Thursday 10 January 2013

Exciting Discovery for Recipe Organisation - MS OneNote!

Do you have a whole ton of recipes floating about your house here and there?  I sure do.  Twenty-two years of marriage in which you are the chef will do that to a person.  If you're anything like me keeping all those recipes in such a way that they're easily accessible is quite a challenge.  I have clipped magazine recipes in display folders.  I have a desktop file-tray draw dedicated to things I print from online sources.  I have a little A5 binder where I keep recipes I've typed over the years.  And of course there's all the beautiful recipes books I've collected.  Surprisingly I know exactly where to put my hands on whatever it is I need, yet that does not reduce the number of folders and piles and collections I seem to have.  I haven't even mentioned the pile of magazines gathering dust in a basket!

The other day I wondered if there was some kind of template I could use to start recording all our favourite recipes on the computer.  Did you know that there is a whole program that has a recipe template already in it all set up and ready to go?  Neither did I.  The answer is Microsoft OneNote.  I happen to already have this on my computer.  It came with the Academic suite of Microsoft programs I bought 18 months ago - you may well have it and not know about it either.

The template is super easy to use.  You just click on the tab, click on the spot to add a new page and off you go.  You can add tabs, you can rearrange the recipes in alphabetical order (a special treat for obsessive people like me) and there are already a handful of recipes in there!



So, here is something I want to do throughout the year:  add my family recipes to my OneNote Recipe Book.  What I especially wanted to be able to do was to add a short narrative about the recipe and what makes it special to us, or where it came from...like my Granny's pavlova recipe or Dh's favourite dip and the way it has evolved to what I make today.  Those stories tell something about us as a family and it is a heritage I want to be able to pass on to my children.

How do you store your recipe collection?

Images from: blogs.office.com

3 comments:

Beth said...

Thanks for sharing this. I found OneNote on my computer! Now I just need the time to explore it's possibilities!

Joolz said...

Thanks for sharing, I found it on my work PC, not sure if it's on my home PC, will have a look.

I have 2 full (read overflowing) ring binders of recipes that I have got off the net and blogs. I need to reorganise that, stat!

Cheers - Joolz

Left-Handed Housewife said...

Like, Joolz, I've got overflowing ring binders filled with recipes. Last summer I started on a project to get them organized, but I still have work to do--which is why all the binders are sitting over there on the floor with pages spilling everywhere. Maybe this weekend?

xofrances