I love collecting and trying new recipes. After years of adding to my collection, the sheer mass of recipes just grew too big. They were taking up a whole long drawer in my china cabinet. Everything was nicely organized by new and tried and true, and then by category from there. Still, it took an eternity to sort through to find my favorite soup recipe or the cake that I make for my daughter’s birthday every year. And if I just wanted to find recipes using specific ingredients or put together a themed dinner? Forget it.
After waiting and wishing for the perfect recipe app to come along, I finally found Paprika several years ago. Add Pinterest, and I have a dream duo that supports and organizes my recipe collecting habit that is also easy-to-use and portable. Now, when I PCS with my stuff in boxes and I’m without internet for an indefinite amount of time, I can still have my recipes with me on my iPad.
Paprika
Paprika is a recipe manager for iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows, Kindle Fire, Nook Color and Android.
When you find recipes online, you can import them into Paprika without retyping your entire recipe. If you have clippings from magazines, many show up online. I’ve even had old clippings from my husband’s grandmother pop up in a Google search. You can also manually enter recipes that can’t be found online. Either way, you have the capability of attaching your own photos, editing, and adding notes to any recipe.
You can tag each recipe with as many categories as you want and you get to pick the categories you use. I like to categorize mine by course (main dishes, salads, etc.) and by type of cuisine (Italian, Indian, etc.). Leslie likes to categorize her recipes by season. When you’re searching for a recipe you can search by name, source, or ingredient, or you can drill down on a category. So, if I wanted to find my daughter’s birthday cake recipe, I could either search for Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake or simply click on my Desserts – Cake category.
Paprika also includes a meal planner, shopping list, a scaling calculator, and in-recipe timers to make the planning, shopping, and cooking process easy. I use Paprika to make my weekly meal plans, but it also comes in handy for special occasions. It’s usually my job to plan holiday meals for my family, so I plan everything on Paprika, and then email recipes to my parents directly from the app.
Since my collection was so big, it’s taking me awhile to get everything entered. I’m starting with my tried and true recipes first. Leslie, however, was able to input all of her recipes in a weekend.
Are you on Pinterest yet? If not, you should be. It’s full of inspiration, particularly for food. Check out InDependent’s boards for inspiration or do a search for a term that fits your lifestyle like vegan, Paleo, clean eating, or gluten free. My personal board has over 2,000 pins for food alone. Not all of the recipes are healthy, but a good number of them are, so feel free to follow me as well.
Instead of entering all of the recipes that I’m interested into Paprika, I now pin them first. If they’re keepers, I put them into Paprika. It’s just faster that way.
When I plan my menus, I make a list of my fresh produce or other ingredients that I need to use up and look for recipes containing those ingredients in Paprika first. If nothing pops up, I hit my Pinterest boards to see what has caught my eye lately.
Dinner is always an adventure in my house! With Paprika and Pinterest I’m never short on inspiration or organization.
Do you like to try new recipes or do you prefer tried and true?
