Last night, on the local news, I saw a piece about an intriguing new website called EatYourBooks.com. You can see the piece here. Too many of these so-called “news” pieces are about the same-old, same-old, stuff like fda approved diet pills. This is definitely “news I can use”.
This is not just another online recipe search engine. EatYourBooks.com is designed for people who have a lot of cookbooks (raises hand), but like the convenience of an online search (raises hand again).
There are no actual recipes posted on this site. You get the recipes from cookbooks that you actually have in your own home. Here is how it works…
First, you sign up for an account. This is a pay site, I’ll get that out of the way right now. The cost of $25 a year, but for a limited time, you can get a lifetime membership for just $50. However, they offer a 30 day free trial period, so you can give it a whirl, and decide for yourself if the site will be of value to you. And there is absolutely no risk, they do not ask for any credit card info for the free trial. So you don’t have to worry about trying to cancel when the 30 days are up, and getting billed if you don’t want the service. You only pay when you make the decision to join. I like that feature; too many companies offer “free” trials, but require payment info up front. Then they make it difficult to cancel.
Okay, so once you sign up, the next step is to add cookbooks to your online library. I found that the easiest and fasted way to add books is to search by author…if you’re like me, you have favorite cookbook authors, and have most, if not all their books. So if you do a search for, say, Julia Child, all of her books that are listed at EatYourBooks will come up. You just check off the ones that you own, and they will be added to your Bookshelf.
Not all the cookbooks in the world are listed and indexed here. Many books are listed, but not yet indexed. You can add those to your Bookshelf, and then put in a request to have that book indexed. Only recipes from indexed books will show up in search. A simple coding system tells you if a book is indexed, waiting to be indexed, or needs you to request it to be indexed. This site is very new, but I’m impressed with the number of books that are indexed thus far. Even if a book you have is listed but not indexed, add it to your Bookshelf anyway, it may become indexed in the future.
So, once you’ve added books to your Bookshelf, now what? It’s time to decide what to cook for dinner tonight! Say you want to make chicken noodle soup. So you search your Bookshelf by typing in “chicken noodle soup”. It’ll come back with a list of all of the chicken noodle soup recipes from all of the indexed cookbooks that are on both your online and real bookshelves. Then you just go and find the book to get the recipe.
You can even narrow a search by entering keywords of ingredients that you have on hand. This is a very useful feature for when you are too tired or lazy to go to the store. So you type in “chicken, noodles, green beans, corn” and it’ll come back with recipes that use those ingredients.
If you do have to go shopping, there is a feature that makes up shopping lists for you, from your desired recipes. This site does almost everything buy the actual shopping, cooking, and washing the dishes!
The site also has a community aspect to it, with chat groups, friends’ lists, and such. It’s like social networking for cookbook junkies. You can also buy cookbooks that you want and don’t have yet through the site…EYB is partnered with Jessica’s Biscuit, an excellent cookbook seller that offers some deep discounts. It’s also a great place to find some out-of-print cookbooks.
There’s a lot of features to play with on EYB, more than I can go into here. So why not go and give it a try?
