If you have a cookbook collection you feel you don’t get as much use out of as you should, SIGN UP FOR COOKSHELF. It has totally changed my life, no exaggeration.

In April of this year, I started a project I had been contemplating for YEARS. I started INDEXING all my cookbooks. I had always said, it would be SOOO easy if instead of having to pull out 5 or 6 cookbooks at a time just to get an idea of what to do with the leftover half jar of Kalamata olives in my fridge, I could just do a search of all my recipes on a database. I even asked AI how I could go about doing this “the easy way” because I knew the task would be so incredibly tedious, not to mention it would take years for me to finish. AI had some suggestions but none were going to be an easy fix, though a couple of steps could be eliminated and a couple others would significantly decrease the time it would take to get things done. Plus it was still going to be a multi step process with a rather steep learning curve. I went back to my spreadsheet.

I plodded along, figuring it will be worth it and I could even pass it along to my kids and grandkids for their use. So yeah, LEGACY.

And then a few weeks later, I got a message from my daughter:

Sign up here: https://www.cookshelf.app (No, this is not a paid post; I don’t get anything.)

Your cookbooks will look like this on the Cookshelf app:

AND, you can also access your library and share it with others via the Eat Your Books website.

It’s a game changer. I use my cookbooks now almost daily. Which means I get to cook many things I had PLANNED on cooking before and never got to because I had forgotten which cookbook they were in! AND I am no longer bored with internet recipes. You know how if you search “chicken thighs”, for instance, you’d get the same list of recipes every single time?? There is more to life than Crispy Baked Chicken Thighs. There’s something deeply satisfying about beating that algorithm. Hah.

One of these days I’ll take advantage of the magazine recipes feature. I have boxes of magazine recipes I’ve collected through the years. 🤦🏻‍♀️

There are several other features that are super useful. What I’ve shown here is just the basic stuff. Go explore.