We are constantly bookmarking new recipes on the web, spotting new ingredients to try, and tearing articles out of magazines. Keeping all these bits and pieces organized is tough, but so many of programs that promise to help end up being too good to be true. But Evernote! This is one program that might just actually be able to deliver.
Evernote is one of the first programs we've found that seems to synchronize our internet life with our real-world life. It allows us to flag a recipe on someone's blog and also take a picture of a new ingredient at the farmer's market, and both of these things go into the same database. The program runs these items through their "recognition technology" to create search profiles and find key words.
The program syncs between all your electronic devices, so it becomes a tool you can use at home or in the grocery store when you're searching for a specific recipe that "you know you saw!" earlier that day. We believe you don't even have to necessarily be online to access it.
We're even thinking that we could scan the recipes we flag in our food magazines every month into our computer and then add them to Evernote. The program can recognize text, so this makes it easy to find recipes even when we can't remember the exact title or where we saw it.
We're still in the early stages of feeling out this new program, but we already think this could be a very useful tool for a lot of us. Like any new organization system, the initial set-up and transition takes some time and energy. But once it's established, it seems like using Evernote should be a snap.
Having everything in one place has a lot of appeal. Having it be easily searchable has even more appeal.
Do you use Evernote? How do you apply it to cooking and recipe organization?
Check It Out: Evernote: Remember Everything
Related: Kitchen Tech: Organize Recipes Using Google Reader
(Image: Screenshot from Evernote Homepage)
On Saying No to Paleo: Why Eating Isn't One Size Fits All
Perfect Summer Cocktail Recipe: Honey Bourbon Lemonade
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Elizabeth Apron fro...
Before & After: Emily Henderson Transforms a Senior's Studio Space
Danielle's Charming, Classic Walk-Up
What an interesting program. I will stay tuned to see how it works!
Emily
I use Evernote exclusively for my recipe organization. I clip recipes straight from the web, then tag them with keywords (i.e. 'fruit', 'pies and tarts') and then stick them into the appropriate folder ('desserts'). My favorite part is the web synchronization... I can clip recipes I find while reading blogs at work on my Mac, then access them at home on my PC, find the recipes at the supermarket from my iPhone to ensure I am picking up the proper ingredients, and still access everything from the internet if I am visiting my MIL and she asks me to make something specific.
I have yet to find anything else that I like remotely as much.
I've been using Evernote for a while. It doesn't have a great user interface. In fact, it's pretty clunky and annoying. Having said that, I stopped using it for daily lists and "to dos" so I don't really have to interact with it too often. Now I'm using it as a storage app just like this article suggests.
I drag the url's right onto the icon in my dock and delete out any unnecessary headers, advertisements, etc. I also use it to store pdfs of recipes that I've scanned from magazines and cookbooks. Then, it's super easy to search. I even add my fave AT articles - especially "round-up" ones like best vegetarian recipes, for example.
The clunky user interface is supposedly being redone, so I'm looking forward to that at which point I may use it more on a daily basis, instead of just as an archive.
I use Evernote, but it never occurred to me to use it for my ever expanding recipe collection. Thanks for the tip!
I do use Evernote and find it useful and it is so easy to clip and catalogue stuff from the web - though I would like Evernote better if it had a export function and handled searches better.
For recipes, I've tried several things (including OneNote) but find Personal Knowbase works best for me. It has fabulous search capabilities, but lacks the cross-platform functionality and only accepts text - no photos.
@birdseyechili
What are you using evernote on? A Windows or a Mac?
Thank you for posting about this, I'd never heard of it before but it sounds like the perfect solution for me. Just downloaded!
I use evernote for all my recipes as well as everything else on my mind. I love the fact that I can capture recipes directly from the blogs and it captures the urls as well. I can try out the recipe then go back and comment on the blog later.
I also like the iPhone app. I can look up the recipe while at the grocery store and verify that I have everything I need.
I also do a grocery list and menu planning in it.
Love it!
love love love evernote - have been using it for a year and its steadily improved. looking forward to using it on iphone when i get one!
@adiaphane On my mac and iPhone.
I have been using Evernote as recipe storage for awhile. After I figured out how to set up a system that made sense to me, all the hard work of adding and organizing data has paid off, and I have it accessible at work, home, etc. I am a big fan after a bumpy test drive.
I have a "food" folder in Evernote that I've shared with my wife so we can both see any recipes and/or article I happen across on the web that sound good. I particularly like having a choice between saving an entire web page, just clipping a portion, or just saving the URL.
Yeesh. This thread is stale, but for those who come back - we use Evernote for our recipes, too, so both my husband and I have them on our phones, including when we're traveling-and-cooking. But these comments from 2009 still hold true; the interface is so bad I grit my teeth every time I have to dive in there and get a recipe out or add one. It's really bad. But it's better at stashing stuff than anything else (still) so we deal with it (still). I hope someone from Apple gets a job in their UI department this year.
It is really good, by the way, for scanned copies of passports etc. We've pulled out copies of important paperwork from thin air during trips three times with Evernote, off one of our phones. For recipes, at least they are all in one place!
Evernote now has a food version