Monday On My Mind
Let’s got for week two of what’s on my Mind, hmmm?
I am having an issue commenting on blogs that use wordpress. See, in order to comment I have to login. And, well, I have a very complex wordpress password. It’s not that I can’t remember it because I have it. It’s more that I don’t want to be logging in to wordpress all over the internets that way. Which is all just a way of me saying, if you use wordpress and I’m not commenting . . . don’t think I’m not reading. I am.
I have this habit of pinning lots of recipes I want to try on Pinterest. I have several boards for recipes, from Friday Night Snacks to All Apps All the Time to Eat Your Veggies. But what tends to happen is that I save a recipe and then . . . I forget about it . . . or I remember about it but I can’t remember where I saved it. Yeah. It’s a mess. So I’m wondering. How do you track new recipes you want to try? I’m experimenting with EverNote and hoping I might use that to remind myself of the things I want to cook but it’s not a perfect solution and I’m hoping you might have one.
Last week Gretchen and Elizabeth discussed pandemic regret on the Happier Podcast. They went on for a bit about all the things we should be doing and how we’re going to regret not doing them when this is all over. You know what I say to that? Bullshit. Because this is a lot to handle. Masks and PPE, hand washing and shortages of things we never anticipated (I’m still waiting on the freezer we ordered in May when ours died) plus figuring out working from home and remote learning. So if you aren’t cleaning out your closets or baking the perfect sourdough loaf or learning Spanish . . . it’s OKAY. Really. What you are doing every day to absorb these changes and incorporate them into your life is enough. YOU are enough.
And that’s what’s on my mind this Monday.
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Ditto. I was saving all my recipes on a board and when I wantEd to access I would have to go to the board —which is completely separate from how I usually look for and use a recipe. In the digital age I started moving my good recipes to an electronic file system. Therefore in order to really utilize the Pinterest recipes I wanted they too needed to be in one master file. Now, I take the new recipe and immediately cut and paste and add it to my electronic file. My electronic file is set up and voilà now I have everything in one place! I can sort and print or view and it’s pretty easy now And sharing when someone asks for a recipe is so easy to just email and attach.
Oh, 100% YES to number 3… I mean really. Good grief…
And the recipe thing? Yeah… I do the same thing, it’s like a big old black hole! I will be interested to see how your evernote idea works.
I hear/see people express that pandemic regrets garbage and I tell them my only regret is that I can’t spend time with people who are precious to me. That trip to Italy that was to be in September? Nope. Learning Spanish? Nada. Cleaning all the things? Bwa-ha-ha-haa! Not seeing my parents who are in their 80’s? Damn straight, mad as hell! Not preparing meals at church for our oldest members who are largely shut-in? 100%.
Recipe management is… complicated. I use Pinterest for inspiration, but seldom an actual recipe to be tried. When I want to try a recipe, I poke around the web until I find a promising version. That gets saved to an electronic file labeled “To Be Tried”, which tells me I’ve decided on that one. Actually, sometimes I save two or three recipes to the same file because I want to incorporate parts of each of them in my version. I will print that out so I can make notes on it while cooking or at least very soon after. Then the modified recipe gets saved in my recipe files in Word in the appropriate category. If I make something that we instantly love, or I’ve refined to ‘our’ version, then it gets moved to my ‘keeper’ file folder. It sounds complicated, but I try recipes for us and for events I do so sometimes it takes a while to decide.
And apparently I had strong opinions this morning. Ha-ha-ha!
Ditto about wordpress. I don’t like logging in all over the internet either. I am reading, just not commenting.
I have played with a lot of options for saving recipes, but this is the one that works best for me. I have a folder on gmail, and I email links to recipes or cut and paste them and send them to myself to put in the folder. Then I can easily search that folder when I want to find a particular recipe, and if the recipe doesn’t work out for me, I eventually delete it. I also just update any changes I make on the emailed recipe to update it and send it to myself again. This may seem a strange way to do it, but it works well for me. And I can access it anywhere I can access gmail, which is anywhere there is internet.
I agree totally about feeling badly about this productivity issue during the pandemic. I have tried new things in order to distract myself, but this is not time for setting unrealistic goals and feeling guilty if you don’t meet them! I spent most of yesterday going to grocery stores, trying to find things that I needed that the initial store didn’t have, and it took up most of my day just finding them and then bringing them home to store them. Then it was time to cook dinner! I feel pretty good when I just get the necessary things done these days. Good post, Carole! I like hearing what’s on your mind.
A rousing yes to number 3! When everyday life is more difficult along with maintaining your mental health, nobody has to feel pandemic regret. I’m walking more, sewing masks out of necessity, and meditating every day, but the perfect loaf of bread and learning Spanish are not on my list.
My new recipe method probably won’t help you as it’s mostly old school. I don’t use Pinterest, so when I find a recipe I want to try I bookmark it. I have a folder on my laptop for “recipes to try” and when I actually try it, if it’s a keeper I write it on a recipe card and put it in my recipe box. Hope you find something that works for you!
As you know, I have many issues with Gretchen Rubin’s approach to life. She has some good things to say — but “happiness” does not (and should not) equate to “productiveness.” And especially now! Pandemic regret my ass. (Oops. Did I say that out loud????)
I use Evernote for my recipes. I am a huge Evernote fan, and it works for me. (Pinterest is fun, but I don’t find it particularly helpful as a recipe reference.) Let me know if you want more details on how I use Evernote. I also cook a lot of recipes from the New York Times, and they have a great app with a “recipe box” feature. Very handy!
I am pretty old school in my “recipe management.” I’m also not terribly organized in that department. I guess I haven’t been browsing & saving recipes for inspiration lately, as much as searching for recipes when I want to make something. One thing I’ve found handy is to have all of the PDFs from Plated saved in a Google Drive folder (many of those have become favorites & stand-bys), and I’ve been known to search/reference those from the middle of Aisle 7 at the grocery store.
I agree, we should not have regrets about what we did not accomplish during this pandemic. Most of us are doing the best we can and that is enough.
I still use a recipe book. When I find a recipe online, I will try it and if I like it I print it out and it goes in my book. But, usually I go to one of my Ina Garten cookbooks because her recipes never fail me!
What we should do during this strange year is erase the word “should” from our vocabulary! Do what feels good and right.
I have (or had, anyway) a tendency to print out recipes, usually at work, and bring them home, where they would promptly go on the “recipe shelf” (really just the shelf holding my cookbooks) and be forgotten, so I have no solution for your Pinterest problem, sadly.
As to your third note, frankly any day I survive without wanting to strangle a member of my family is a success!
I’ve thought about all the things I wanted to do during quarantine but it’s all just been too much so I just continue to read and knit.
As for recipes, I have a few boards on Pinterest but I really like the idea of saving them to a file, especially the ones I know I want to try now.
1. please let me know if my blog is one you need to log in to. (I have to type my name, email and website into many blogs – wordpress and typed – and some like yours make it easy by remembering me … others I just type into – but all of that is not a password)
2. I bookmark recipes in safari (and now you know you do not want to know my opinion!)
3. nothing new to add here. (sometimes I do wonder WHO is their audience?!)
aren’t you glad you shared?!
*typepad
Amen to #3. I’m old fashioned with recipes. When I see one I think sounds or looks good, I will print it out and put it in a folder on my book shelf in the office (where there are many cookbooks too). Once I try it and we like it, I write it on a recipe card and put it in one of my recipe boxes. I like thumbing through them (and I have my Mom’s recipe cards which is fun). Same thing with recipes from magazines – I’ll tear them out and put them in the folder. Once we try them they either get written onto a card or put in the trash!
Since I’ve been working full time during this pandemic I had to take actually take time off just to get the big projects completed. So no pandemic regret except I wished I’d checked in on my 94 year old neighbor more, not that she needed it, but just to do it. When I come across a recipe to try I either book mark it if or print it out and I have a file folder I keep them in and go through it every now and then. I haven’t been on Pinterest in ages.
I have trouble with WordPress too. Can’t comment at all from my phone and for some weird reason, it allows me to comment on only 2 people from my laptop. I don’t even have a login but it wants me to log in and I’m not going to create an account just to be able to leave comments.