I’m not known amongst my friends and family as a big cooker, but we do try to do family dinners more Sundays than not, so my sister and I tend to swap on cooking duties. Since we’re often not cooking in our own homes we’ve gotten in the habit of bringing recipes back and forth which can create a challenge with shopping and just keeping track of printouts.
I decided that getting recipes online was the best next step. At the start of my evaluation I wasn’t sure what my criteria was but as I looked at the myriad of options I started tracking it all down.
- Ease of recipe input – Trumping all, I want to be able to cut and paste ingredients and directions in one big lump rather than individual fields for quantity/item for each, an extra perk is if the program can automatically import based on common recipe sites/formats; I would like to be able to edit the info input as well as add misc. notes; I don’t want there to be mandatory fields that I don’t want to use.
- Categorization or tagging – I want to be able to search based not only by ingredient or kind of meal (main, side, etc.) but I also want to be able to search based on whether the recipe is one that is mine (vs. say sis’s) and whether I’ve cooked it or not.
- Web based – I wanted something that I wouldn’t have to own specific software or an app to view on a particular computer or be a mac specific thang.
- Public – Ideally I was interested in something that I could share my recipes with others.
The other nice to have would be a specific printing format, while things I don’t care so much about are an existing database of recipes and the ability to meal plan and do shopping.
After registering for a myriad of free sites and trying them out, it turns out I’m almost final on going with One tsp. They were the easiest to input and with a menu bar addition it “clip”s recipes. You can have up to 150 recipes and for $5/yr unlimited. The things it lacks are the public aspect, which isn’t that big of a deal (you can email your recipes to others), and the nice printing format (though of course the web page view is printable).
I’ve got a start with eleven recipes that I’ve used, input with a combination of clipped, cut & pasted from digital format, and typed from a hard copy. So far so good. Have you gone digital? Any thoughts or reccos?
4 Comments
Um, Danaa is “not known” among friends as a big cooker??!!!!@@$#%^&*( Can I vote for this post to be the “understatement of the year”?!
That said, I have enjoyed many a good Sunday dinner prepared by you, so I should keep my sarcasm on the low. And for that matter, I just may be the beneficiary of all your recipe-culling site tests. So go forth with your ramekins and conquer. Oh, and can I book a Sunday in August?
Tell me, do I need to be on the same system as you if I want to get recipes from you or is a simple e-mail still a good way to go?
yes, i’ll take your comments with a pinch of crystalline sea salt and ramekin in hand! so far email works (though if you are a member you can also then save it to your own clipping)…
and yes we’ll get a date on the books : )
I have been using pepperplate.com – for their recipe bookmarklet, cataloguing and even their shopping list. so far, so good.
i’ll have to check out pepperplate, i have been liking the onetsp, i haven’t been tagging things as much as i thought i would but super easy to search through the recipes i’ve input. and i have been cooking!