Cooking Up Memories with Evernote

Tips and Stories | 08 Oct 200908 Oct 09 | By Ron Toledo

25 comments

recipebook3

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.

brownies

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

Paul

I loved the recipe idea but found the “Drop Cookies” recipe is actually page two of the “Strawberry Shortcake recipe”.
http: janitorial supplies

I read some the the recipies in the book and I think they are just wonderful. I cannot wait to try some of them out this evening.
Tanner

@Joe

I use Evernote on my iPod Touch. I will make a shopping list for example and while I’m in the wifi area, I mark the note as a favorite. When I’m out of wifi range, my favorited notes still appear. I also have an iphone and have used this feature for reading on the train class readings I’ve put into Evernote. When the train goes into the tunnels and I lose both wifi and cell reception, I still have access to my favorited notes.
JohnnyT

Thank you for sharing your prized grandmother’s cookbook. From the photos, it’s clear that the paper used in making the book has a high acid content (the brown staining and brittleness) and needs some preservation work to prevent the pages from eventually disintegrating. A book preservationist can do this but it may be costly. I use a paper deacidifying spray called PaperSaver on my vintage postcard collection and it seems to work quite well.
http://www.riveroffers/?cogid=almar Allen Peterman

Would be nice if underlined link items would capture the actual link also.
Also, how about a one-stroke capture of a multi-screen web page?
I recommend E-N to all my friends !!
Emily O

I started something similar with my mother’s recipe index cards, especially because she had preserved some of her mother’s Russian recipes. When I take a photo with my digital camera, the writing is backwards, so I have to do a mirror image version within Photoshop. It was too many steps and it took too much time. I would like to know Ron’s technique for reversing the images. Perhaps my camera has a way of reversing the image before I transfer it to my computer. I really want to share my mother’s recipes with the rest of my family. I do not have an iPhone, just an iPodTouch. Examples: http://www.evernote.com/pub/emsterdamsel/Mimisrecipes
Katrina

This is wonderful,
Trying to capture all the recipes I have, or want to try, is such a daunting task. I started to do this using evernote, but quickly gave up. With so many millions of recipes on the web, in cookbooks, etc, its easy to get recipe-overload.

I’m beginning to think its more important to create more of a journal than an index, and just my favourite recipes. Similar to what your grandmother did. I like the idea of using evernote for this – to note changes, etc.

Wonderful idea, can’t wait to try the recipes.
Karmen

This brought back so many memories. This was a very similar story to our own family. Our Grandma was a wonderful cook who handwrote all of her recipes in a book. Your Grandmother’s handwriting looks so much like my Grandmother’s – and even the recipes are so similar. Thanks so much for sharing! When she passed away I did scan it into a computer file and shared it with everyone that way.
Mart

thats a good idea;-) http://www.evernote.com/pub/martinlyall/recipes
myn have all been done simply by creating a snapshot note using the evernote iphone app. Seems to work really well and much easier than copying the recipes out manually.
Joe

@Tanner
Thanks for the response Tanner, I use the favorite star as well. I star all my notes, so they are all available offline. The problem i face is that Evernote’s search functionality is not available offline. I can’t search for tags or keywords when I’m offline, I have to browse (my favorites) which is a pain. Offline needs a search, search is the point of evernote, and to not have it offline, makes no sense.

Sad evernote user waiting for his offline search
Joe

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