[DRoszak]

Can anyone recommend any Recipe Database Software. I have tons 'o cookbooks, loose recipes, scraps of paper, ect laying around. If I do one thing before I die it will be to organize my recipes and possibly create cookbooks for my 2 daughters from them.
I'd like to hear some reviews from those of you who have used them!!
Help!! I'm drowning in recipes!

[Rainey]

I have been keeping my recipes in a database for years and I highly recommend the practice. This thread has the responses I got when I brought up this subject some time ago: http://chocolateandzucchini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=466&highlight=database

Short version: for me, on a Mac, MacGourmet has been super. PC users have many more options and I hope there's helpful info there about them.

When you chose a program, check with the manufacturer. Many have helps for importing. I bit the bullet and did my imports by hand but, even so, the versatility of the database makes it well-worth the set-up work. Epicurious is a great online resource. You can copy in recipes from Gourmet and Bon Appétit from the current issues and going back a decade and more. And often there are photos you can import to your DB as well. Other useful online sites are King Arthur Flour (if you're a baker), Sunset magazine, food sections of major newspapers and, of course, C&Z. I'm sure you'll find others.

Finding the same or a similar recipe online can help eliminate a lot of typing and, in my case, a lot of unfortunate typos that are much harder to spot in a recipe than they are in prose.
_________________
God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. -- Garrison Keillor

[Rainey]

PS: Sometimes when I want to get a recipe in my database and I'm gonna hafta type it out, I simply do it here. Here, I can comparatively quickly type it out into a text screen and then I can copy it whole into the Directions/Method field of my database. Later, I clean it up into the proper fields and add keywords so that I can scale it up/down, search on keywords or create shopping lists from it. But the important thing is I got a recipe into my database before I moved on and forgot something important or forgot about it altogether.
_________________
God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. -- Garrison Keillor

[DRoszak]

Thanks Rainey!! Very helpful!!
Looking to get a program with the most options to make this project the easiest and most useful to me when I'm done (this should take me into my golden years..Hee hee!)