Everyone has a pile of favorite recipes lying around. Those that are written on the back of deposit slips or torn from a magazine or scrawled on an ancient sheet of notebook paper filled with wrinkles and turning yellow around the edges. You may think it would be expensive to buy a software recipe program but in reality you don’t need anything special just a word processing program and windows. Notepad or WordPad is fine for entering recipes or word if you want to add graphics to your recipes.
Start by creating a folder in My Documents that will be the cover so to speak of your cookbook. Open my documents and without selecting any folders right click and then click on new then click on folder. Then type in whatever name you wish to call your cookbook, Such as Mom’s recipes, Mom’s Cookbook or My favorite Recipes. I just simply use the word “Cookbook”. Then hit enter and your cookbook folder is created.
Now that you have a folder for your recipes Lets think about how to organize those recipes. A cookbook usually has categories such as Appetizers, Bread Poultry, meat and one dish Meals not to mention all the Cakes Cookies and Desserts. Start by clicking on the Cookbook folder you just created then right click and click on new and folder as the same way you created the Cookbook folder. Type in the name of the first Category you wish to create and hit the enter key whalah, your first chapter for your cookbook is created. To add other categories to your cookbook file start by hitting the control key plus the shift key to unselect the folder you have just created then follow the steps above to create as many categories as you like. I like to add a tried and true category and one for the Holidays.
When you have created as many categories as you like you are ready to enter your recipes. You can do this by typing the recipes into a word processing program and saving the recipes into the cookbook category that is appropriate. Such as saving the recipe for Grandma’s sweet potato pie recipe into the Pies category.
As you add recipes you will notice that windows automatically sort the names of the recipes alphabetically. You can change the way the recipes are sorted in Microsoft word by clicking on the view menu and selecting sort by and then choosing from the offered list.
If you are so inclined and have a scanner you can simply scan the recipes into your computer and save them as a jpg file. This will take up a bit more space on your hard drive but you will have an exact copy of grandma’s written recipes.
This cookbook can be save to a CD and shared with family members or you can print out a single recipe for a friend who enjoyed a specific dish at the church social.
Try gathering recipes from friends and family members for a fund raiser. Make copies of the cookbook on CD’s and sell them for a quick and easy way to raise money for your favorite charity…
Or just continue to add to your cookbook over the years and see how many recipes you can collect. It’s your cookbook so make it the way you want. Enjoy creating folders and files and sorting recipes.
If you find after a while you have several categories of cookies such as chocolate cookies, bar cookies, and butter cookies simply add folders to the cookie category and drag and drop the appropriate recipes into the corresponding folder.
It’s your cookbook it can be as complex or simple as you like. Have fun creating a cookbook without spending a lot on software and don’t forget to save it to a CD. This way you will have a copy if your computer decides to crash. Most importantly have fun and if you add a lot of recipes you will be sure to increase your typing speed dramatically.
