I created a cookbook when I was a teenager of all my mother's recipes. I re-typed each recipe individually so that the cookbook would print out on regular 8.5" x 11" paper, slide easily into a page protector, and fit inside a three-ring binder. Awesome idea, right? That way you don't get muddy flour caked all over your page, you can easily flip through the book to find exactly what you need, and because it's on my computer, I can easily add more!
The cookbook is fantastic. The problem I have is that I keep adding to it. For any normal person this wouldn't be a problem. But me? Of course I'm no where close to normal - I have to make things truly difficult. I have to have everything *just* right. I can't just print off a new recipe from its original owner's page and stick it into my binder. Why? Because the formatting is not consistent!
Everyone uses different fonts, different colors, different sizes.
Some use pictures, some don't.
Some have extra information that I could care less about, like nutritional information.
Some don't even have printer-friendly options because it just comes from a blog.
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So when I add a recipe, the format gets screwy and I spend more time fixing the format than I do adding the actual recipe. On top of that, I've decided to start adding pictures since I'm such a visual person.
This is where my current dilemma comes in. Beyond having uniform formatting, I need each recipe to be grouped together. Some pages may have two, three, maybe four recipes. Other pages might have just one that can fit. In order to make sure all formatting is correct, I have to manually scroll through every page and fix each recipe individually.
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| this is wrong. all wrong. |
The caption in purple reads "The new recipe should start here if the ENTIRE recipe doesn't fit on the last page."
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| *sigh of relief* much better. |
I want to create a type of form where all I do is type or copy + paste my shizz, add my picture if I have one, and be done. I cannot find a way to do this easily. I can just put each recipe on a new page (insert a page break after each entry) but that could be a lot of wasted space!
Does ANYONE know what I'm talking about and have any ideas on how to help?
Here is a different idea. I have a recipe blog. I keep it private because it is my online recipe box basically. If I see a recipe I would like to save and try later, I just copy and paste it as well as a picture so I remember what it looked like or if the picture is instructional to the recipe. I have labels so I can find a recipe easily and then I just pull it up when I am ready to cook/bake (the Ipad is nice for that in the kitchen) But I guess it doesn't help with the printing issue. So maybe not.
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