how do you manage your recipes?

My recipe pile seems to be repopulating all by itself. I have a binder to sort them into categories, but it's a losing battle. I think I want to go digital. Can anyone recommend an Apple friendly app that will let me scan my printed recipes, cut & paste new ones from the interweb, then sort by category and retrieve? I'd like to be able to search by ingredient and/or keyword. Is it possible?

Thanks for any help!

Evernote is the repository for all of my recipes. I imported all of my Mastercook recipes into it. I use it to clip recipes from the interwebs. Very powerful tagging and searching capabilities. Instant access to my recipes (and all kinds of other saved info) on my PC, Mac, mobile devices, and any web browser. And it's free unless you need more cloud storage.

http://evernote.com/

It does interface to certain scanners, but I've never tried that.

I do not have anything that sophisticated. But here is a tip someone might want to use. If I see a recipe on the computer sometimes I cut and paste it and save it on my computer. Well I was saving it on my hard drive and it crashed and I lost my recipes. Now what I do is I cut and paste the recipe into an email message and send it to myself. Then I make folders in my email to save these recipes. The subject is the title. If I want to print it I can cut and paste it into word and print it out. That way if my computer crashes I will still have my saved recipes in my email files.

Bill/SFNM wrote:Evernote is the repository for all of my recipes. I imported all of my Mastercook recipes into it. I use it to clip recipes from the interwebs. Very powerful tagging and searching capabilities. Instant access to my recipes (and all kinds of other saved info) on my PC, Mac, mobile devices, and any web browser. And it's free unless you need more cloud storage.

http://evernote.com/

It does interface to certain scanners, but I've never tried that.

I also recommend Evernote. Been using it for years.

While we're on the subject, Evernote Food is also very good: http://evernote.com/food/.

I use a little program called treepad lite. It is a windows program but there is a java version for the mac at jreepad.sourceforge.net. I run it from a usb drive so I can take it from computer to computer and when the computer crashes I have it safe. It doesn't hold pictures but I put a link for the picture if it is on the web or on the usb drive.

Thanks for the suggestions! Looks like evernote is the place to start.

I also love evernote. You can also couple it with a scanning app like Shoebox and scan recipes into your photo album for use in evernote.

I use evernote for everything.

Shoebox sounds great - especially since my scanner isn't compatible with evernote. Can't wait to get started on this! Thanks everybody!

It has become fact that my recipes manage me. On last count, I have 1,423 loose recipes. They are clipped together by category (Apps, Chicken, Beef, etc) then those are filed alphabetically in an accordian file. I may have to try one of the ideas mentioned above.

I've also used evernote for many things including recipes. Just out of curiosity and wanting to try something new I purchased an app for my ipad called The recipe box. Looks pretty interesting especially since I use so many from online sources. This app enables you to import those online recipes from different sources so that you have them all centrally located. Another function is the ability to create shopping lists from you recipes. I'm sure this will be a regular in our kitchen! Your milage may very but for $4 I figured what the heck.

Enjoy!

My method isn't the best but its fast and simple and does not require learning anything new, and you can start using it today while mulling over which method to use or while teaching yourself how to use evernote or something else. I'm still working on scanning photos. And once you have it on electronic media, you can transfer it to something else. So stop printing and saving hard paper and just cut and paste to an email and put in a email folder. I've looked at evernote but again there is a learning curve there, not impossible but needs to be figured out.

When I want to make something, I do sometimes print out my recipes and take them into my kitchen or I use my netbook which will perch on my counter. A good thing is you can paste them into word and adjust the print to make it bigger if you want. I then file frequently used recipes in a notebook if I have printed it but I am trying to get away from hard copy. Its difficult to cook though looking at a computer, maybe an i pad but I do not have one. I also have recipes cards from previous decades and use them sometimes too. They have some sentimental value to me especially if they were written by my mom or grandmothers.