By Monica Resinger

There are many ways of saving recipes, but IÂ’d like to tell you my way because it is quick, organized, easy and you donÂ’t need a recipe program to do it. I have found it hard to save recipes from the Internet into recipe programs because they require you to type in each separate ingredient into the programÂ’s recipe format. This is too time-consuming especially when youÂ’re scanning 50 recipes.

What you need to save recipes my way is a word processing program such as ‘Wordpad’, ‘Notepad’ or ‘Microsoft Works’. Most new computers come with a word processing program already installed on it, so if you have a fairly new computer, you probably have a word processing program too. I’m using Windows operating system. Here’s a step-by-step process of making your own computer cookbook.

1. The first thing you will want to do is make a new folder somewhere in your computer such as in ‘My Documents’ called ‘Recipes’, or whatever you want to name your cookbook. You can create a new folder by selecting ‘New’ under ‘File’, then select ‘Folder‘. A new folder will show up and the computer will prompt you to name it.

2. Open a new document in the word processing program.

3. Highlight the recipe you want to save by left clicking your mouse, holding it down and dragging the cursor over the entire recipe you want to save. This should show black highlight over white text when youÂ’re finished.

4. Right click any part of the text you highlighted. An options box should pop up and you want to select ‘copy‘. Now you have copied the text onto the clipboard of your computer.

5. Go back to the blank word processing document and right click your mouse in it. From the options box, select ‘paste’. This will paste your recipe into the document.

5. Save your recipe by clicking ‘save’ in the word processing document. Double click the ‘Recipe’ folder you created in step 1 to go into this folder. Now you will want to make a new folder for this type of recipe. Click the ‘New Folder’ icon at the top of the ‘save‘ box. The new folder will pop up in the save box where you can give it a name. If your recipe is a spaghetti recipe for example, you can make the new folder a ‘ground beef’, ’Italian’ or ‘main dish’ folder. After you have named the new folder, double click it so you will be saving the new recipe inside of it. Now name the recipe accordingly and click ‘save‘.

Follow this simple procedure for all your Internet recipes and soon you will have your very own computer cookbook.

I find it very handy and I can find recipes easily. If there is one I want to try, I print it out. Since it is in a word processing program, you can change the font or the colors to jazz it up. I hope this helps you with your recipe collecting.

© Monica Resinger, 2000

About the author

Monica Resinger is editor/founder of the FREE, fun and interactive newsletters Creative Home, Creative Gardening and Creative Home Money. If you're interested in decorating, organizing, crafts, gardening, cleaning, cooking, being frugal or working at home, then one or all of these newsletters are sure to help you! To find out more about these exciting newsletters, please visit http://www.geocities.com/plantldy.geo