I recently received an e-mail asking me to look at and post about a recipe website, no strings attached. Since I didn't have a recipe for today, why not?
So I'm a cookbook addict and that's my blogging schtick. I try not to veer from my cookbooks when choosing recipes to blog about here but planning a menu from my cookbook collection is very time consuming and inefficient. It's definitely a labor of love and I know that I'm probably in the minority by doing it that way. Most people who are planning menus either pull from their repertoire or they turn to the internet. Honestly, I can't blame them. It's a heck of a lot easier.
There are some great recipe sites out there and I've just been introduced to another one, myrecipes.com. Although this site is new to me, the cookbooks that many their recipes come from include several that I've been cooking from over the past few years so I have confidence in them.
There are so many ways to search for recipes on myrecipes.com. You can search by ingredient, by course, by occasion, by region, by dietary consideration (gluten-free, low cholesterol, etc) by appliance, even by sponsor. You can even exclude ingredients such as nuts which I think is great since we avoid nuts due to allergies. I love this dinner countdown timer where you input how much time you have to make dinner and it tells you what you have time to make. If only my cookbook collection had a search function like myrecipes.com!
They have recipes entertaining, budget recipes and healthy recipes. There's something for everyone.
Just as a test I went in and tentatively planned a week's menu (4 entrees) in less than 20 minutes, even with several distractions. It often takes me longer than that to find one recipe in my cookbooks.
You can take recipes from your own collection or from other sites and save them on myrecipes.com along with recipes that are already on the site. You can organize the recipes any way you like. You can add notes to recipes. You can also save menus and make shopping lists. This is going to be great when I'm planning cookouts, parties and holiday baking.
It's not just recipes, there are how-to videos and reviews (of food products and other food-related items).
Hey, it's free and it may be helpful to some of you so I just thought I'd share that site with you in case you haven't already discovered it on your own. I did not get paid or compensated to post about this. I've never made any money off of this blog - never even tried. I recently read that the average blogger makes $6K a year off of their blogs. $6K a year!!?? I think by 'average' they probably mean that if you take the money that Dooce and Pioneer Woman make and divide it by the number of blogs out there, it comes to $6K/blog.
Question of a Day: Do you use myrecipes.com or a similar site to organize your online recipes? If not, how do you organize them? I was bookmarking them but since I use two computers, that's not efficient.
I'm going to take a good look at myrecipes.com. Right now I just organize recipes using my Google Reader. I mark each with a star, then tag them To Try, Beef, Chicken, etc. to sort them into folders.
ReplyDeleteBut of course, this only works for recipes I find on blogs or websites to which I've subscribed with Google Reader. (Which is more than I'll ever be able to make in a lifetime!)
I set up files in my yahoo email for recipes by catagory and whenever I find a recipe I like I email the link and cut-and-pasted copy of the recipe to myself, then move it to it's correct file. That way as long as I can access my yahoo email I can see the recipe from any computer. If I try the recipe and don't like it, then I just delete the email.
ReplyDeleteSounds organized, but I must admit I also have a HUGE stack of printed out recipes sitting on top of my fridge and a ton of cookbooks and cooking magazines that are driving my husband crazy!
I use Delicious.com to save my recipes. Since it is on the internet, you could use it on multiple computers. Plus, you can tag recipes and save them in your own useful categories.
ReplyDeleteI use the My Recipe Box feature at TasteofHome.com
ReplyDeleteI am going to check out my recipes too.
Myrecipes.com is the recipe box/search engine for Cooking Light and their sister publications.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't too bad, but did you know that hashbrowns is 2 words? Creates a search problem.
Nice review.
I also get tons of recipes from allrecipes but the comments kill me - people will "review" a recipe by saying, "I gave it 5 stars, but with many changes" - not the same recipe then, right?
ReplyDeleteI have the binder of recipes I've printed off the internet like a lot of people do, plus I have a Yahoo Bookmarks file labeled "cooking" that I keep links to recipes in.
I don't get that many from the internet. I use my recipe books and foodie mags mostly. When I do see something I like on the net I tend to make it that night or save the site to my favourites to include in the next weeks menu. It's rare that I look thru food sites for something specific (though it does happen).
ReplyDelete