Google Notebook For Tracking Online Recipes

I don’t have a recipe to share with you today.  Sorry…life has been insane.  There was a birth in the family, jobs are nuts…we’ve been cooking and eating but nothing interesting or new.  I’m hoping to rectify that this weekend.

However, I thought I would share a little tip that I have found quite useful.  If you’re like me and read a lot of food blogs every day, you probably find an awful lot of recipes that make you go “mmm, I should try that.”  Now you could bookmark the permalink for the recipe.  You could print off a copy that you’ll probably lose.  Or you can take advantage of the beauty of Google Notebook.

I am in love with all things Google.  I’ve got Gmail and so many tools from Google Labs it’s not even funny.  Google Notebook has a nifty little plugin that integrates with your browser (Firefox, for IE you’ll have to google it).  This plugin gives new functionality to allow you to capture or “note” anything from just about anywhere.  Oh, and it’s totally free.  Here are the FAQs.

So when I come across a recipe that I want to try out, I just right click on the title (or I can select the entire thing and right click), pick “Note This (Google Notebook)” and it automatically places it into my notebook (which is tied to my Google Account).  I then have the option of leaving it where it landed or moving it to a self-created subsection.  For my Recipe Notebook, I’ve got all the classic cookbook divisions of appetizers, sides, etc., plus I’ve further broken things down by type of meat, vegetable, pizza, pasta, etc.  Then within each “note”, I have the option to make my OWN notes about, say, any changes I make to the recipe or whatever.

The hard part is remembering to scroll through there to look when I’m trying to find inspiration for dinner!  I’ve got dozens of recipes that I still haven’t tried.  So that’s the new plan–to start actually cooking the recipes I’ve stuck in there–and share them with you.

In the meantime, I hope you find it a handy online tool.

2 thoughts on “Google Notebook For Tracking Online Recipes

  1. Google Notebook would, indeed, have been the perfect tool for collecting and sifting recipes on the web, as it would for many other tasks involving researching online data. However, Google, in their infinite, inscrutable wisdom, has announced that it is no longer developing Notebook and will not be accepting new users. So far, I have not been able to find a replacement with the same functionality.

    http://googlenotebookblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/stopping-development-on-google-notebook.html

  2. Wow, I really did not know that (as I’ve been using Google Notebook for quite some time). That surprises me. I CAN, however, point you in the direction of a few other things that will work in a similar way (they just may not have the nifty integrated browser plugin).

    ZoHo (www.zoho.com) also has a notebook tool (which DOES apparently have a Firefox plugin, now that I look). There is also the capability of importing an existing Google Notebook if you wish. It actually has considerably more functionality than the original Google Notebook, so I might try that myself.

    Another possibility is Evernote (www.evernote.com), which is actually geared more toward images and such than text, but still has that same base functionality of allowing you to clip stuff and keep it all in one place.

    A further google search led me to Ubernote (www.ubernote.com), which appears to also have a toolbar available for your browser and much of the same functionality as both Evernote and Zoho Notebook.

    And you could always use a wiki to keep and organize your online recipe content. There are scads of free wiki hosting sites available with premade templates. It’s more work on the front end, but might be a bit more user friendly on the back end.

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