Salon post: March 23

[jenett]

Welcome to this week's salon post!

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Topic of the week
I am contemplating revamping how I store recipes (which is to say, something more effective than the tag in Pinboard I have, many of which are entirely too aspirational for my actual cooking time and energy, no matter how tasty they might be.)

So. I'm curious. What works for you when managing recipes? What doesn't? What would you like to try, but haven't gotten around to? (Both in terms of organising such things, and in terms of, y'know, actual recipe recommendations)

What I've been up to:
Just started the Donna season of Doctor Who (I am skipping some episodes at this stage, since I've watched the early seasons of New Who multiple times relatively recently.)


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Comments

[redbird]

I have a folder of "recipes" on my PC, and beyond that do some google cooking.

I'm also still using printed cookbooks—mostly The Joy of Cooking, Fanny Farmer, and Cooking for Two Today (for values of "today" that are in the last century). A week or two ago, adrian_turtle sent me a recipe she'd made and we'd both liked, and I printed it out, used it, and then folded the printout up and tucked it in between two cookbooks.

ETA, in case that term isn't familiar: "google cooking" means I look at what ingredients I have, and then search for something like "chicken green pepper onion -mushroom."

[jenett]

Google cooking is a great solution!

I have some cookbooks I like, but often don't remember to pull out (and right now, I'm trying to figure out if I can manage food planning a little better than I am to vary things better while still being manageable in terms of shopping.)

So complicated.

[alexseanchai]

I know there's a site designed for the purpose for which you use google cooking, but I forget what site it is. It is a good technique, anyway :)

[wohali]

Could it possibly be Chef Watson? Or was it something more...intelligent?

[alexseanchai]

Preeeetty sure that's not familiar. I'll see if I can find it later. :)

[alexseanchai]

I think I was thinking of Supercook?

[pameladean]

I do a lot of google cooking too. Sometimes this results in my bookmarking four or five recipes for whatever I want to make, causing later confusion. Sometimes, too, I end up smushing two recipes together and not making notes about how I did it, so that reproducing a success is difficult. It seems to be very complicated for me to make notes while actually cooking, for some reason; I also have a touching faith in my memory that has never actually been justified.

I too have a RECIPES file on my computer, and a folder of tattered printouts of the most-used ones. This is getting full enough that it needs to be organized in some fashion, since paging through the printouts can take some time.

I do also use cookbooks from time to time, mostly two vegan ones, the first Marilyn Diamond's Classic Fit for Life Cookbook, which is waaaaay outdated as far as nutritional data is concerned but still very tasty; and the other Bryanna Clarke Grogan's Nonna's Kitchen, in which she veganizes a whole lot of family recipes from her Italian grandmother. She's a genius at making such transformations, as in her own way also is Diamond.

P.