• Windows
• Evernote Web
• Windows Mobile

We’re always on the lookout for unexpected ways that people are using Evernote. When we heard about California dairy farmer Ray Prock and his Evernote use, we had to see it for ourselves.

On our recent visit to his family farm, not only did we get a tour of the dairy, but we also learned about the critical role Evernote plays in keeping everything running. Ray, like lots of business owners, has the huge task of managing enormous amounts of information. In his Evenote account, Ray captures information on his cows, including their numbers, treatments and feed details. He also keeps track of his maintenance needs, supplies, notes from meetings, and remaining tasks.

Check out the video below to get a peek at our visit to Ray Lin Dairy.

Part of Evernote’s Food Month

We recently asked you, our blog readers, to submit some delicious fall recipes. We chose our favorite, clipped it into Evernote, and were off to the farmers market to pick up the ingredients. With goodies in-hand, we met up with Laurine Wickett, chef and owner of Left Coast Catering (and Top Chef contestant), to cook up this great fall meal. Here’s the video of the culinary excitement. The full recipes are below.

By the way, if you’re looking for an awesome Bay Area caterer for an upcoming event, you need to check out Left Coast Catering.

Recipes

Arugula salad with roasted beets, shaved fennel, toasted hazelnuts and blue cheese
Serves 4

• 12 oz arugula
• 16 baby beets ( red, chiogga or gold), or 2 large red beets
• 1/2 c. blanched hazelnuts – toasted and rough chopped
• 1 fennel – cut in half, core removed and shaved thin just before using
• 1/2 c. crumbled blue cheese
• 1/4 c. – ½ c. sherry vinaigrette – recipe follows
• Olive oil to coat the beets
• Salt and pepper

To prepare the beets, remove the beet greens (if any) and save for another use. Wash and dry beets. Coat with olive oil, salt and pepper. Place in pan and add 1/4 cup water. Cover tightly with foil and roast in the oven at 350F until done. Check after 20 minutes is using baby beets. If using large beets, check after 45 minutes. Beets are done once they can easily be pierced with a sharp knife. Cool, peel and cut into wedges for large beets, in half or quartered for baby beets.

To prepare the salad, mix arugula, beets and fennel with sherry vinaigrette just to coat ingredients, season with salt and pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning. Top with chopped nuts and crumbled cheese

Sherry Vinaigrette
Makes 1 cup

• 1/4 c. sherry vinegar
• 1/4 c. olive oil
• 1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 t. honey
• 1/2 t. dijon
• 1/2 t salt
• pinch of pepper

Combine honey, dijon, vinegar, salt and pepper and whisk. Mix the oils together. Slowly add in the oil while continuing to wisk until all the oil is added and dressing is emulsified.

Pork and Orange Stew
From: At Home with Michael Chiarello

• 1-1/2 pounds boneless pork shoulder, cut into bite-size chunks
• Gray salt or Citrus salt
• 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 teaspoons NapaStyle Fennel Spice Rub or 2 teaspoons fennel seeds (toasted and ground)
• 2 tablespoons Cointreau
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
• 6 cups chicken stock or canned low salt chicken broth
• 1 bay leaf
• 1-1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter or extra virgin olive oil
• 3/4 pound potatoes, peeled and diced into 1/2-inch cubes
• 12 pearl onions, peeled
• 2 cups shiitake mushrooms, quartered (stems removed)
• 12 baby carrots, stemmed
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary
• Gray salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 pound cooked wide, flat noodles
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh flat leaf parsley

Full recipe is available at NapaStyle.com

Food Month posts

• Welcome to Food Month
• Cooking up memories: Digitizing a prized family recipe book into Evernote
• San Francisco tasting event with Foodzie.com
• The things I ate in Japan: A visual culinary diary of our CEO’s trip to Japan
• 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
  

• Mac
• Windows
• Phone: Evernote Mobile Web (http://www.evernote.com/m)
• iPod Touch
• Evernote Web

Part of Evernote’s Food Month

John Andrews is a chef and manager of Victoria Station in Salem, Massachusetts. Over his fifteen years in the restaurant business, John has figured out many ways to deal with the immense organizational challenges of operating a restaurant. With Evernote, John has created a system that keeps him sane and keeps his restaurant running smoothly.

Why Evernote Works For Me

Evernote has become a critical tool for running my restaurant, Victoria Station. Operating a restaurant is so much more than cooking the food–it’s a huge juggling act. My biggest challenge is dealing with the sheer amount of information being thrown at me from every possible angle. I need a place to put it all, and for me that place is Evernote. Getting that finished dish onto the table takes tons of coordination. Here are some of the ways that Evernote helps the restaurant function.

1. Coordinating food vendors

In any given week, I might interact with 10-15 different vendors and purveyors, each with their own product guides and point of sale flyers for any new items. Multiply this by the hundreds of products from each vendor, plus the need to maintain a fully functioning kitchen seven days a week and you can see how it could easily get out of control. To keep it under control, I throw everything into Evernote.

2. Finding new ingredients, creating new recipes

Today’s culinary consumer is well-informed, which makes my job of coming up with unique dishes on a daily basis a challenge. Since I don’t like to limit myself to one style of cooking, I tend to do a lot of research online, especially for new products and ingredients that I haven’t used before. With Evernote, I can clip or email ideas into my “Recipes and Food Ideas” notebook from my computer or phone. Then, whenever I do a search, not only does Evernote display the product, but also any related ideas, along with information on which vendors carry that product. I have also shared this notebook with some fellow chefs so that they can contribute their ideas, as well.

3. Keeping everything organized wherever you are

I spend most of my time in the kitchen, which means that I don’t always have access to a computer during the day. Having Evernote on my phone is a big deal because it allows me to stay on top of things wherever I may be. If I get an email from a vendor for an interesting product or an important proposal, I just forward it along to my Evernote account. Then, later when I get back to my desk at work or at home I can pull it up in Evernote.

4. Getting rid of paper clutter

As a chef, I work long hours and the last thing I need is to waste time reorganizing paperwork (receipts, bills, etc) or spending additional time trying to locate loose papers that become lost in the clutter. With Evernote and my scanner, I easily convert the paper mess into digital notes that are always available whenever I need them.

A sampling of some of the vendor flyers and product sheets

5. Staff training

I have specific notebooks for Wait Management and Service Training. I keep all relevant training documents and information in these Evernote notebooks. Whenever I find something new, I simply tag it (waitstaff, kitchen, management) and then add the name of the restaurant. This way, I can pull up specific information for my current restaurant or establishments that I have managed at in the past.

6. A complete backup of my Food Life

Having all my information backed up and available on multiple computers is an essential feature for me. I ran restaurants in the past, and whenever I left, I lost years of specials and ideas that I would love to have back. Now that I have Evernote, I have everything backed up and available in my account. I’m no longer tied to a single computer that I may not have access to forever. Now, wherever I go, my ideas stay with me.

7. Keep track of your ideas for a website redesign

For the redesign of our website, I created a Shared Notebook to share ideas and inspirations with our graphic designer and webmaster. I clipped images and pages that I liked from other restaurant sites. I also saved all the graphic work that my designer created. The three of us are able to access the shared notebook at any time to pick and choose what we need for the project regardless of what computer we happen to be using. I can also remotely check the progress of everything using my phone to make sure things are being handled efficiently.

This photo is on the home page of our website. Evernote allowed me to save a high-quality image, and then share it with the designer without worrying about email restrictions.

8. Collaborative menu creation

The shared notebooks work great for collaborating on creating a menu with other managers and chefs at my restaurant. I also take pictures of finished dishes with my phone, pop the pic onto my desktop, add descriptions and recipes, then share with the others. This way everyone can know exactly what the finished dish should look like, and have a record of each dish.

9. Catering projects

Whenever I need to work on catering projects and functions menus, I use Evernote as a way to keep the menus organized with my function coordinator and day manager. If they have any questions about what type of event it is, how the event should be set up, or how the food should be presented, they can go to my Functions shared notebook in Evernote. There they can access the contract, menu, table setting, and food instructions. I keep everything tagged with the name of the event for easy searching.

10. A system designed by Me for Me

The best thing about Evernote, is that the system is completely open. It is really only limited by your imagination. Evernote is so flexible that I was able to adapt it to work specifically for me. Once I came up with my system it was able to do everything I needed. As a chef, I was able to integrate it into my work-flow and perfect it, rather then having to adapt my work-flow to fit into an already established system.

Food Month posts

• Welcome to Food Month
• Cooking up memories: Digitizing a prized family recipe book into Evernote
• San Francisco tasting event with Foodzie.com
• The things I ate in Japan: A visual culinary diary of our CEO’s trip to Japan
• Caleb Troughton profile: A food blogger uses Evernote to keep track of ideas, food experiments and recipes

Blog: Food Goes In Mouth
Twitter: @foodgoesinmouth

Part of Evernote’s Food Month

Caleb Troughton is a web developer, blogger, and Evernote user from the Central California coast. His blog, Food Goes In Mouth, follows him through experimentation, development, and cooking of fantastic original recipes.

Caleb describes his cooking style as daring and instinctive; he rarely sticks to straightforward recipes–rather, he often plays with ingredients and always takes photos of his delicious and, occasionally, unexpected creations.

How does Evernote help you?
I use Evernote to record ingredients and recipes for my shopping, cooking, and blogging. During my day job, whenever a recipe inspiration hits me, I record the idea in a text note. Before I go to the store, I look over my notes and start testing things in the kitchen. I am constantly editing and revising the note as I go. Evernote is my whiteboard. It’s where I can play around with flavors in my head, without needing to be in the kitchen all day long. Over time, these notes evolve into complete recipes and eventually blog posts.

Here’s an example of a recipe brainstorm, which led to the recipe below:

Caleb shared one of his original recipes with us. You can clip the recipe below.

Vegan Umami Risotto (serves 4)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Arborio rice
• 1/8 cup barley
• 1/4 cup fresh white corn
• 1/4 cup fresh shiitake mushroom, diced (4 mushrooms left whole)
• 2 medium-sized shallots, finely diced
• 15g kombu (dried kelp) sheets
• 2 tbs extra-virgin olive oil
• Fresh italian parsley
• Fresh tarragon

Instructions:

• Spread the barley out on a baking sheet and dry roast at 425°F for 5 minutes. Set aside for later use. Take equal parts of fresh parsley and tarragon and finely chop.
• Set aside 1/4 cup of this mixture.
• Make kombu dashi by following these four steps. Clean the kombu by wiping it with cloth, soak it in water, heat that water to just below a boil, and remove the kombu. For the amount of kombu I’ve listed in the ingredients, you will want to use approximately 8 cups of water.
• Keep the heat on the kombu dashi so that it stays just below a boil. The dashi will be our stock for cooking the risotto.
• In your favorite skillet heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add shallots and some salt and cook until translucent.
• Add the Arborio rice and roasted barley. Stir, coating the grains in oil and keep cooking over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for two minutes.
• Kick the skillet to high heat. Pour a ladle of the dashi into the skillet. Start stirring.
• Whenever the bottom of the skillet is visibly dry, bring another ladle of the dashi over. Always keep stirring. You’ll notice things start to get creamy and thicker almost immediately.
• After 10 minutes of this, add the corn. Continue with the cycles of adding dashi.
• After another 8 minutes (18 minutes total now) add the diced mushrooms and continue.
• At 25 minutes, make your next liquid addition your last. Things should be al dente at this point. If not continue the cycle until you reach al dente.
• During the last addition, salt the risotto to taste.  I avoid adding salt before this because with all the liquid reduction going on, it may become easy to overdue things.
• When the bottom of the pan is nearly dry, add the whole mushrooms on top of the risotto, cut the heat, put a lid on the thing, and walk away for 3 minutes while the mushrooms steam a bit.
• Remove the lid and stir in the fresh herbs.
• Serve up a pile of risotto and top it with one of the steamed shiitakes.

Visit Caleb’s blog to see more delicious recipes.

Food Month posts

• Welcome to Food Month
• Cooking up memories: Digitizing a prized family recipe book into Evernote
• San Francisco tasting event with Foodzie.com
• The things I ate in Japan: A visual culinary diary of our CEO’s trip to Japan
• 10 Ways to Run a Restaurant with Evernote Chef John Andrews shares how Evernote helps him run a restaurant
  

What is Foodzie?

Foodzie is a marketplace devoted to small and artisanal food producers from around the US. They carry an obscene amount of deliciousness (just wait till you see the food photos). Best off all, they help you discover locally-made foods that you never knew existed.

What’s the theme?

As any San Franciscan will tell you, a party ain’t a party without a theme. So, for our tasting, the theme will be Tasty Gifts. Although I’m convinced that anything from this site will make a tasty gift, the folks at Foodzie have hand-selected their absolute favorite products just for us. Personally, I’m a fan of this, this, this, and this.

As a very special bonus, some of the producers will be on hand to tell us about their gourmet vittles.

When? Where?

Date: October 29th
Time: 6pm
Location: San Francisco, CA

Special gift from Yak Pak

In addition to the culinary goodness, all attendees will get a super special gift from the great bag-producing folks at Yak Pak. If you’re not familiar with these guys you need to check them out.

Interested in joining us?

If you would like to join us, please leave a comment below telling us your favorite way to use Evernote. We will randomly select six (6) people from among the commenters. Everyone selected will be allowed to bring one guest to the event. We will contact the selected individual via email, so be sure to use a valid email when leaving your comment. To be considered, comments must be submitted by 12pm PT on Wednesday October 21st. Good luck!

Can’t make it? Don’t worry. There’s more Foodzie excitement to come. Stay tuned.

Food Month posts

• Welcome to Food Month
• Cooking up memories: Digitizing a prized family recipe book into Evernote
• The things I ate in Japan: A visual culinary diary of our CEO’s trip to Japan
• 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
  

I just got back from eight hectic days in Japan. It was wall-to-wall meetings with no room for sightseeing, but I did make time to eat a quick bite here and there. And there. And at that place around the corner.

Naturally, I decided that I would photograph every single thing that I ate and put it into an Evernote shared notebook. I had three good reasons for this:

1. It’s Evernote Food Month, and this is a great way to remember your trip (and shortcut all those, “what’d you have for lunch?” conversations with the relatives back home).
2. It was a good excuse for me to buy a new camera and Eye-Fi card (read about Eye-Fi and Evernote).
3. It would prevent me from eating anything that I would be too ashamed to share with the world.

That last reason turned out not to have any impact.

My notebook

Here is my shared notebook of every single thing I ate in Japan. Since this is clearly the sort of content that you’ll constantly want at your fingertips, you can link the notebook to your own account.

The setup worked great. The Panasonic GF1 was small enough to bring everywhere and it took great, low-light shots of the food, which the Eye-Fi Pro automatically geotagged (try hitting “Map it” on most of the notes) and magically transferred into my Evernote account. I did some light editing in Evernote itself (putting in titles, text, and occasionally right-clicking the photos to open them in my photo editing software to crop things non-edible) and then dragged all of the food notes into this shared notebook.

All in all, a great experience! I’m going to do this whenever I go anywhere interesting from now on.

And now for something completely different…

While on my food cataloging spree, I realized this process would also work well for those (clearly not me on this trip) that are keeping tabs on what they eat for dietary reasons. Just make a few small changes to the procedure:

• Photograph only the portion you eat (some of my pictures are of communal-sized dishes, which I shared with several people).
• Add a known-size object (like a business card; yours or the restaurant’s) to each shot for scale.
• Add any calorie or nutritional info as text.

And voila, now you have an always-accessible dietary log.

Food Month posts

• Welcome to Food Month
• Cooking up memories: Digitizing a prized family recipe book into Evernote
• 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
  

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
  

If you’re anything like me, then food-related thoughts enter your mind with embarrassing frequency. From recipes to restaurant reviews to gadgets to cookbooks, it seems there’s always something worth throwing into Evernote for later. Without exaggeration, Evernote is the greatest food companion I’ve ever had (sorry friends and family). As it turns out, I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Welcome to Food Month

And so begins Evernote’s Food Month, our exploration of all the many ways gastronomy and Evernote intersect. Throughout October, we will bring you user stories, videos, tips, community projects, giveaways, and tons of other great stuff all around the topic of food and Evernote.

Let’s get cooking!

We’re really excited about our first Food Month activity: seasonal recipe cooking class. We’ve enlisted the help of Laurine Wickett, chef and owner of Left Coast Catering (and Top Chef contestant) to use Evernote to put a new twist on your favorite seasonal recipes.

UPDATE: The video is up! Thanks Kanton for the recipe suggestion.

How it works

Leave a comment on this post telling us your favorite fall main and side dishes. You can either give us the name of the dish, a personal recipe, a favorite one, or link to a recipe on the web. If you provide a recipe, make sure to always give appropriate attribution.

Later in the month, Laurine will use Evernote to prepare her favorites from among the submitted dishes for a special video segment.

Lots more to come

Stay tuned for tons of great ideas on how to use Evernote to turn your notable world into an edible one.

Food Month posts

• Cooking up memories: Digitizing a prized family recipe book into Evernote
• 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