To think that I am a very sad human being but I'm going to ask anyway....

[stillawip]

Hi everyone,
I have lots of cookbooks, and whenever I have something to use up in the fridge, I would like to be able to go straight to a recipe in one of my books that uses that ingredient. Or, if I want to cook a particular dish (say apple pie), I want to be able to find out quickly which of my books have a recipe for apple pie in, rather than trawling them all. So, being the sad human being that I am, some years ago I started to make an index on Microsoft Excel of all the recipes in my favourite books, and then categorising them under appropriate headings (so for apple pie it would appear if I looked under 'Apples', 'Desserts - Sweet pies' and 'Desserts - Fruit' ) thus making it easy for me to search. The list has now grown like Topsy & I would love to know how to automate what I am doing a bit more, but I don't know what that would be called!! How could I do that?

Do I need a catalogue function? An index? A drop-down list? Any ideas?!

YABU - you are a very sad human being and you should go & lie down in a darkened room for at least a year.
YANBU - this is a genius idea & here's my suggestion

Import your excel file into AirTable.

thank me later!

I voted YANBU but I don't have a constructive suggestion other than take a course , or find someone who already designs apps. I love the idea

This is like trying to read a foreign language!
I truly admire your endeavour @stillawip

😁I wonder what it would do with the meagre contents of mine - two small bottles of Peroni, Primula cheese spread, margarine and corned beef? (I go shopping on Sundays).

Easy @SevenSeasOfRhye - cheese fondue, made with the Primula, Peroni and marge, and you dunk the corned beef into it.

<I'm here all week>

Seems like @MEgirl has you covered, but as an Excel superfan, I want to heartily commend this project! It's a fantastic idea. Our many cookbooks gather dust; I'm definitely stealing your strategy.

Just Google what you have in the fridge + recipes. I do this quite often.

That sounds like the kind of thing I start with enthusiasm and then leave unused… I have an app called crouton (paid for but quite cheap), think you can take photos of recipes and it AIs it all into the app for you.

The Samsung fridge would clearly be redundant in your kitchen!

My husband uses an app called Stashcook which does a lot of what you're looking for.

This could be built in air table I think

OMG you are all so kind and supportive on my crazy plan, thank you so much!! I will attempt to investigate and understand all of your suggestions 💕

What about using gmail.

Email yourself recipies and you can tag them with many headers.

The search function is pretty good too!

(Thinking outside the box)

I do excel modeling as a large part of my job.

I don't completely understand what you are trying to do either.

I think structurally what you want is a database as pp have said. but Microsoft access is not very user friendly compared to excel.

Is your problem with entering data or finding the results or both?

Pivot tables are actually very easy but would not really help you, I agree with pp that to find the data then the filter functionality should be fine.

You can use data validation to create a dropdown list which would let you select the ingredient each time instead of typing it in (in most recent Excel you can also type a few letters and it gives you the options from your dropdown list that contain that letter combination) but you would still need multiple lines (one for each ingredient).

Is the problem that when you enter multiple lines per recipe you are having to type e.g. the category again every time? There are lookup formulas you could use to avoid that, but tbh your best bet given you need things simple is probably just to copy paste any duplicates from the first row when you have added all the lines for that recipe.

Maybe the MyFridgeFood or Supercook app might be what you're looking for.

And as pp said you want separate columns for your categories (desserts, pies) not split by colons.

If you want to split it out, insert enough columns to make space then go to the data menu; text to columns; delimited; and select : as the delimiter.

While you're at it buy a soup maker .
I have made all manner of Soups Made From Random Things ( but we're a vegetarian house except DS )

Some work better than others ( the spinach soup was quite unusual best eaten in the dark but delicious )

Nah.. they’re easy just takes a little practice… oh and since it’s excel a fair bit of swearing

Side note but I had forgotten Microsoft Access existed.

I love the data validation tool

1. filter
2. conditional formatting
3. data validation

And you're away!

@stillawip I have this. It's called BBC Good Food. 🙂

Op, just use google for recipes, no need for all this.

Absolutely and if you use Alexa or have an echo show you can have them read out or shown.

name a chef, a book and google, Siri or Alexa will find the recipe for you.

a bibliography program would work. Zotero is free. You could enter the references for each cookbook and then make folders/groups tagged for your favorite dishes.

One other thing you can try it the MealBoard app.

It has categories and can be searched by ingredient.

When I add book recipes to it I add the ingredients but then just put the book and page number instead of the 'method'.

You can also upload online recipes to it.