes and pictures of tricky steps. It's hands free, and you can set it up to scroll through certain frames or hold one frame static. I'm not sure what the memory on these things is capable of, but it should handle 10 "pages" of 8x10 information. That should be plenty to make a full meal. I'd like to try this one, once I can spring for a frame that size. A smaller one might work, but I don't know how much text you could put on it.

Or you could just print out the recipe and stick it on the fridge with magnets at eye level. That tends to be the way I do it now. Low tech, but it works.

[LaurieB]

I am curious as to how other EGulletters keep track of their recipe collection. 25 years ago this was not a problem for me (i.e., very small amount of recipes & cookbooks) but, today, after wasting 45 minutes searching for a recipe I knew I had (somewhere) but couldn't find -- I began to wonder how others keep track.

Here's the general description of my "recipe collection" today:

Approx. 275/300cookbooks (continuously growing, too )

Approx. 15 years worth magazines (Gourmet, Bon App., Food & Wine)

1 large (double size) recipe box

1 kitchen notebook

1 Word Document (containing approx. 200 recipes, formatted to be printed on recipe cards)

1 loose-leaf notebook holding menus I've collected over the past 10-15 years.

Not included in the above list are recipes scribbled on scraps of paper, waiting to be typed into the Word doc., and a notebook recently started to keep track of wine and other beverage tasting notes.

Please share how you keep track of your recipes. Thanks in advance for all insight/input.

Laurie

[project]

I keep track of recipes and other information on cooking as a

special case of how I keep track of nearly everything.

The main tools are

<blockquote>

<OL>

<LI>

personal computer,

<LI>

a <i>taxonomic hierarchy</i> based on the computer's

hierarchical file system,

<LI>

a file of documentation in each directory,

<LI>

a good text editor,

<LI>

a simple search program,

<LI>

a central file of random facts.

</blockquote>

Hierarchical file systems go back at least to the computer

system Multics done by Project MAC at MIT in about 1970.

I started using hierarchical file systems in 1977 on a Prime

computer, much like Multics, and have been a heavy user of

these file systems ever since.

I regard hierarchical file systems as one of the crown jewels

of civilization, especially for organizing the information

of a person or a small group of people.

<br><br>

An hierarchical file system is something like having a house

where to find a sweater go to the second floor, the master

bedroom, the closet, and look on the top shelf on the left

side.

If that closet is a mess, then can divide its contents into,

say, several categories and for each category punch a new door

in the wall of the closet and behind it get a new closet.

Such new closets would solve a lot of problems in organizing

personal <i>stuff</i> and do solve a lot of problems in

organizing information on a computer.

<br><br>

Yes, as in

<blockquote>

Jeffrey D. Ullman,

<i>Principles of Database Systems, Second Edition,</i>

ISBN 0-914894-36-6,

Computer Science Press,

Rockville, MD,

1982.

</blockquote>

with entity, attribute, relational data modeling, (EAR) can

use any of hierarchical, network, or relational data base

systems for any EAR model.

Still, as just a file system, hierarchical is terrific.

Yes, a better file system could be built.

However, since the world of practical computing still has not

widely exploited all the good ideas in Multics, better ideas

now could take decades to get into practice.

<br><br>

So, for now, as a practical matter, just exploit hierarchical

file systems for all they are worth.

They are worth a lot.

<br><br>

I built the computer last year, and now it is running Windows

XP.

The file system is NTFS and seems quite capable.

My favorite text editor is KEdit.

Can write little programs for KEdit and have about 100.

The simple search program is the Windows program FINDSTR;

it's good enough.

<br><br>

The system has three hard drives.

The first hard drive has drive letters C:, D:, and E: for

operating systems.

Drives F: and G: are for DVDs.

The second hard drive is drive H: for my stuff.

The third hard drive is I: for backup.

<br><br>

Drive H: has directories

<blockquote>

H:\prog01

<br>

H:\prog02

<br>

H:\prog05

<br>

H:\data01

<br>

H:\data02

<br>

H:\data05

</blockquote>

Directories PROGx are for programs.

Directories DATAx are for other data.

PROG01 and PROG02 are old;

PROG05 is getting new programs now.

DATA01 and DATA02 are old;

DATA05 is getting new data now.

<br><br>

On my computer, deliberately, directory

<blockquote>

H:\data05

</blockquote>

is the only directory in the root of a drive letter on a hard

drive with directory name DATA05.

That is, there are no directories

<blockquote>

C:\data05 <br>

D:\data05 <br>

E:\data05 <br>

I:\data05 <br>

J:\data05 <br>

</blockquote>

etc.

So, really, DATA05 implies H:\.

So, the drive letter could change, and the directory would

still be identifiable.

So, a lot of the software I have just starts with the DATA05

and looks up the drive letter H:\ (via a simple <i>environment

variable</i> DISK.DATA05=H:).

So, if the drive letters change, then that software will still

work.

There are other ways to accomplish such <i>drive letter

immunity,</i> but this approach is simple.

<br><br>

The directories x01 and x02 are from 10 years ago.

So, this scheme of DATAx and PROGx can last centuries!

<br><br>

In

<blockquote>

H:\data05

</blockquote>

the most important directories are

<blockquote>

H:\data05\topics

<br>

H:\data05\projects

</blockquote>

So, TOPICS has my copies of files mostly from others.

Currently TOPICS has 37 directories -- so, right, currently

off and on I am adding files to 37 topics.

PROJECTS has files from my projects and currently has 36

directories -- so, right, currently I have 36 projects.

<br><br>

One of the projects is COOKING.

So, there is a directory

<blockquote>

H:\data05\projects\cooking

</blockquote>

with directories

<blockquote>

BBQ <br>

BEEF <br>

BREAD <br>

CHICKEN <br>

CHINESE <br>

DESSERTS <br>

DRINKS <br>

EGULLET <br>

EQUIPMENT <br>

FISH <br>

INGREDIENTS <br>

ITALIAN <br>

PORK <br>

SALADS <br>

VEGETABLES <br>

</blockquote>

Right, given a recipe for an Italian chicken dish, do we put

that recipe in the directory ITALIAN in the directory CHICKEN

or do we put that recipe in the directory CHICKEN in the

directory ITALIAN?

Right, once we have a directory CHICKEN and have 150 recipes

in it, maybe we would like to reorganize and subdivide into

stock, soup, stew, casserole, grilled, roasted, etc., or into

French, Italian, Chinese, and we would want an automatic way

to do this and to update any pointers to the old locations.

Such issues are for Computer Data Administration 102 next

semester!

<br><br>

For example, am typing this note into file

<blockquote>

H:\data05\projects\cooking\eGullet\post053.dat

</blockquote>

Mostly the files I type in are via the editor KEdit.

One advantage here is an easy solution to the computer version

of the Tower of Babel problem:

For all the files I have typed in using KEdit, it is easy

search them with FINDSTR and to move data among them; one

spelling checker program (Aspell) works for all of them, etc.

A file I enter with KEdit usually starts with a few header

lines of descriptive information, e.g.,

<blockquote>

POST053.DAT --

<br><br>

Created at 06:40:12 on Saturday, April 1st, 2006.

</blockquote>

So, these header lines help finding and identifying information.

When I get the URL of this post, I will insert it in these

header lines.

<br><br>

A good aid in organizing information is to slap times and

dates on wherever not inappropriate.

So, I have a KEdit command "insert dated comment" (IDC) as in

<blockquote>

Modified at 06:42:37 on Saturday, April 1st, 2006.

</blockquote>

The files I enter with KEdit have lots of these lines.

<br><br>

But these KEdit files alone are not enough.

In addition, get files of other types where it is not easy to

enter a few descriptive header lines at the top.

E.g., for a really good thread on eG with lots of pictures,

the easy way to keep it is just to have the Web browser write

the main HTML file and a subdirectory with all the other

related files.

But for such a Web page, would like to have its URL, etc.

Similarly for many other file types -- JPG, PNG, WAV, MOV,

MPEG, PPT, PDF, etc.

<br><br>

So, to solve this problem, each directory has a file of

descriptive information that provides documentation, when

appropriate, on all the other files in that directory.

In directory COOKING, the documentation file is COOKING.DOC.

Yes, I maintain this file with KEdit and not with Microsoft's

Word.

Since I make very little use of Microsoft Word, that DOC is

the Word file type is of no great concern for me, but others

might want to use a different three letter extension for such

files.

<br><br>

In cooking, the main data is in files somewhere in

<blockquote>

H:\data05\projects\cooking

</blockquote>

I make only incidental use of paper.

<br><br>

Finding things on cooking in

<blockquote>

H:\data05\projects\cooking

</blockquote>

is fairly easy due to the taxonomic hierarchy there, the

mnemonic naming, the use of dates, and the abilities of

FINDSTR to read nearly all the relevant file types.

<br><br>

Yes, there is <i>legacy</i> data on recipe cards, in file folders,

etc.

Yes, I have a small tin box of recipe cards I got from my

parents.

I have about 1/2 of a full file drawer of file folders with

notes on cooking.

<br><br>

Generally, though, now, the main data is on my computer.

If some paper copies are important, then data at some

appropriate place the computer points to the paper copies.

<br><br>

E.g., recently cleaned out my home office space and got 20

file folder storage boxes of old books.

So, for each book, I typed in its bibliographic information,

the box I put the book in, and the date I packed the book.

That file is in a directory with other bibliographic

information.

E.g., there is a file of all the books I own:

When I get a new book, I enter its bibliographic information

in that file.

So, for the book on data base by Ullman above, I had KEdit

copy that from the file of bibliographic information into

the file for this post.

<br><br>

Also, in many of my project directories, I also use the

directory descriptive files directory_name.DOC to keep

a log, with dates from IDC, of activities.

Here a good thing to do is to have good references to relevant

e-mail sent or received.

Standard e-mail starts with some <i>header</i> lines, and one

of these has time and date as in

<blockquote>

Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 18:17:07 -0500

</blockquote>

It turns out that, for one user of e-mail, this time-date line

usually uniquely identifies that e-mail message.

So, a good facility to have is a little program that will take

that time-date line and find and display the e-mail message.

On my old computer, where I wrote my own e-mail software, I

had such a little program and could invoke it with one

keystroke in KEdit.

On my new computer, a project soon to move to the front burner

is to have such a facility again.

<br><br>

There are items of information not easy to categorize

elsewhere.

For such information, I have a file FACTS.DAT.

The file is mostly a <i>log,</i> that is, new items are added

mostly only at the end.

There are time and date stamps and key words for each entry

and some simple KEdit programs to make new entries and search

for old ones.

There is lots of stuff in FACTS.DAT:

User IDs, passwords, mailing addresses, pointers to

information that might be difficult to find elsewhere,

answers to tricky questions in

computer usage, etc.

If one entry in FACTS.DAT needs to grow to a long file or to a

directory, then put in a note that the entry is <i>closed</i> and

insert a pointer to where the more recent information is.

<br><br>

Here is a big point about FACTS.DAT:

The number of new entries averages only a few a day.

So, a file of one million characters, easy enough for KEdit,

can handle entries for some years.

By that time, the earlier entries are mostly old enough to be

of low interest, out of date, etc.

So, really, a file of one million characters is enough to keep

essentially all the reasonably relevant random facts.

<br><br>

To type this note, I went to a Windows text window and typed

in commands to make directory

<blockquote>

H:\data05\projects\cooking

</blockquote>

the current directory.

But to do this bit of directory tree <i>walking,</i> I

started at H:\ and typed command

<blockquote>

dn d p c

</blockquote>

for move down to directories DATA05, PROJECTS, COOKING.

The D is ambiguous, so my little program DN gave me the

options and let me choose one.

Then the C was ambiguous, so DN let me choose from

<blockquote>

1 cars <br>

2 computer <br>

3 cooking <br>

</blockquote>

So, typing

<blockquote>

dn d p coo

</blockquote>

would let me avoid the second ambiguous situation; this is

what I usually do.

<br><br>

Yes, more can be done, but such issues are for Computer Data

Administration 102 next semester!

<br><br>

Generally such keyboard usage is much faster than mouse usage

because (1), since it's YOUR computer, you usually already

know about what you have to type in and (2) ten fingers and

over 100 keys are FASTER than a mouse and some icons on a

screen.

Indeed, you can usually type a command faster than you can

just move one hand to the mouse.

<br><br>

Okay, but frequently I just want to go to directory

<blockquote>

H:\data05\projects\cooking\eGullet

</blockquote>

So, maybe I should be able to type, say, just

<blockquote>

g eg

</blockquote>

for "go to eGullet".

Yup, but, again, that's for Computer Data Administration 102

next semester!

[Sugarella]

For magazines, I stick post-its or tabs sticking out from the top of the page, with the recipe name on it. I place them staggered so all can be read at the same time. Favourite go-to recipes in books are the same.... things gathered online are printed on recipe cards an kept in a file, organized by type of recipe (beef, pastry, beverage, etc.)

As you can see I'm not nearly as organized as project.

[Marlene]

For cookbooks and magazines I keep a simple excel spreadsheet by category, i.e appetizers, meat etc. Under that I list the name of the recipe, the cookbook or magazine it is in and the page number. I sometimes add notes if I've made substantial changes to a recipe.

For recipes that I've found on the net and tried and liked, I label them in gmail under recipes.

Of course there's recipeGullet and I do have recipe software as well, but I find the spreadsheet is easier and i don't have to spend a lot of time retyping a recipe.