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Cooking with Evernote


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I've been using Evernote on my iPad while cooking in the kitchen. I must start by saying that I cook 3-4 times a month. I normally do really simple stuff and I almost always double or triple check ingredients while cooking. I was wondering if any other users had tip and tricks. Here are a couple that have helped me:

  • • Once I've added a recipe, I specify the type of food it is in the tags
    • I clean up the ingredients area and add any conversions I foresee
    • In the directions part of the recipe, I type in the amounts next to the ingredient it's telling me to use. (This is super helpful in long recipes so I don't have to scroll to the top)
    • I've been placing my iPad in a Ziplock bag. I have a foodsaver that I plan on trying once, but I'm scared it'll suck the inner parts of my iPad out! :shock:

I love to hear from other users!

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I started with a lot of ingredient tags and ended up trashing most of them. Search for text works just as well without the need for tagging. My tags are now fairly high level, e.g. breakfast, tex mex, crockpot, for one, etc.

I have a "Cooking" notebook which contains all my cooking notes. I prefix the note title for indivual recipes with "Recipe: " and tag them as "recipe". Notes/Links to lists of related recipes are prefixed with "Recipes:" and tagged "recipes".

General notes are tagged as "tips".

All notes in the "Cooking" notebook are also tagged as "Cooking".

I have a bad track record of not having all the ingredients on hand for a recipe, so I now get everything out in advance of actually starting the cooking. If I don't have everything on hand I either put them on my grocery list, look for substitutes, or search my recipes for something else I can make with the ingredients on hand.

I put the ingredients into individual bowls in the order I will need them and in the quantity needed. So, adding in the quantities to the instructions would not be a help to me in general.

I use "*****", "ok", "great", and "favorite" tags to record my opinion of a recipe

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What about ZipList?

Hmmm. Interesting. Read through FAQ and worth a test. The recipe clipper integration with some sites (e.g. About.com) could be handy.

Might be a replacement for my Grocery IQ iOS app.

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IMO, recipes are one thing that's often best left with apps designed for that. They can easily increase/decrease recipe sizes & calculate nutritional values & produce shopping lists. That's not to say I don't have any recipes in EN. However, they are only the ones I've scanned or screen capped. If I'm going to the trouble of keying in a recipe, it's going to be into Mastercook, my recipe app of choice for the past ~15 years.

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IMO, recipes are one thing that's often best left with apps designed for that. They can easily increase/decrease recipe sizes & calculate nutritional values & produce shopping lists. That's not to say I don't have any recipes in EN. However, they are only the ones I've scanned or screen capped. If I'm going to the trouble of keying in a recipe, it's going to be into Mastercook, my recipe app of choice for the past ~15 years.

I do a little of both.

When I find a recipe that I like from a site such as food.com, I make sure it's set for the proper amount of people that I would usually make it for. Then I send it on over to EN.

Then most of the time I use the EN'ed recipe. If I have more or less people, I can click on the URL tagged on the EN note and adjust accordingly via the food.com website.

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What about ZipList?

Tested Web and iPhone App.

Will not replace recipes in EN.

Will replace Grocery IQ iOS app.

Recipe clipper bookmarklet clips title, photo, ingredients and source url. It does not clip instructions. Quick tests showed clipper ok on allrecipes.com and failed on about.com. Fortunately the clipper allows manual copy and paste from recipe source page to clipper. Planned use is to add recipes to ZipList when used/planned to use. This allows quick add of recipe ingredients to grocery list.

Getting started was straight forward. Recommend reading the FAQ first. Lots of useful readable info. e.g. That is how I found out about the bookmarklet and the mobile app.

Some usability issues but those may be learning curve instead of app problems. e.g.

- Could not edit recipe photo using url. Had to save and upload web image.

- iOS app did not appear to sync to web on first use. List was eventually updated but not obvious how to force sync/check sync status.

As noted before, ZipList is most useful to US users, but still useful enough that I am planning to use it for at least a month in place of Grocery IQ.

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It does not clip instructions. ... Fortunately the clipper allows manual copy and paste from recipe source page to clipper.

I found the same. That's good enough for me... for now. But then, I'm not much of a cook. Maybe as my needs grow, I'll find better or the app will improve.

- iOS app did not appear to sync to web on first use. List was eventually updated but not obvious how to force sync/check sync status.

I see this as well. I wish I could figure it out. The bottom line for me, though, is that the grocery list benefits outweigh using EN for recipes. Everyone is different, though. :)

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- iOS app did not appear to sync to web on first use. List was eventually updated but not obvious how to force sync/check sync status.

I see this as well. I wish I could figure it out. The bottom line for me, though, is that the grocery list benefits outweigh using EN for recipes. Everyone is different, though. :)

Figured it out by accident. While in List view drag down past the top of the list. That will trigger and show a sync to web. Bug in the app however, the list display is not automatically updated after the sync. Had to switch to "Recipe Box" and then back to "List" to refresh List.

Have now tested bi-directional syncs. Seems to work with one exception. Checked out items on iOS app were not removed from web list. Need to re-test that as I was also, succesfully I think, testing iOS app while Wi-FI disabled. Worked, and this would be a deal breaker if it didn't.

As usual, it is much easier to edit data on my desktop than on my Touch. One gotcha, it is easy to get item descriptions that are only partly usable on mobile device. e.g. "2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary" becomes "2 tablespoons chopped...". You can see the full description by following the edit arrows for the item, but, a pain. Will probably edit descriptions to avoid problem, e.g. "2 tbsp Rosemary, Fresh, Chopped".

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  • 5 months later...

FYI: I have stopped using ZipList. Found it simpler and good enough to just update grocery list text note with items needed. I re-use the same note and have it marked as a Favorite (starred) on my Touch. This made the note available while offline as a free user. Still useful feature as a premium user. The "Favorites" notebook is the first item available from the "Notebooks" button.

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  • 4 months later...

I love using Evernote to organize my recipes. I have at least 100 magazines that I never look at aside from the first time they come in the house, but they are full of things I'd love to try. So I started going through them all & scanning them, then running them through Lightroom to optimize & crop (way faster than Photoshop). Most of the time the recipe is for 4, which is ok because I don't mind leftovers (we're a family of 2 + a 3yo). Once I've cooked the meal, I leave some notes for myself in there, make any personal adjustments to ingredients & tag it with what type of meal it is (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and that's pretty much it.

I also started scanning the recipe index pages of my cookbooks because I never look in them although I know there are good recipes in there also.

I actually just wrote a whole blog post about exactly this :)http://www.noordinaryhomestead.com/house-home/how-to-organize-recipes-with-evernote/

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I love using Evernote to organize my recipes. I have at least 100 magazines that I never look at aside from the first time they come in the house, but they are full of things I'd love to try. So I started going through them all & scanning them, then running them through Lightroom to optimize & crop (way faster than Photoshop). Most of the time the recipe is for 4, which is ok because I don't mind leftovers (we're a family of 2 + a 3yo). Once I've cooked the meal, I leave some notes for myself in there, make any personal adjustments to ingredients & tag it with what type of meal it is (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and that's pretty much it.

I also started scanning the recipe index pages of my cookbooks because I never look in them although I know there are good recipes in there also.

I actually just wrote a whole blog post about exactly this :)http://www.noordinar...-with-evernote/

Scanning your cookbook index pages is a brilliant idea! Great way to keep track of recipe you have on hand, even if they aren't stored in Evernote themselves!

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