My boyfriend judges me because my computer always holds little crumbs and sometimes a swipe of sauce. No, it's not because I eat while writing, it's because the laptop is often in the line of fire by the stove. Like many of you, I find a great many recipes online.
Last week NPR ran a story exploring how many folks are now finding their recipes and food content online rather than in print sources, which we shared in our Food News on Monday. They reported that "half of consumers use sites like Twitter and Facebook to learn about food. Another 40 percent of consumers say they learn about food via websites, apps, or blogs." That's a whole lot of folks. And I'm guessing since you're here with us on The Kitchn today, you may fall somewhere in line with those numbers.
The reasons for this are great. First off, many of us spend a lot more time in general online so it makes sense that we'd search for dinner recipes and engage with the food blogging community in that way. Also, online sources are portable and you can pull them up regardless of where you are. At the grocery store or your mother-in-law's house in Ohio? No problem. With recipe cards or print sources you have at home, you must physcially be there to consult them, obviously. Last, searching for recipes has become more of a visual and sensory experience. This didn't exist with mom's recipe box. Today, especially with sites like Tastespotting, Foodgawker, and Pinterest people are searching for recipe using photos of the end product. This is new terrain.
All of this is true and undeniable and, in my experience, has enriched my time in the kitchen. But I can't let print go. I love flipping through cookbooks and I cherish my mom's recipes jotted down on old scratch papers. Call me an optimist, but I do feel that print recipes still hold a lot of weight. Mom's recipe boxes are a snapshot of a very particular point in time -- the internet is much more an amalgamation. And cookbooks are such a special curation of one writer or one cook's point of view, skill set, and aesthetic. So lately I often find myself shutting down the computer and flipping through cookbooks to gain a bit of inspiration. How about you?
Do you still consult print recipes and find value in the notion of mom's recipe cards?
Related: Recipe Cards: Useful or Outdated?
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i've completely converted to using recipes online
I've been storing recipes on computer since I've been cooking when I was in college (circa 2000). Word files, personal website, blog. I get tons from the internet too, most recently via pinterest. I used to print one occasionally ... that is until I got my Kindle Fire. Now that is a thing of the past too. The only paper that remains are my favorite cookbooks. Even my single cooking magazine subscription has gone digital. Of course my mom's recipe box to say nothing of my grandmas' will always hold a special place in my heart. :)
I find them online, print the recipe, and then test it, and if it passes muster I handwrite it into a recipe book with my notes on the recipes. I bet I would behave differently if I had an i-pad but I am too spill prone to use my computer in the kitchen. It is fun to look back and see how my taste has changed over the years.
I use my computer to search for new recipes, but I always write them down on a recipe card, it makes it easier to keep notes about changes that I may make to a recipe. Plus, there's nothing like receiving a hand written recipe from a loved one.
I love my old recipe cards and still have my grandmothers, my mothers and my mother in laws recipe boxes. I look into them frequently to find a memory and a good recipe. I find many recipes on line haven't been tested and are written so poorly that I don't even bother. I have a large collection (over 1000) cookbooks and use them constantly. I don't think I could ever give up the printed book.
I do use the internet to find and store new recipes, but once tried and loved them, they get written down. I only have a PC that's in the study (my sloooow laptop doesn't count). What if we lose internet? Or the computer breaks down? I even re-write recipes on the paper so that I can add it to my folder and donate the magazines again (I only buy them used).
I also find many of my recipes online. I tend to print them out and if happy with the results, I'll write the recipe on a card and add it to my huge collection. I had a computer go "blue screen of death" on me and I lost everything. It was an old computer and I couldn't transfer to discs. I like having all of those old family recipes in the original writing and when I read them so many warm memories come to me from the hand that wrote them.
Our family has an extremely old cookbook that was hand written sometime in the 1800s as far as we can tell. The recipes are very vague. No measurements are used at all, just the ingredients. Even the choice of meat in the recipe doesn't note what kind of meat to use. Before my Aunt passed she was seriously considering donating it to the Smithsonian. Hope someday we'll be able to trace the author through our family tree...but that may be impossible.
I like the idea that after I'm gone someone in my family's future generations could have access to these. A bit of education in history, you know?
100% digital. even recipes i find in print i most often convert to digital. From family recipes to stuff from books most are copied to a google doc which allows me to revise and edit and make notes and changes to my liking. Its very handy if Im at the store and see a good sale on cut of meat or something I can pull up my favorite recipe and see what else I might need to finish my dish.
I have a few cook books that are great but even those I have ended up scanning in if I really like a recipe.
I live online but I really hate it. Whenever I need to find a recipe I have to go to Pinterest to look it up and I really (really) want to have a stock of favorite recipes with a nice design and case. Problem is, I have the most awful handwriting (I blame this on being a programmer) and I don't dare deface beautiful design with it.
One of these days I am going to program a custom recipe designer. Like this http://www.jamlabelizer.com/ but for recipes with nice designs.
I'm the same as adamwa. All my recipes get copy/pasted or transcribed into individual google documents. The results are edited and annotated as needed, re-discovered via searching, and then used in my kitchen via my iPad.
Never. The traditional recipes passing from generation to generation are allways better, tastier and cooked with extra love.
I'm still a written addicted person...I find them online, print them out and sometimes write them into the recipe box. I lost mine at my in-laws house though which completely bummed me out. I have a stack of cards from my grandmother though, which I shall cherish even if ham cookies (made with lard) don't sound good to me.
My canning and preserving goes in a journal. Each recipe is printed out and notes are added at the bottom along with yield.
I like to think that someday my boys will look back at my cooking blog for recipes. I've even recored recipes I made with them, like Malcolm's Supreme Spicy Croquettes. (Delicious!) I'm a huge fan of pens and paper, but with all of my recipes online, both boys can use them whenever they like, wherever they are. AND, possibly more importantly, I write about our lives and memories in a way you don't on a recipe card. I think they'll like to read all this some day!
i've been totally online for recipes for years. i permit myself one shelf of cookbooks, and when i want to buy a new one, an older one goes out. i don't buy many new cookbooks!
online, i pay for access to cooks illustrated, i visit lots of blogs, and i'm so excited to have gotten going on pinterest, where i can keep recipes instead of emailing them to myself! i love finding and following other food curators on pinterest, and being exposed to flavors, techniques, and ideas i might not have found on my own.
@claireooto that's one of the reasons why i started food blogging! i wanted a place to keep track of what i've done, so i wouldn't forget favorites that could otherwise have been lost in time.
I don't have any family recipes. I use the internet for general inspiration, but if I know what I want to cook I tend to look it up in one of my trusted cookbooks. I save internet recipes in my email account.
As others have said, I don't think I'd like to entirely give up my hand-written recipes. I certainly wouldn't part with the notes written by my grandmother or mom.
I like having stuff organized and I have some online backup for my favorite or most-special (or complicated!) recipes. But to me, nothing will ever replace the feeling of turning a real page or taking out a little colored index card to guide me along. They seem like old friends, cheesy at that sounds. :)
I use Evernote to store recipes I've found online, and some older favorites too. I like that I can add notes and tag for easy sorting. I even have different notebooks for recipes I've tried and ones I would like to experiment with. I don't have to look things up online later and always have my recipes in my laptop.
plan to eat and pinterest is my meal planning/recipe combo, for special occasions i do use my beloved cookbooks, particularly for baking.
i pin recipes throughout the week that i read about and want to try, and then whem i'm meal planning i import them into plantoeat.com (the single most useful meal planning resource) i set my computer on the kitchen counter and go to it. although i'm hoping that an ipad may replace the computer in the kitchen, i'm terrified of spills!
Here's my rule of thumb. Before I try the recipe, I don't write it down. I will have the recipe tagged in Pinterest, or elsewhere ( I used to use delicious before something happen to it). Once I make the recipe few times and I think it will be a recipe I'll use over time, I write down the recipe in a moleskin notebook.
I got the idea from this post: http://www.deliciousdays.com/archives/2007/06/24/how-to-organize-recipes/
I like to try a lot of recipes that I find online, but the problem I was having was that I'd want to make something again a year later, but wouldn't be able to remember which version of a particular frosting I liked so much, or how or whether I'd tweaked a recipe, or whether I'd frozen something before baking and added to the baking time as a result, etc. So now recipes I'd like to make still get bookmarked on the computer, but whenever I actually make something that I think is worthy of being made again, I print off a copy of the recipe and put it in a binder, jotting down any changes I made (or any I may think the recipe needs next time).
I love collecting cookbooks and usually turn to those first when I am looking for a recipe. But I also follow several food blogs and when I find a recipe I want to try, I copy it into google docs and into a folder called "To Try". If I like it, I print it out and it is added to a notebook of recipes. The online copy is moved from the "To Try" folder into a folder for recipes I've tried and liked.
I mostly use online recipes, but I still do get magazines and will make recipes out of those. Also, I tear out all of the recipes from those magazines that I've dog-eared. I haven't decided what to do with those tear outs though - should I scan them and tag them for reference or should I just go find their online equivalent and ditch the paper?
I had a recipe binder until the iPad -- then I spent e best $5 ever and bought Paprike recipe app. It has an internal browser that can add a recipe or you can type or import any other recipe content. I categorize "recipes to try" and then either save or delete depending on how it goes. Love love love.
Before I built up a solid cookbook collection I used to use the internet for all of my recipes. Now I tend to use a mix of family recipes, cookbooks and websites/blogs. When I am looking for something to make, I either flip through a stack of cookbook books or go through blog recipes I've recently read and saved. The only time I actively search for a recipe online is if I am looking for something specific, like how to use up the extra ingredients from another recipe, etc.
It's a combination. I have a bulging envelope of recipes Xeroxed from my mom's box, and three or four cookbooks that I like. I do find a lot of recipes online though. I save them in a bookmarks folder, and if I make them and like them, they go on the blog where I have a record of the recipe and any changes. Sometimes I write those down too, but often they are simple enough that I end up memorizing them.
I think finding good recipes is a greater challenge than keeping track of them. If you get the recipe from someone you know, or it's something you've had before, it comes with instant ethos behind it. When you get recipes from other sources, though, it takes a while to build that rapport. I have to make at least 2-3 recipes from a new source before I "trust" it. That's where the internet has an advantage over cookbooks and magazines--I can read the comments and reviews, and see what other people have said or changed about a recipe before I try it.