Create your Own Computer Cookbook
By Monica Resinger
I’ve always loved saving and trying new recipes from magazines and books.
When we got Internet services, this opened up a whole new recipe world. I
found e-mail lists where people share recipes, ezines that have recipes
published and I do searches on the Internet for specific recipes when I need
them. Obviously, I needed a way to save these recipes.
There are many ways of saving recipes, but I’d like to tell you my way
because it is quick, organized, easy and you don’t need a recipe program to
do it. I have found it hard to save recipes from the Internet into recipe
programs because they require you to type in each separate ingredient into
the program’s recipe format. This is too time-consuming especially when
you’re scanning 50 recipes.
What you need to save recipes my way is a word processing program such as
‘Wordpad’, ‘Notepad’ or ‘Microsoft Works’. Most new computers come with a
word processing program already installed on it, so if you have a fairly new
computer, you probably have a word processing program too. I’m using Windows
operating system. Here’s a step-by-step process of making your own computer
cookbook.
1. The first thing you will want to do is make a new folder somewhere in
your computer such as in ‘My Documents’ called ‘Recipes’, or whatever you
want to name your cookbook. You can create a new folder by selecting ‘New’
under ‘File’, then select ‘Folder‘. A new folder will show up and the
computer will prompt you to name it.
2. Open a new document in the word processing program.
3. Highlight the recipe you want to save by left clicking your mouse,
holding it down and dragging the cursor over the entire recipe you want to
save. This should show black highlight over white text when you’re finished.
4. Right click any part of the text you highlighted. An options box should
pop up and you want to select ‘copy‘. Now you have copied the text onto the
clipboard of your computer.
5. Go back to the blank word processing document and right click your mouse
in it. From the options box, select ‘paste’. This will paste your recipe
into the document.
5. Save your recipe by clicking ‘save’ in the word processing document.
Double click the ‘Recipe’ folder you created in step 1 to go into this
folder. Now you will want to make a new folder for this type of recipe.
Click the ‘New Folder’ icon at the top of the ‘save‘ box. The new folder
will pop up in the save box where you can give it a name. If your recipe is
a spaghetti recipe for example, you can make the new folder a ‘ground beef’,
’Italian’ or ‘main dish’ folder. After you have named the new folder,
double click it so you will be saving the new recipe inside of it. Now name
the recipe accordingly and click ‘save‘.
Follow this simple procedure for all your Internet recipes and soon you will
have your very own computer cookbook.
I find it very handy and I can find recipes easily. If there is one I want
to try, I print it out. Since it is in a word processing program, you can
change the font or the colors to jazz it up. I hope this helps you with your
recipe collecting.
© Monica Resinger, 2000
About the author
Monica Resinger is editor/founder of the FREE, fun and interactive
newsletters Creative Home, Creative Gardening and Creative Home
Money. If you're interested in decorating, organizing, crafts, gardening,
cleaning, cooking, being frugal or working at home, then one or all of
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