Tuesday, 19 August 2008

Getting organised

Ste Mylène

I am a hoarder. I have hundreds, possibly thousands of recipes saved from various magazines over the years and they have to be dealt with. I can never find the one I want when I want it.

I did have a good clear out just before we moved here, and another one recently, but there are still many, many recipes I want to try out.

I've been looking for a way to organise them. I tried making a database but my memory has failed me and I can't remember how to make the queries work.

What I really, really want is to be able to feed in my recipes to a program and then when I can't think what to cook, tell the computer what ingredients I have and let it suggest recipes to me.

Surely that can't be too much to ask?

The only thing is, I don't want to have to pay for such a program (I'm a retired person you know), so I've been trawling the internet for a solution. I may have found one that isn't too irritating, not too many messages flashing up 'You could make your life so much easier if only you upgraded this program to GOLD!!'

Anyone out there got any ideas?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds to me as if you need a secretary. Or cheaper still, a MOTHER - runs on tea, biscuits, G & T and a packet of crisps!

Steve Morton said...

'then when I can't think what to cook, tell the computer what ingredients I have and let it suggest recipes to me.'

Sue you already have that program... it's called Google... put in to Google recipe followed by the ingredients you have in the fridge/cupboard and hey presto up will pop various recipes!! Try it it works... Google is your friend..

Steve

La Vie en Rose said...

That's an option, Steve, but I have soooooo many recipes already that I want to use but I never know where to find them!

A MOTHER - now that's an idea - when are you free to start dealing with the paperwork???

Anonymous said...

Hey Sue, you do have a free tool, it's called a blog :-) That's essentially why I put all my recipes in a blog! Not only that, but I can get at them anywhere I have an internet connection.

For other people's recipes, better than Google is FoodBlogSearch, which restricts the search to good-quality food blogs.