How do keep your logbook, if you keep one?

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gregor

Smoke Blower
Original poster
May 7, 2016
101
13
Starting to acquire bits and pieces of paper and electronic files with scribbled notes, I'd like to get it a bit better organized..

Thoughts?
 
Cheese log is in an old school bound notebook.

Originally I had one each for cheese, pork, beef, and poultry but the protein books quickly outgrew themselves and I moved them to Excel spreadsheets.
 
All in my head. Do I remember everything from every cook. Nope. But I remember the important parts. Don't sweat the little stuff. By not keeping a log I have learned to make good food by instinct.
 
I keep a recipe book & constantly change the individual recipes until I get exactly what I want.

The recipe will contain all the variables, including smoker, smoke time, wood, smoker temp. etc.

And of course ingredients & instructions.

Al
 
Spiral bound notebook. Date time weather, meat type, size. Start stop times, comments on what I did differently, food & bad.

RG
 
Last edited:
Ok..I am ready for the rolling of many eyes. I keep the journal and more in a WordPress blog site using categories, tags and the search box to help me find related cooks to decide about the next "experiment". Each cook is a post and sometimes, like last weekend, I did a post of the standing rib pork roast and one for the tomatoes and japs smoked for salsa.

I like it on line as I can update it during lunch at work, access it while at the country house, include photos, etc. We also use it for more than smoking and grilling events; i.e. anything we want to find one day and repeat related to cooking. It has many links to other sites including links to all the step-by-steps and recipe link collections here at SMF.

For years we tried to keep a master table of contents that cited which cookbook had the _____ recipe that was great. The site is becoming our master link to the cook books, recipes we like, want to try, resource sites, on-line cookbooks and techniques, etc. 

Yup, compared to most it is way geeky but also comforting that I know where everything is or links to where I can find it and repeat that special [anything] we had years ago. Our site is under a private domain but you can have the same thing for free at WordPress.com. A simple spreadsheet in a book binder would be less time consuming but for a geeky sort of person that time is fun.
 
I'm using excel but like the sound of Wordpress. I maintain a couple of websites. 
 
 
Ok..I am ready for the rolling of many eyes. I keep the journal and more in a WordPress blog site using categories, tags and the search box to help me find related cooks to decide about the next "experiment". Each cook is a post and sometimes, like last weekend, I did a post of the standing rib pork roast and one for the tomatoes and japs smoked for salsa.

I like it on line as I can update it during lunch at work, access it while at the country house, include photos, etc. We also use it for more than smoking and grilling events; i.e. anything we want to find one day and repeat related to cooking. It has many links to other sites including links to all the step-by-steps and recipe link collections here at SMF.

For years we tried to keep a master table of contents that cited which cookbook had the _____ recipe that was great. The site is becoming our master link to the cook books, recipes we like, want to try, resource sites, on-line cookbooks and techniques, etc. 

Yup, compared to most it is way geeky but also comforting that I know where everything is or links to where I can find it and repeat that special [anything] we had years ago. Our site is under a private domain but you can have the same thing for free at WordPress.com. A simple spreadsheet in a book binder would be less time consuming but for a geeky sort of person that time is fun.
@Sundown Farms  What's your site?
 
I also use evernote.  I created a notebook for my BBQ log.  I like evernote b/c it's easy to document with pictures and text.  Also, it syncs across devices and I can add recipes and other ideas to it from the internet version of evernote.

I like the idea of the website that Sundown uses.
 
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