Software Search

I'd like to create a cookbook of sorts. Not really an original cookbook but more like a collection of all the recipes I like. I've been doing this in part by recording my own recipes, recipes I find online and a few cookbook recipes in a number of Word files, with the idea that I could print them out and put them in a binder eventually. However, I don't like the idea of printing them because it would require a great deal of paper and ink, something I can't justify without at least having a laser printer (per page, it's immensely cheaper than an ink jet and produces better-looking results with text to boot).

I'd like to find a way to store them more efficiently on my computer. Using Word files makes the recipes more difficult to search (there's no table of contents generated, and different categories of food are in different files), plus Word is a pain to use for formatting. Probably because I don't do it right. I've never learned how the styles system in the program works (I never had to worry about them in other word processors), and for some reason it's exceedingly intrusive in Word, sometimes reformatting something for me based on a style I used for that kind of heading when I first created the document but later thought better of. I'm sure there's some AutoComplete feature I could turn off to fix this but I've never dedicated the time to look for it since it's really only annoying (or noticeable) in these particular documents.

I tried using a database before I started using Word. I created a template for entering recipes in AppleWorks' database module, and I put in a few recipes. While this system had the advantage of being sortable, it suffered from formatting issues. Pasting stuff in from web sites would retain the site formatting rather than conforming to the look of the database. Plus, recipes (and especially, ingredient lists) often were too long to fit in the text fields I had created. (I don't remember if you could even scroll through them -- but who wants to scroll with a list of ingredients, anyway?)

I've also tried using Blogger to record recipes, but Blogger doesn't allow you to assign categories like Movable Type does, so it's like pasting everything into one long Word document. Being able to sort by date isn't helpful for a cookbook. Movable Type isn't an option, as it requires a server that gives you special CGI access, which you generally have to pay for.

I also tried Blosxom a bit. Blosxom is a blogging system as well, built with Mac OS X in mind (although it works on other systems). It has the clever idea that rather than using a database system (like SQL) to sort your entries, it can use the ultimate database system -- your hard drive's file system. Basically, this means you save your entries into folders based on how you want them sorted into categories (Blosxom can pick up the date from the file itself). Blosxom uses information in the blog's URL then to determine which folders of files to display. However, since it does this all with text-file entries, it's not great for recipes. Unlike Blogger, Blosxom doesn't convert line breaks out of the box. Thus, to get a hard return, you have to type the HTML for "line break." Hand coding HTML isn't much fun when your blogging or creating a database.

I have Windows cookbook software. Fat lot of good it does me now. If I looked, I might find some OS 9 cookbook software in the basement. Rather, OS 7.5. Too old and slow to be useful. OS X cookbook programs seem to run about $20 and seem mostly to have questionable designs or, at best, to be self-running FileMaker databases. I'm considering iBlog or BlogWave Studio, but one seems buggy and the other seems to require .Mac. And both cost money anyway.

What to do?