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iPad in the Kitchen: Evernote, Goodreader or other?

C

ChgoMike

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 10, 2010
13
0
I cook a lot and read a lot of food blogs. When I see an interesting article or recipe while using my Macbook, I print to PDF and then save into variously catagorized and nested folders. i.e., "indian food," "food writing," "pizza," etc.

Now I want to use the iPad to hold this information in a manner as organized as my Macbook. What I've been doing to this point is printing into Evernote. And I really like Evernote, but it doesn't have nested folders. (boo! hiss!) When I'm browsing food blogs on the iPad, I have to copy and paste into Evernote, since I can't print directly into PDF form on the iPad. (boo! hiss!) So far, this has been working just okay....

Is there a better method/application that I should be using for well organized document management? I want to be able to import information into the application when browsing either on the iPad or laptop/desktop. Goodreader? Instapaper? Other...?

Thanks for any suggestions.

- Mike
 
I'm interested in this too. I have been saving recipes in Evernote and have an easel to hold the iPad in the kitchen while cooking. I know I need to get my recipes more organized somehow.
 
You can use google docs to organize and cloud store your documents. Goodreader can access them and download them. You can create folders in goodreader to.
 
This is probably not what you were looking for but I was thinking of getting MacGourmet to organize my recipes for my iPad. It organizes them on your main computer and then syncs them all to your iphone/ipad etc.
 
I love MacGourmet for OSX and my iPhone, but to the best of my knowledge there is no iPad/universal app yet. You can blow up the iPhone app on the iPad, but it doesn't detect orientation. So usability is there, although somewhat limited.

MacGourmet is super cool due to its ability (in the OSX/desktop app) to automagically snarf recipes directly from foodtv, allrecipes, epicurious and other cooking sites. If they do release an iPad app this'll be an essential app for cooks.

I believe the BigOven app also lets you store your own recipes, and is actually ipad-specific.
 
I keep all of my recipes in a Bento DB I setup on my Mac mini. Filemaker (developer of Bento) has an iPhone version that syncs with it and that way I always have my favorite recipes with me when I am at the grocery store and am trying to decide what to make. :cool:

I was quite excited when they came out with their iPad version but sadly I cannot as yet recommend it. It syncs fine and all of that but their text areas cannot expand beyond about 5 or 6 lines of text. So if you have a recipe displayed and you only show the title, ingredients list, and instructions showing you have probably 2 small text windows that you will have to scroll through and about half of the iPad screen will be empty!

Maybe they will fix this at some point... :(
 
Have you tried tags in Evernote? According to their blog they are working on nested folders. I keep all my recipes in a folder then tagged by category and major ingredient. Saved searches may work for you as well since those searches will sync back to the iPad.

For now Goodreader will give you nested folders and PDF download on your iPad. However you lose the ability to easily sync with the cloud like you can from Evernote. The way iTunes handles moving files in and out of the ipad is horrible.
 
Try Bento :D

I was looking for something to organize recipies and it is super duper nice to customize it like you want :apple:
 
NinjaMonkey said:
Have you tried tags in Evernote? According to their blog they are working on nested folders. I keep all my recipes in a folder then tagged by category and major ingredient. Saved searches may work for you as well since those searches will sync back to the iPad.
Click to expand...

I think this may be the way to go. As nice as Bento and MacGourmet look, I was hoping not to get into a propietary format. I just want .docs, .txts, and .pdfs. MacGourmet looks most promising, though. I'm really curious to see what their iPad application looks like.
 
What I use

I use RecipeCraft for this: http://www.recipecraft.com

It aims to be exactly this sort of tool for organizing all of your recipes. It gives you automatic nutrition information, easy meal planning and automatic shopping lists too.

Disclosure: I am a principal at RecipeCraft. I welcome your feedback if you find the service useful or if there's anything that would make it more useful to you on the iPad!

Cheers,
Brian
 
I too would stick with Evernote and start using tags.

Create a notebook in Evernote called Recipes and put all your recipes there, but tag them so you can easily find them according to your usual criteria. For example, you could tag a recipe for blueberry pancakes you got from Gordon Ramsey with #breakfast #pancakes and #Ramsey. Searching on any three (or any combination of three) will find it instantly. You can't do that with Dropbox, Goodreader, and most of the other doc management aps. In fact, I would suspect that for managing recipes what you *don't* want is nested folders. Would you put the pancake recipe in the breakfast folder, the pancake one, or the Gordon Ramsey one? Tags, which do take some getting used to, overcome this dilemma.

Other nice features with Evernote:

If you get an email with a recipe in it, you can just forward that email to your Evernote email (which you can keep in your contacts) and it'll go directly into Evernote. You can even edit the subject line to tell it what notebook to put it in, and what tags to give it. The subject line might be: Tasty blueberry pancakes @recipes #breakfast #pancakes #Ramsey. Of course, you can also email PDFs, docs, pictures, etc, to your Evernote.

Evernote's web clipper allows you to easily clip an entire web page, a selection of the webpage, or a screenshot of any piece of the webpage, directly into Evernote. I use this feature a lot for recipes which I find online. The web clipper feature, however, is a bit clumsy on the iPad and iPhone. It requires a bit of a hack to get setup, but I suspect that'll change.
 
Apologies for hijacking this thread, but can anyone recommend some good cooking/recipe apps for the iPad? I already have epicurious but wanted some others. Thanks!
 
ihazapple said:
Thanks ... I just found the iPad info for Macgourmet on the blog http://macgourmet.com/blog/. I guess the developer is planning a new iPad app. I think this sells me on the software for my MacBook!
Click to expand...

I think we'll be waiting a long time for a iPad specific version of MacGourmet. I emailed the developer and he hasn't started working on the app yet. He said he is working on the next MacGourmet (OS X version) upgrade and after that he will start on the iPad version
 
Have you tried YUM ?

I have been using YUM for several months on my iMac and iPhone. The iPhone version is wonderful as you have your recipes, ingredients with you (in a shopping list if you choose) when you go shipping. I emailed the developer and he will be working on a Yum version after the next update v 4.0 is released.
 
Roy Hobbs said:
I think we'll be waiting a long time for a iPad specific version of MacGourmet. I emailed the developer and he hasn't started working on the app yet. He said he is working on the next MacGourmet (OS X version) upgrade and after that he will start on the iPad version
Click to expand...

That's...crazy. Given that there's still no good app in this category and the guy obviously already knows how to make iPhone apps, making the iPad version would be like a license to print money. iPad use in the kitchen has come up many, many times.

(We've all already seen every youtube you're thinking of posting right now, so just don't.)
 
gwynne said:
That's...crazy. Given that there's still no good app in this category and the guy obviously already knows how to make iPhone apps, making the iPad version would be like a license to print money. iPad use in the kitchen has come up many, many times.

(We've all already seen every youtube you're thinking of posting right now, so just don't.)
Click to expand...

For sure.

I also hope that very nice fella that makes yummy soup on the mac (probably the best recipe app on the mac) has the time and resources to bring it to the ipad too, and soon. Yummy soup (lol, and I am not affiliated to the developer) is just such a great piece of software, macgourmet which I also own might have more bells and whistles but to me it's inferior.
 
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