Help: how to organise

[Heemskerk]

Hello,

I recently bought a couple of basic cookbooks like The Complete Asian Cookbook, The Silver Spoon and Mexico: The Cookbook.
All the books contain 700 - 800 recipes each.

I love Asian food so I started to mark the pages in the Asian cookbook with the recipes I liked and want to make.
But nog almost 50% of the pages is marked. Because the recipes are sorted by country, I am having trouble finding anything. If Inwant to make a curry for example. There are 13 different sections with curry in it.

What is a good way to order recipes from your old fashioned cookbooks without having to spit through the massive books eveytime you want to cook something new??

I thought about a Excel spreadsheet. But does anyone know if there are other tools for it?

Thank you very much.

 

[WhateverYouWant]

After decades of using one program or another to catalog recipes, I finally threw my hands in the air and now just keep each recipe as a single text file. My text editor (BBEdit) will search entire directories (including subs) of text files for a string such as "curry", and show me every file that contains it in a single window (heck I can even use regular expressions). If I want to cook one I'll just copy it to a note in Google Keep. Google Keep also has a search function to show you every note a searched for string is in as you type it.

Keep is available on virtually every platform, and I have an Android tablet in the kitchen I use to follow recipes. And since it syncs with every device, I automatically have them on my phone as well for when I am shopping. It also makes it a snap to share them via Google Docs.

This may seem a bit overkill to some, but as someone who has used a half a dozen or so apps to manage recipes, and a developer who has even written several apps in the past to do this, This is my holy grail for managing them.

 

[Heemskerk]

Thank you for this insight.

Maybe I want it to difficult. My wife recommends keeping an handwritten index in the book with categories like curry, vegetables, sambal and sauces. Then write down the name and pagenumber on the list.

I will look into Google Keep!

 

[Andy M.]

Your best bet for finding recipes in the cookbooks is the index.

My process is to create a separate cookbook for recipes I like/make regularly. I use MS Word to type in the recipe in a standard format then file it in a series of folders. One folder for you could be Asian Curry. Another for Indian Curry, etc.

You could print the recipes and put them into a binder or just keep them online.

 

[Heemskerk]

Thank you. That is also a good idea
I always use Paprika app for online recipes. Maybe it is time to use it for offline handtyped recipes also

 

[WhateverYouWant]

Thank you. That is also a good idea
I always use Paprika app for online recipes. Maybe it is time to use it for offline handtyped recipes also

Just so you are aware... here is my problem with apps like Paprika. While they have some nice feature sets, they tend to go away after a few years. Every dedicated recipe app I have used over the years has gone away. Leaving you in some cases a rather nasty task of getting the data out of them and into something else.

In Paprika's case, it is a two person shop, with likely a single individual developing it. If they decide to move on to something more mainstream, you may be left in the lurch. What's worse is that Paprika only offers two formats for exporting your data: their own proprietary data format (most likely a multi-table SQLite database), and HTML. And while HTML is better than nothing as it is at least a standardized format, the thought of having to strip all HTML element tags from hundreds or thousands of recipe files to make them more readable (or moving to another app) is not something I would look forward to doing again (I have had to do similar three times over the years).

This is why I now keep my recipes in text files.

 

[Heemskerk]

Thanks never thought about that.

 

[Andy M.]

I never flag or save recipes online. You never know when the site developer will clean house and delete some recipes, including the ones you flagged.

Keeping recipes on your computer in a common standard format gives you more control and dependability than other options.

I use an app called "Copy Me That" to collect recipes from websites via my phone then transfer them to MS Word on my laptop. I can access them with my phone via a cloud account.

 

[dcSaute]

when I find a recipe I'd like to try, I either print it out, or it the pix are essential, print to a pdf, or copy/paste to a text file.

everything untried goes into the folder "Recipes to Try"


if, when tried, we like it - I rewrite it with my own directions and notes into a .txt file and put it in my "filing system" which is a collection of on disk folders for organization into meat/fish/pastry/bread/etc/etc/etc. if the pixs are essential, I use a .doc file.


you may want to include a note about it's source.



if you're going to keep an index - use something electronic - not pen/pencil on paper. when the list gets too sloppy with inserts/deletes, you won't have to re-write the whole list.


pay close attention to what Andy/et al said - there are thousand of hopping mad people who have millions of recipes safely stored away in abandoned software.

and some of that software does run on newer computers - so they can't even get at it.

 

[taxlady]

My method is closest to Andy's. Almost all of my recipes are on my computer. I keep those in folders in various formats. They could be text (.txt) or word processor (.odt or .doc) or spreadsheet or PDF. I find that the Windows search function in Windows explorer is adequate for finding stuff that I can't just find by sub-directory and file name. It does search for words inside of documents. I have a software PDF printer. I can "print" a PDF of anything that can be printed with a hardware printer. I use that with the recipes I save with Copy Me That.

There are still some recipes that I use that are only in my cookbooks. If it's something I use a lot, I usually get around to typing it up and storing it on my computer. I still have some that need to be typed up.

I have one folder in my recipes folders called "recipes to try". I move them to their appropriate folder once I have tried them.

 

[Andy M.]

...everything untried goes into the folder "Recipes to Try"...

...I have one folder in my recipes folders called "recipes to try". I move them to their appropriate folder once I have tried them.

I have a "recipes to try" folder in each cookbook category.

My recipe files are in folders marked with the type of recipe:Meats, Poultry, Desserts, etc. Within each of these folders is a "Cookbook" folder that holds all the recipes I have in hard copy in a 3-ring binder and collections of all the '...to try' recipes for that category of recipe. When I try a recipe and like it, I move it to the "Cookbook" folder for that category.

 

[taxlady]

I have a "recipes to try" folder in each cookbook category.

My recipe files are in folders marked with the type of recipe:Meats, Poultry, Desserts, etc. Within each of these folders is a "Cookbook" folder that holds all the recipes I have in hard copy in a 3-ring binder and collections of all the '...to try' recipes for that category of recipe. When I try a recipe and like it, I move it to the "Cookbook" folder for that category.

I think I will start doing that Andy, the "recipes to try" folders in the other higher level folders.

I forgot to mention another trick I use. If I have a recipe that could go into more than one folder, e.g., it's Danish and it's pork, I make a shortcut to the recipe and move the shortcut into the other folder.

 

[Andy M.]

Here is a screenshot of a portion of my Documents page.




The first column on the left shows the cookbook categories.

The middle column starts with a Cookbook folder, the contents of which are in the right column. These recipes are in a binder in my kitchen that I refer to for cooking meals.

The rest of the middle column is a listing of all the recipes I liked and want to try someday.

 

[CWS4322]

I stumbled across this last night:

https://www.justapinch.com/

You can "pinch" a recipe that is in that collection or any recipe URL to your recipe box and then print it. Anyone have negative experiences with this web site/app? A lot of the recipes are from other locations, some are original. I spent way too much time last night looking at recipes and pinched about a dozen I want to try. The one that peaked my interest on another forum was for no-knead naan and https://www.justapinch.com/recipes/...en/chicken-rama-in-thai-peanut-sauce.html?r=4.

 

[dcSaute]

we have a wireless router home LAN.

so I bought a tablet, it's on a fold down shelf in the kitchen,

copied my recipes to a hard drive which sits on the router USB port.
so now I have access to all my files from the kitchen - using just a stylus (keyboards go gookie in a kitchen...)



for some people the touch screen works with fingers, but I seem to be inadequately conductive and I have better results using a stylus.

 

[CWS4322]

we have a wireless router home LAN.

so I bought a tablet, it's on a fold down shelf in the kitchen,

copied my recipes to a hard drive which sits on the router USB port.
so now I have access to all my files from the kitchen - using just a stylus (keyboards go gookie in a kitchen...)



for some people the touch screen works with fingers, but I seem to be inadequately conductive and I have better results using a stylus.

You can view the recipes online or print with the app I mentioned.

 

[dcSaute]

my "cooking" folder aka subdirectory has roughly 5,000 files in it. to keep them on paper - ten reams of paper at one per page - but less, because the pix I would print on the page with the recipe. I find that impractical.

so many web sites have failed/closed, or changed from free to outrageously expensive, I would not trust a single one of them. same with computer apps - they fail, you're left with all your recipes / info in a proprietary format you can no longer access.

the other issue is, since I'm cooking for two, I have adjusted the quantities of army size recipes and in most cases converted from cups to weight/grams. so the theory of just look up a bookmarked recipe does not work for me.

 

[taxlady]

I have to agree with dcSaute. I have lost data to proprietary formats that belonged to companies that no longer exist. But, I do save recipes in an app called "Copy Me That". I consider it a way to access recipes when I am not at home. I'm still working out exactly how I want to do that. My other option for doing that is copying all my recipes to a USB stick.

 

[Andy M.]

I have to agree with dcSaute. I have lost data to proprietary formats that belonged to companies that no longer exist. But, I do save recipes in an app called "Copy Me That". I consider it a way to access recipes when I am not at home. I'm still working out exactly how I want to do that. My other option for doing that is copying all my recipes to a USB stick.

I use "Copy Me That" on my iPhone to grab recipes from twitter, Instagram, etc. I also have the app on my MacBook where I can access those recipes and transfer them to a MS WORD document that is saved on my Mac and in the iCloud. Then I delete it from "Copy Me That".

Because the recipe is saved in the cloud, I can then access it from my phone too.

 

[CWS4322]

Hard drives fail. I have more than one stick with my favorite recipes on it.