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, a whole new recipe world opened up! 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.
I found a quick, organized and easy solution, and you don’t need
a recipe program to do it. I have found it time consuming 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 lots of 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 need to select ‘copy‘ from it. 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 organized computer cookbook. You can take this
a step further and type in your recipes to try or favorite recipes from
cookbooks or magazines; this will save space and money by eliminating the need
for cookbooks or recipe storage systems.
Monica Resinger is the creator of 'Homemaker's Journal E-Publications' where you
will find many fun and informative home and garden related e-books, tip sheets
and how to sign up for her FREE home and garden newsletter! Click here to visit:
http://homemakersjournal.com/