How To Organize Your Recipes: Cook’n Recipe Organizer

If there is one question that I get asked a lot it's how I organize my recipes.  My response is usually to simply laugh because up until about a month ago, my recipe “organization” was a joke!  I had three binds packed with recipes from magazines, the newspaper, the internet and anywhere else I happened to find inspiration.  There was no rhyme or reason, nothing was really even attached to the binders. I just stuffed papers in and shut the binder. I'd spent so much time searching for recipes — it was ludicrous.

So a month ago I decided that my best bet was to go digital. I went through every single last recipe I had on paper, found it on the internet (most magazines put the recipes on-line now) and pinned everything to my Pinterest boards.  I kept a few recipes that my husband cooks and organized them for him in to one binder.   I'm OK with this system but it makes me a little nervous.  Sometimes pins disappear on Pintrest and what if the whole thing shuts down for some reason… then what? I really wanted somewhere a tad safer to keep my recipes.

Enter the creators of Cook'n Recipe Organizer software who asked if I'd like to review their product.  Hello?! YES, PLEASE!  I haven't spent as much time on the software as I'd like (just spent a week in the hospital so I'm still a little fuzzy around the edges), but I love this software! Finally, a place where I can put recipes for safe keeping and it stores right on my very own hard drive.

What I love the most aboutCook'n is that the software has a search engine built right in to it so I can search for a recipe and then “capture” it and put in a cookbook I create.  The other day I saw a recipe for Coca Cola Cake on the Serious Eats website.  I searched on Cook'n for the recipe name followed by the website name and there it was! I hit the “capture” button, put it in a cookbook I'd created called “Recipes to Try”  (nice picture and all!)and I was done.  You can change the serving size, swap out ingredients or even create a menu and shopping list based on recipes you choose.

The only thing I didn't like about Cook'n is that at the moment it only works with certain websites (although all the big ones are included) so I couldn't put the recipes on my blog in to a cookbook.

What about the old family recipes you have around that aren't on-line? No problem! You can manually input any recipe you want.  There is also a print feature which would be great for making family cookbooks or to hand out recipes to friends.

Any software that allows me to find recipes on-line, enter my own recipes, create shopping lists AND menu plans has my vote!

The creators of Cook'n have generously offered to giveaway one free copy to a reader! The software will be a part of a fabulous Mother's Day giveaway starting on May 1st! 

 

Don't want to wait or need a gift for Mom before that? How about a code for 50% off Cook'n! 

Just enter “mb-gabel” at checkout!