Been intending to post about this for quite awhile, but a tweet that I made alluded to it and since my tweets appear in my blog, I thought it was time.

Introduction

Ever since I moved out of my parents’ house at 19 I’ve been accumulating recipes in a binder. What began with recipes photocopied from cookbooks and newspapers, and photocopies of newspapers, expanded. Since around 2000 I’ve been accumulating recipes from websites.  I prune every so often, but for every few that get thrown into the recycle bin there are many more that get added. I’ve increased binder size at least twice and at some point in late 2008 added a second, smaller binder, using it for desserts, beverages and holiday recipes.

My process for recipe collection

While scrolling through blogs and other websites I’d see a recipe I like and either print it straight from the website or copy and paste it into a Word document. Most often it was the latter. I often had a file in progress of recipes that were copied, pasted and formatted (Arial, 10 or 11 pt font with 12-14 pt title, sometimes ingredient lists made into two columns to save lateral space) and eventually printed. I find most recipes in blogs – either the main post or in the comments – and blog pages don’t print well.

At the bottom of most of the recipes I’d note the source URL – the exact page – so that I could go back in case I needed to reprint, wanted to see photos and/or context or wanted to see the blog comments.

Enter the laptop

In February my desktop computer died leaving my laptop, which I’ve had for a year and a half (20 months) as my only computer. At that point I realized that I could have been using my laptop in my kitchen for the past year and a half. Then it occurred to me: Most of the recipes from that binder are available online. This was the genesis of an ongoing project. Going through the recipe binders, finding the recipes online and bookmarking them in Google Bookmarks.

The benefits of this:

1. Losing the heavy binder.
2. Recycling all the current pages.
3. Saving paper by not printing out new recipes. This equals less clutter in my apartment and less environmental impact, though I realize that the paper is being made whether or not I buy it.
4. Saving money on paper and toner (though negligible).
5. Everything is organized by category. I currently have 32 categories in Google Bookmarks, whereas my binder has fewer.
6. I can place recipes in more than one category.
7. Way easier to find what I’m looking for. Hypothetical scenario: I return home from picking up my weekly CSA selection with some kohlrabi and want recipe ideas because really, I have no idea what to do with kohlrabi and hadn’t even heard of it until I participated in the CSA two yeas ago.
   I go to Google Bookmarks, type “kohlrabi” into the search box, click “search bookmarks” and find every recipe I’ve got that mentions kohlrabi. Of course, I could just do a regular Google search, and I’m sure I will. [This reminds me that I need to find and bookmark recipes for kohlrabi because I don't have any.]
8. Google Bookmarks has a “notes” field. I’ve used it for recipes that I’ve previously made. For example, the recipe for “Swiss Chard with Tomatoes and Chickpeas” had a note on it written in pen. Now that note is in the bookmark: “Don’t add too much water. Add small amount at first. Finish with chili flakes and Gomasio. Try fleur de sel”.

The only disadvantage that I foresee: Getting food on the keyboard,  possibly a reason that my backslash key currently isn’t working. Also, I might want to back up my bookmarks even though they’re online.

Having the URLs at the bottom of printed recipes has been helpful because I can go back to the website. For example: The printed recipe for “Pasta with Roasted Eggplant and Tomato” from Serious Eats, posted last September, has a direct link at the bottom of the page so I can either type out the entire URL, which I seldomly do, or go to the SE (etc.) website and search for the recipe for bookmarking. Where I don’t have the URL at the bottom I Google the recipe name.

I tweeted the following today:

“Amusing typo while googling: Instead of typing “sauteed rainbow chard with raw beets” I typed “sauteed rainbow chart with raw beers”.

It was a recipe from The Kitchn and I hadn’t noted the source. Mmm, rainbow charts with raw beers.

I started in project in March, I think, and am well into the binder despite it not being a daily task. I’m onto the “vegetable” section after clearing out “favourites”, breakfast,  muffins, breads, appetizers/dips, soup, salad, grains, and pasta. The main binder has around 15 categories (a main index of 10 tabs was further subdivided at one point) whereas, as mentioned above, my bookmarks so far have 32 categories,  including “favourites” and “must try”.

It’s satisfying to throw out a huge stack of completed pages. This has also given me an opportunity to throw out recipes that I didn’ t want to keep. The final phase will be scanning recipes that I couldn’t find online (magazine photocopies, some of the original newspaper photocopies) and saving them as PDF on my server at canadianfoodiegirl.com. I’ll then bookmark those.

I still have cookbooks that I buy, and I enjoy those. I enjoy reading through cookbooks as regular books and I’d like to grow my collection. I’m happy to be freeing myself from the big-ass recipe binder – and it does feel freeing.

Eat well, be well.