Please welcome guest blogger, Keri from Bread of Angels to my blog today. I was blog hopping the other day and saw a post that Keri had written about meal planning and she happened to mention that she used Delicious to organize her recipes online.
I’ve used Delicious a bit here and there but not enough to explain to anyone else how to do it. Yet, since February is recipe month, I definitely thought it was something we should talk about. So I twittered Keri and begged asked her if she would please write a tutorial explaining how it all works. She was so kind to do this and she even used screen shots, how cool is that! Thank you so much Keri!
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Anyone have a messy mountain of recipes ripped out of magazines or printed off websites? Can you find the exact recipe you’re looking for in that pile, or quickly skim through all your soup or chicken recipes?
Here’s a handy way to make your personal cookbook paperless. I used delicious to create a customized, searchable online cookbook and eliminate that pile of paper. Delicious is a social bookmarking tool that stores your favorite sites online. You can see my online cookbook, and I’m going to show you how to set one up for yourself.
If you don’t already have a delicious account, you’ll need to register for one first. It’s also very helpful to have a delicious bookmark tool installed in your browser. Once that’s done, follow these steps to get started on a paperless cookbook.
Creating Your Delicious Cookbook
- Log into your delicious account. Click on the gray Bookmarks square at the top of the page. Look in the upper right corner and find the blue shaded box under the search bar. Click on the link that says ‘Tag Options’ and then click on the link that says ‘Manage tag bundles’.
- Click the green ‘Create’ button.
- Name your cookbook whatever you want in box number one, then type as many recipe keywords as you can think of in box number two.
- Enter anything you would want to search by, including ingredients (chocolate, fish), cuisines (Mexican, Asian), meals (dinner, breakfast), or other possibilities you use (meatless, slowcooker).
- Do not use commas; separate each keyword with a space only.
- If you have keywords you want to use that are more than one word, just smoosh the words together (teaparty).
- Once you have entered all the tags you can think of, click the green ‘Save’ button.
Adding Recipes to Your Cookbook
- Now that you have a system set up to organize your recipe bookmarks, let’s start adding recipes to your cookbook. Go to an online recipe you want to add to your online cookbook. Click your ‘bookmark on delicious’ button. (This will vary by the browser you are using, but should have been explained when you installed the browser tools in the first step.)
- The title of the webpage will be included (you can change this if you want to remember it by something else) and there is a line for tags. Enter as many of your tags as you think you might want to search for this recipe by. As you do this more often, your tags will appear below the ‘Tags’ line under ‘Recommended Tags’ and all you have to do is click on the ones you want to add. Click ‘Save’ when you are done.
- If you go to your delicious page, your new recipe bookmark will appear under your cookbook heading. Clicking on any of your tags will show you all the recipes you have added under that tag, making it easy to look up soup or cookie recipes.
Adding New Keywords to Your Cookbook
There is one other thing you need to know. Eventually you will tag a recipe with a keyword that’s not included in your tag bundle because you didn’t think of it when you first set this up. If this happens you’ll see those tags listed at the bottom under ‘Unbundled Tags’. To make sure any recipes you tag with the new keyword are included in your cookbook, you need to go back and add them to the tag bundle.
When this happens, all you have to do is go back to step one, but rather than creating a new bundle, click ‘Edit’ next to your cookbook. Add the unbundled tags that you want in your cookbook group and the recipes will automatically be moved into your online cookbook folders.
One More Thing
You can add other delicious users to your network so they can see your bookmarks and see the great recipes you’ve discovered as well. To do this, click on the gray People square at the top of the page and then look for the blue shaded box in the upper right.
Click on ‘Add a user to Network’. Enter the delicious username you want to add and then click ‘Add’. They will then appear under your Network and by clicking on their username you can see all of their bookmarks.
Leave a comment and let us know your delicious username so we can can add you to our networks and see your new cookbooks.
Ami says
Thanks so much for sharing this tutorial. I’ve been tagging recipes in Delicious but I’m pretty new to the whole thing and didn’t realize I could create a bundle my tags so all my recipes would be easily accessible. Awesome!
ter says
Wow, I have seen “add to delicious” under some posts before but I never knew what it was. I am going to have to check it out, it sounds like something that would benefit me.
Lyndsi says
This sounds great. I would love to have an organized recipe book online. I would use that for all my menu planning. Then I would just keep an alphabetized book of paper copies to be used only for when I am in the kitchen.
My fear is that what if a link gets deleted? Do you all worry about that too?
susieshomemade says
What a great idea!
seamaiden says
This was a great tutorial. I used Delicious previously but got out of the habit- I’ve been using Stumble, which I like, but find it a little difficult to organize the pages. This seems like just the ticket. I will be adding my favorite stumble recipes to delicious so I can organize them better. My username is Seamaiden399, and I’d love to be included in your list.
-Sea
Siri says
So, this post started out talking about a mountain of recipes that were torn out of magazines and printed off websites. So, what do we do with those? Using delicious sounds great for the future – but how do I get the old books of printed recipes added? Is there a place to store stuff (I don’t have a blog-gasp)? I’m up for suggestions. Thanks for the tips!
Berit says
This is a GREAT post. Thanks a bunch! I’ve never used this before, but I just set up my account. My username is BeritLem. I’ve added a few recipes, but none I’ve personally tried (although a couple are from this site 🙂 ).
Berit says
Sorry for the double post – forgot to respond to Lyndsi. Yes, I have worried about that too (links getting deleted). Only thing I can think of is to either keep a backup copy printed out or on your home computer in case that happens. Then at least you still have the recipe – even if it is no longer accessible online.
ter says
I set up my account too but I don’t quite get it yet…. hopefully soon I will figure it out. 😉 Though I am a bit confused, I thought it was for recipes but some of the other tags sound like it’s for more than recipes??
Berit says
Ter – Yes, I think you can tag and organize whatever sites online you want to. Recipes, among other things. It’s a great way to set up a cookbook of recipes. But it appears people are using it to organize their bookmarks of other favorite sites as well. Once you have created your site, and set up your account and the tools mentioned in the article above, then you basically search the net, find a recipe (or website) you like, and you click “add to delicious” or “save to delicious” or however it is in your browser. Then give it the tags you want. And it saves to your favorites in your Delicious account. I guess it’s another way of organizing your bookmarks, instead of just bookmarking a page in your browser – this way you can save it online – and access it from any computer.
Keri says
Glad you found this useful!
@ter – yes, you can bookmark anything and organize it on delicious. I keep recipes organized this way, but I also keep track of sewing and craft patterns, homeschooling ideas, business ideas, etc. It’s just an all around handy way to organize links you find.
@Lyndsi – I guess I’ve never thought about links getting deleted, but I imagine if there were recipes I’d cry if I lost them, I print them or store a copy on my computer.
Michelle says
This is absolute genius!!! Thanks for sharing. I love delicious and didn’t know about bundles!
Raelene says
Neat! I just joined. Thank you for the tutorial Keri.
My username is FlyMomRae
Christine says
Thanks! This was a great tutorial! I was having trouble sorting documents in google docs, and I think this will be a great way to keep my recipes. My delicious username is ramavich. join me! 🙂
The Masked Mommy says
I think this looks great, but there’s something to be said about having a cookbook in your kitchen. I don’t want to be running back and forth from the computer, and if I have to print them anyway I may as well just make a book to keep loose papers from flying around. I guess it would be good for bookmarking them until you decided what to print.
Lorri says
Thanks for the tutorial. These social websites always seem crazy to me until someone shows me exactly how to do it. Easy! Thanks again!
Anya says
What a wonderful post! Inspired me to organize all those recipe links I’ve had floating around!!
$5 Dinner Mom says
I so don’t get delicious! But this was really helpful! One of these days I’ll get in there and figure it out!!!
🙂 Erin
Rita says
This sounds great, but I’m old schooled and am a bit anxious about doing a recipe book all online. What if something happens and I no longer have a computer or online access? Eek! Interesting, though, and I’m going to check this out. Who knows?
Saver Queen says
This is awesome!
The Masked Mommy – I love hard copy cookbooks too, but I also use the computer for recipes a lot. I have a laptop so I just prop it up near the counter and it’s just as easy as referencing a cookbook.
Another thing I do is cut out the recipes from magazines and add them to a big binder. That way I can recycle the old magazines and get rid of clutter while keeping the good parts. The binder is easy to reference too.
Betty says
What’s that old saying “The hurrier I go, the farther behind I become!” You all are working on organizing your recipes and I’m still working on January’s project. Oh well, I’ll keep on plugging along with what I’m doing and some day I’ll get “round to it!” Sometimes Life just gets in the way and things don’t go as planned!
nicole says
I would love a way to organize all of my recipes. I use the internet mostly (trying to keep the clutter at bay in the house) for my menu planning and I’m always up for trying something new on my family (we have a good stock of frozen pizza if something goes amis!)
Rachel says
Thank you for explaining this………this is great. I’m just starting out but I’ll become addicted soon I can tell.
My user name is livinglighthouse
Karen Brown Letarte says
Hi, Laura– Thanks so much for having Keri share her fabulous tips with us! I’ve been having a blast today organizing my online cookbook. Del.ici.ous is a fantastic tool, and I’m so glad to have learned about it!
Cheers!
-K 🙂
Joanne says
I love your blog. I don’t anyone can ever get enough organization! You come up with the GREATEST ideas!
BTW- I wanted to ask you to pray for the Octuplets and their family. They are in need as ANY family would be, and I feel the media buzz has been very detrimental to them receiving the assistance they need. Keep them in your prayers, and if you feel moved, help them in whatever way you feel compelled. If you will leave me a comment on my blog, I am trying to coordinate efforts to get resources and supplies to them. Thanks!!!
Jude says
I would like to second the question asked by @Siri. Is there any way to organize my paper recipes into this same tagging system? I have thought of a couple of ideas, and would be open to any feedback.
1) I perhaps could scan and publish favorite recipes to an online blog, then giving each a unique URL for tracking in Delicious.
2) If not #1, perhaps the same URL creation could be accomplished through some Google program – is there such?
3) I could use another tool like Diigo or Evernote to capture photos of recipes, but then I would need to be able to tag them in a system congruous with Delicious.
Thanks for any recommendations.
Jenny says
I love using delicious! Still working to organize it.
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