S/O Discouraged....organizational thread. RECIPES. How To Organize them.

[cin]

Cookbooks and recipes are my arch nemesis. I can never get them organized AND usable. Was thinking about going electronic but I am not thrilled about the thought of scanning all of them. And' not sure how best to organize once they are scanned. Anybody BTDT? Would love ideas, programs used, etc.

[nandmsmom]

Long ago I decided to organize my recipes. I have a 2 inch binder, although I think I'm going to get a new 3 inch. It's divided up into sections that work for me. Appetizers, baked goods, chicken, beef, you get the picture. Yours would look different. The dividers have little pockets in them. If I print out a recipe to try, it goes into the pocket. When I make the recipe, we decide whether it's a keeper or not. A keeper goes into a sleeve protector and into the binder. I toss what we don't like. I have no desire to have a computer in my kitchen. It would get ruined. For me, it has to be a hard copy.

[lorisuewho]

I bit the bullet and went electronic a number of years ago. I bought a program called Living Cookbook. I felt overwhelmed when I first got it. It took me forever to load my recipes into the program. But now that is up and going it is so easy to copy and paste recipes I find on the internet or to quickly type up new ones a friend gives me. I can always find what I'm looking for. I'm so organized now!

[cin]

I bit the bullet and went electronic a number of years ago. I bought a program called Living Cookbook. I felt overwhelmed when I first got it. It took me forever to load my recipes into the program. But now that is up and going it is so easy to copy and paste recipes I find on the internet or to quickly type up new ones a friend gives me. I can always find what I'm looking for. I'm so organized now!

 

 

I would like something electronic, but I'd also like something that is accesible to my laptop, notepad and smartphone. Something that I can access anywhere at anytime. I like Living Cookbooks, it looks like what I want. Except for that.

[aggieamy]

I have a copier in my house and whenever I see a recipe that looks interesting in a cookbook I make a copy of it. If I see a recipe online that looks interesting I print it off. Those recipes go loose into a folder marked "To Try". I have a recipe box with 4x6 cards of recipes that are proven family favorites. Everything in there I've made and I know is good. When I make my weekly meal plan I sit at the table with my "To Try" folder and my recipe box. Usually I flip through the file and pull out a few recipes that I want to try that week - they go on the calendar, the ingredients I need go on the grocery list, and the recipe goes on my clip on the fridge until it's made. Once I make the recipe I decide if it's a keeper or not. If we all loved it then I copy it onto a 4x6 notecard with any notes I want to make and it goes into my recipe box otherwise it goes into the trash. It only takes about five minutes to do and I know that I have a recipe box that my kids will be fighting over someday.

 

Every so often I do have to go through the "To Try" file and pull out recipes that I know I'll never make. Why did I decide to print off five different complicated breakfast casseroles? Do I need six different recipes to try for bran muffins? Why do I have a recipe for duck - nobody in my family likes duck? What am I doing with a recipe that calls for three exotic spices that I don't have? I keep the folder to less than an inch thick and it doesn't take that long to flip through it and pull out five recipes that look good.

[historically accurate]

Long ago I decided to organize my recipes. I have a 2 inch binder, although I think I'm going to get a new 3 inch. It's divided up into sections that work for me. Appetizers, baked goods, chicken, beef, you get the picture. Yours would look different. The dividers have little pockets in them. If I print out a recipe to try, it goes into the pocket. When I make the recipe, we decide whether it's a keeper or not. A keeper goes into a sleeve protector and into the binder. I toss what we don't like. I have no desire to have a computer in my kitchen. It would get ruined. For me, it has to be a hard copy.

 

 

This is my method as well. Untried recipes are kept in a page protector until I use them. If no one likes them, they get thrown out. If someone loves it, the recipe is put into a page protector and filed in the binder.

 

I hate cooking off of the computer; I'm always afraid I'm going to slop something on it. The computer will also go to screen saver whenever my hands are ooky and I can't hit a key to wake it up!

[dbmamaz]

I used to do the binder thing, but it was hard to keep up iwth the filing and refiling as new recipes got printed

 

I went electronic - i use Paprika recipe organizer or whatever its called. Its on my ipad and i think they have it for other things, not sure about the PC. it can import recipes from some of the bigger recipe websites or some of the smaller ones that use standardized formats. I can easily copy recipes i email to myself, and i can type recipes in. You can also edit the recipes after you import them, so if one of your standard recipes is a variation of something on line, you can import it and then just change teh parts you need to change.

 

it also has calendar function, so at the beginning of the week i put all the menus in it, and it links right to the recipes. So today I open up the calendar and I can link ot the chicken recipe, go back to the calendar and link to the coleslaw recipe. it wont let my ipad go in to sleep mode while a recipe is open.

 

i cant imagine going back . . its so nice not to have to print and sort papers!

[Delighted3]

I have done the binder thing for years, but for the last year I have been using Plan to Eat. I love it. It is so easy. Mostly drag and drop. It is accessible from all my devices, even my phone at the grocery store. I didn't like the idea of typing in all my recipes either, but I have been able to find most of them online and then it is a simple matter of importing or just copy and paste and then import. I think they still offer a free trial for a month.

Joy

[FriedClams]

Printed - 2 binders arranged by topic

 

Electronic - PAPRIKA!!! It's awesome!!!

[mamajudy]

I need to get my recipes organized, too. One thing I do that works great is to tape my most-used recipes to the inside of the cupboard door above the counter. All I have to do is open the door, and there they are.

[Myra]

I put my recipes in a photo album that has plastic pages for photos. I just fold the recipe or slide the recipe card into one of the clear plastic sleeves - usually 4-6 recipes per page. .

[cin]

These sound good. I'm going to look into both of these. I have a couple of BIG books that will just stay; King Arthur and Bob's Red Mill baking, but most everything else is just LOTS of papers, semi-filed, and impossible to find what I want. I also like the idea of being able to search with a keyword, instead of literally searching through the stack, for an hour or two! I probably can find most of them online. Great ideas ladies! Keep them coming!

[threedogfarm]

I have a recipe box. Old fashion for sure but it works. Every time I made a recipe that wasn't on the cards but was a keeper, I took the time to type them up on a recipe card template and print them up. Search around for some templates that you like. You'll find free ones and some will let you type on them and save them on your computer as well. I save them all in a recipe folder on my computer based on the name of the item. Another option is to put it in a binder but I HATE dragging out something that big, but that's just me. Also, the binder won't fit height-wise on the shelf that I keep my cookbooks on (I don't like using binders for homeschooling either).

 

Here's a link to a blog entry (not by me) on this very topic that you might find informative--there are lots of comments as well so you might get some other great ideas. http://smallnotebook.org/2010/01/13/organizing-recipes-kickin-it-old-school/

 

I am one of those people who like to keep it simple. Saving it on the computer is like a back up for me and it makes it easy to print out something for a friend who might want it.

 

Here's also something else to keep in mind--you need fewer recipes than you think! Also, do you need the list from the recipe when you go to the grocery store?

 

Good luck with the whole process!

[Rebel Yell]

I use gallon ziplock bags and keep them in a plastic dishpan on a shelf.

 

Each zipbag is a category:

Desserts

Main Dishes

Sauce/dressings

salads

veggies/sides

breakfast

etc.

 

I realized I am not likely to get them organized in nice binders anytime soon. I also don't want them electronic. Zip bags fit all the full-size sheets of paper my moms gives me recipes on- and also keeps the little bitty snipped-from-the-can recipes together.

 

Works for me! :hurray:

[LifeLovePassion]

I also use a binder. Not all of mine are tried and true, some are yet to be made, but I did sort through them a couple months ago and tossed ones I'd never use now as our food habits have changed. I do have a recipe box from my wedding that I reference too. On new recipies I print I write reviews/modifications as I go so I know for next time

 

I have gotten rid of most cookbooks since I never referenced them in 10+ years of marriage I figure I'd google or search on pinterest for one now anyways.

[Mystie]

I went electronic and use Evernote. I have one stack for "Food" and notebooks for meal categories. Each notebook has a primary note with my shortcut "processes" with variations (basically, my eBook, Simplified Dinners). Then I can also use the webclipper to save recipes I want to try. Holiday-related recipes I keep (or clip from the web) in the Holidays stack. My latest ebook (Paperless Home Organization) more fully describes my set up.

 

I love Evernote for this use because it is free, syncs with data in the cloud, and works with any device. Plus, I can even snap a picture in a note, either of the dish when I make it, or as a way to input a recipe from a magazine I read at the doctor's office, for example.

[NancyNellen]

I have done the binder thing for years, but for the last year I have been using Plan to Eat. I love it. It is so easy. Mostly drag and drop. It is accessible from all my devices, even my phone at the grocery store. I didn't like the idea of typing in all my recipes either, but I have been able to find most of them online and then it is a simple matter of importing or just copy and paste and then import. I think they still offer a free trial for a month.

Joy

 

I adore Plan to Eat. I have been using it for 2 years and have no paper recipes anymore. When I find a new recipe I want to try I can usually just add the link to Plan to Eat and, voila, it's available from my iPad or iPhone. It generates grocery lists based on which stores i want. I have a few friends who are Plan to Eat members, as well, and love that we can all share recipes. I highly, highly, highly recommend.

[carriede]

I've been wanting to revamp mine lately. I have cookbooks, a recipe box, magazines, and computer printouts that are in their own folder.

 

I was thinking of leaving everything where it is and simply making a contents list of all my recipes and where they are located.

 

I love my cookbooks and magazines, so the though of copying those hundreds that I'd like to keep only to have to creatr new storage for it all seems silly.

[nmoira]

A friend of mine is *loving* Eat Your Books. It indexes the ingredients (other than standard pantry ingredients) for each recipe in thousands of cookbooks, blogs, online recipes, and magazines. (You can enter the ingredients for your own recipes as well.) You tell it which cookbooks and magazines you have, favourite online recipes, ets., and then you can search within your library. You still need the physical cookbooks.

 

I've signed up, but don't use it extensively at this point because we're using a meal planning service.

[beckster]

I was thinking of leaving everything where it is and simply making a contents list of all my recipes and where they are located.

 

 

This is what I keep thinking I should do...

[matrips]

Long ago I decided to organize my recipes. I have a 2 inch binder, although I think I'm going to get a new 3 inch. It's divided up into sections that work for me. Appetizers, baked goods, chicken, beef, you get the picture. Yours would look different. The dividers have little pockets in them. If I print out a recipe to try, it goes into the pocket. When I make the recipe, we decide whether it's a keeper or not. A keeper goes into a sleeve protector and into the binder. I toss what we don't like. I have no desire to have a computer in my kitchen. It would get ruined. For me, it has to be a hard copy.

 

Yep, this is what I've had for about 4 years now. Love it!

 

 

[Candid]

About a year or so ago, I had a large slippery mass of thousands of magazine pages with recipes. They were loosely organized by big categories like entrees or desserts. But they weren't very helpful: too difficult to look through to use often. I had carefully torn out recipes I wanted to try or sounded good over probably a 30 year period.

 

I was already using Evernote http://evernote.com/, but getting this many recipes into it was a problem. I'd have to lay them one by one on my multipurpose printer's scanner, a time consuming process. So I decided to get a Scansnap (but really any good duplex scanner would work). I could drop a stack of papers into its hopper and it would scan them right into Evernote. I could set it to scan one side, both sides, scan a group of pages as one document or as separate documents.

 

To help myself, I went back and typed in the titles of the recipes.I also added tags to the recipes. I put them into big categories like entrees, but added more detail like beef or pasta. As I got further into the project some extra tags became apparent (chocolate got its own tag).

 

Evernote is an open platform so you can use it with other apps. I use it with other add ons like Say mmm which turns recipe ingredients into shopping lists. http://www.saymmm.com/

 

I keep all my recipes in one big notebook and use tags to sort them out. Tags are more powerful than notebook hierarchies because you can use multiple ones for any given item. This is nice for recipes that use more than one thing or for when I have more than one recipe on a page I've scanned in.

 

I now have a premium account which means I can designate some notebooks as ones that my individual devices can download and keep in them even if they are offline. I generally put recipes I am planning to use in the next few days, into this notebook which means if I find the grocery store doesn't have great reception, I've still got my recipe to shop from.

 

The other nice thing about Evernote is you can install a web clipper on your browser. Given some history the web clipper will identify the notebooks and tags to put on many items including recipes.

 

I have over 1700 individual recipe notes in Evernote. I will admit I have not done much with my cookbooks. Unlike some paperless adapters, I'm fond of books, so I plan to only add recipes in books I'm getting rid off to Evernote. I will take a look at Eat Your Books, but in the end I think scanning out the recipes I love from cook books is the way to go in the long run.

[PrairieSong]

I use a binder, too, with recipes in plastic page protectors. Lots of my recipes have come from allrecipes.com, where you can choose to print them in a full page style.

 

But ooh, I like the idea of going paperless now that we have an iPad!