How to index recipes from my cookbook collection?

[Anonymous]

I cook most meals from scratch and have around 40 cookbooks. I'd like some way of indexing the recipes so that I don't have to look in my cookbooks when choosing what to cook. In an ideal world, I'd have some kind of database where I could enter the ingredients that I have on hand, and the database would give me a recipe from my collection that I could cook. Of course, this is not an ideal world, but there must be some good way of indexing recipes that I'm not aware of. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Anonymous]

I find that I only use a handful of recipes from each the dozen cookbooks that I have. I copied those and put them in an accordian folder with subfolders for easier use (eg, folders for dessert, seafood, chicken, etc). Over time I find myself rewriting them with my tweaks into similar folders on my computer.

[Anonymous]

I also just copy the ones I like, laminate them, and put them in a 3-ring binder. When it comes down to it, I only use a binder's worth. I keep some of the cookbooks and look through from time to time, but I now avoid buying new ones (I get them from the library).

If you are up to it, type the recipes into Excel and then add several columns with info that you feel is important. Then you can sort by column. I'd suggest:

Meat: Beef, chicken, pork, veggie,
Ethnic: Italian, Mexican - whatever else you have
Type: Soup, Casserole, crockpot, whatever
Time: Quick, Moderate, Long