Remember my cookbook problem? I purged my cookbooks a couple of years ago and it was hard to decided what to let go. I made all the books fit onto one shelf on my bookcase. My goal was to keep only what I could fit. Well, that didn't last long.
Now my cookbook shelf is a mess again. You saw that coming, didn't you?
I love print copies of cookbooks. When I need some inspiration, I flip through the pages, skim the recipes, drool over the gorgeous photos. However, when I'm looking for a recipe that might work with a couple of pantry ingredients, it's a pain to pull each book and check its index (if it has one).
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| This was the purge, 2 years ago. I have collected much more since then. |
Last week, Tavia from Morrow Books introduced me to Eat Your Books. My cooking life has changed forever!
When you join Eat Your Books, you virtually add your cookbook collection to your EYB Bookshelf. If the cookbook is in their database, you can search through your book right on the website. In the screenshot above, I did a search for "sausage kale." I had sausage in the fridge and wanted a soup with kale in it. Within seconds, I found the Spicy Sausage Bean Kale Soup from Savory Sweet Life. (Which I posted about yesterday.)
The recipes aren't posted on the website. Eat Your Books gives you the title of the cookbook and the page number of the recipe. It might also give you a list of ingredients. Once you know which recipe you want to use, just grab that book off your shelf and start cooking!
Normally it would take me at least 15 minutes to pull several cookbooks off my shelf and searching the index. I say 15 minutes because usually the kids interrupt me. Sophia was so excited about the search engine, we also did a search for pumpkin.
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| Click to see my search |
Ok, so the search feature is pretty cool. I didn't want to try Eat Your Books at first because it might take too much time to input all of my cookbooks. Then I discovered I could use my GoodReads smartphone app to scan the bar codes on my books. Sophia actually scanned half of the books for me. She had so much fun, she was a little disappointed that we didn't have anymore cookbooks to scan. I think I was kinda sad too.
After scanning my cookbooks, I just followed the instructions from Eat Your Books to add them to my bookshelf. The entire process (after scanning the books) took less than 5 minutes. I couldn't believe how easy it was! Not only can you add cookbooks to your shelf, you can add food magazines and food blogs that in the database. I have quite a stack of Everyday Food magazines that I am not ready to part with yet. Now there's an easy way for me to search them.
There are 3 membership options to Eat Your Books:
- Free Membership - you can add up to 5 books, magazines or blogs to your Bookshelf.
- Monthly Membership US$2.50 per month
- Annual Membership US$25 per year
So try it for free first and see how you like it. Eat Your Books lets you make a shopping list, add personal recipes, and more things I haven't tried yet. They have a great blog too. So far, I'm pretty happy with it.
GIVEAWAY: I was so excited about them, I contacted Eat Your Books to offer my readers a giveaway. They're offering a Lifetime Membership! At $25 a year, that's an incredible offer! Just enter in the Rafflecopter form below.
No compensation was received for reviewing the site or hosting this giveaway. Eat Your Books did offer me a membership for putting up a widget of my bookshelf from the site. I know you're nosy. Go ahead, click on the widget. Maybe we have the same tastes in food. Opinions are my own.
