October is food month here at Evernote and so I thought I’d share a personal food-related story about how Evernote helped me save a treasured family recipe book.

The book

My grandmother was an amazing cook. She loved to devise and collect recipes into a massive recipe book, which was a constant fixture on her kitchen counter. Spending time in that kitchen became a family pastime—full of delicious smells and flavors. Some of my earliest and most vivid memories are of standing beside her looking up as she worked her magic.

It has been many years since my grandmother passed away, but everyone in the family still reminisces about her baking. At a recent family get-together, someone mentioned a cookie my grandmother used to bake and how delicious it was. The next thing I knew, my aunt went to the other room and brought out a faded, stained book loosely held together with rubber bands. We all instantly recognized it as The Book.

As we huddled around flipping through the brittle pages, you could hear whispers of “Oh I remember those” and “Mine never tasted the same as hers.” Each recipe, in her familiar handwriting, bringing back special memories for each of us.

This book was important to my family and I didn’t want it to disappear. So, I took it upon myself to digitize it and then share it. I turned to Evernote.

How Evernote helped

Preserving this book was incredibly important. Here’s how I used Evernote to transform this old recipe book into a digital notebook:

• First, I took pictures of the individual pages with a digital camera. I chose not to scan the book for fear of damaging it further, though scanning into Evernote is also a great option.
• Then, I created a new notebook in Evernote and add the images.
• I titled each note with the recipe name.
• Finally, I shared the notebook by going into the Sharing settings on Evernote Web.

With a little help from Evernote, I was able to turn this family heirloom, which had been tucked away in a dusty closet, into something that is now archived and easily accessible by the whole family.

Take a look

I would like to share this book with you, too: http://www.evernote.com/pub/ronoledo/recipes. Feel free to link it to your own account by clicking the “Link to my account” button at the top right of the page.

All those wonderful food memories that we thought were lost can now live on forever, thanks to Evernote!

Food Month posts

• Welcome to Food Month
• The things I ate in Japan: A visual culinary diary of our CEO’s trip to Japan
• San Francisco tasting event with Foodzie.com
• Caleb Troughton profile: A food blogger uses Evernote to keep track of ideas, food experiments and recipes
• 10 Ways to Run a Restaurant with Evernote Chef John Andrews shares how Evernote helps him run a restaurant