I had a vision and have seen it through to completion. Canada wins Hockey Gold. I win a personal victory.

Go Canada! Go me!

It all began at my bridal shower. As a new bride, I would be moving to another country taking very little with me. Instead of gifts, I was offered love in the form of cookbooks and precious family recipes. They were a responsibility and a treasure. I took them in all earnest and with much joy.

Over the years as I’ve searched the net, poured over cookbooks and written out weekly menus, there have been many failures and burnt offerings from my kitchen. But there have also been aromas to draw you inside from all the way down the block. I didn’t want to lose any of those. I wanted to pass on my successes. I wanted to create a legacy.

But where to put them? I looked and searched for the best answer. I started my recipe blog called Mere Recipes but didn’t find enough time to keep up with those posts and – very surprisingly – ran into copyright issues with some chefs even when I was giving full credit and disclosure. So, I kept looking, sometimes despairing, finally rejoicing when I found Living Cookbook.

It’s a personal recipe archive, menu planner, will print cookbooks for you, everything. I don’t know what it doesn’t do. It’s still, after many months using it, surprising me. But most important of all to me, it allowed me the awesome power of capturing recipes from anywhere – friends, online, cookbooks, magazines – and putting them in ONE place.

The only snag was that it wasn’t portable. And I wanted it portable. Especially since Santa brought me an ipod Touch this year. I LOVE my touch! But that’s another post…

Again, I was in search of a solution. I found it in Evernote which – hurray! – does have an ipod app and would let me keep notes offline, meaning I can access them even when not in wifi. (Small warning: You have to pay for the premium service.) Would it be worth it? Could I get everything out of Living Cookbook and into Evernote? Yes, I could. LC let me export every recipe as an HTML file, and Evernote has this neat web clipper that allows me to clip any webpage and save it in a notebook.

Voila! Open recipe as HTML, clip, tag and save to Mere Recipes notebook. 230 notes later, I have a public and portable version of my favourite recipes from ten years of blood sweat and tears in the kitchen.

I share it with you today.

I will continue to post recipes here on the blog when inspiration strikes, but this notebook is my database. Everything is in there, posted or not. And it’s guaranteed to be kept up to date with any new gems that I find.

I’m giddy. Absolutely glowing.

Now I can plan menus when I’m bored and waiting in the dentist’s office. Well, unlikely, but I could… if I wanted! I can search them when I forget an ingredient while I’m shopping. If I want to change my menu, I can. I will never ever print another recipe. My ipod will always be in the kitchen with me, out of spill range of course. My children will know how to cook cornbread without relying on a box of pre-made mix. My grandchildren will know how to cook gumbo, two generations removed from Louisiana as well as know the name of their great-great grandfather who passed on the wisdom of it.

“Gather up the fragments that remain, lest they be lost.”

The Madonna House Community impressed me deeply with this lesson. I’ve never forgotten.

Father, nothing will be lost.

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