Evolve Recipes in Evernote

06 Jan 2017

I’ve never seen my grandma use a recipe. I’ve never seen her use a timer. I’ve never seen her ask for advice on how to improve a dish. And most importantly — given all this — I’ve never tasted one of her creations that was off.

But we all can’t be my grandma. Whereas my grandma makes cooking look like an art, conjuring divine inspiration and direction from thin air, I take a more scientific approach to cooking. Things are measured carefully and precisely, timers are used all the time, and recipes are annotated to remove any and all ambiguity.

So that’s why I don’t print out recipes or keep a list of bookmarked recipes; I use the Evernote Web Clipper to clip recipes directly into Evernote. Then when I use those recipes, I add observations (e.g. different flour brands affect the density of bread), critical reminders (e.g. don’t forget to set the oven temperature down), tweaks (e.g. add a little more flour to get less sticky dough), and fun facts (e.g. which maple syrup Canadians prefer). Here are some examples:

• Pão de queijo (Brazilian cheesy bread)
• Whole wheat bread for a bread machine
• Stuffed shells

This method lets each recipe evolve every time I use it. I can also easily share them with others as seen above. Ultimately, I aim to be about 10% as good as my grandma which is a stretch goal to be honest.