June 5, 2012 - 6:56am
Kindle as kitchen gadget -- getting a recipe from the computer into the kitchen
This may be obvious to many of you but I am new to e-readers having just gotten a Kindle (the basic model) this week.
One problem I have with having recipes here at TFL on hand in the kitchen is that there is no printer attached to my laptop and not enough space in the kitchen to bring it there. The Kindle can sit right up on top of the bread box while I'm following a recipe. It's great to have the original instead of my cryptic (and occasionally quite wrong) scribbles on the back of an envelope.
I just put Jason's ciabatta recipe on my Kindle by
- blocking the text and hitting <ctrl>c
- opening up a word processor (Libri Office in my case), hitting <ctrl>v to dump the recipe into a document
- saving the document as a text file (.txt)
- attaching the Kindle via the USB to my laptop so it becomes an external drive
- saving the document to "documents" subdirectory on the kindle
Easy peasy.
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You can copy the recipe from the website and then save to PDF (that way you'll have photos, not just text). Then send the PDF to your Send-to-Kindle E-Mail (it's something you can set up in Kindle account->manage your Kindle) with just 'convert' (without quotes) in the subject line. After a little will the recipe will appear under docs on your kindle. This works for smartphones running the Kindle app as well.
I take a screenshot of my BBGA formatted spreadsheet on my Mac. Renamescreenshot to dated formula. Drag to Dropbox. Walk over to kitchen island. Open Dropbox on iPad that lives there. Bingo, formula ready to read.
but I like the kindle interface - you turn pages with a quick flick of the finger rather than scroll up and down (which mean less contact with the screen and less flour on your ipad) plus kindle catalogs (alphabetically) and puts all your copy/pasted recipes in one place so they're easy to find.
I got a Demy for a gift a couple of years ago and love it. I think Amazon sells it. anyway, synchs with computer, takes up very little room, and best of all, has a great cookbook organization software so that finding a recipe is very easy.
I have a nook, and I hate using it as a cookbook. I don't like the idea of getting it floury (and it inevitably does) and for other recipes, well, when I imagine the damage I could do making something like soup, I shudder. I buy a lot of used cookbooks, and am always amazed at the pristine condition. Didn't these people actually cook with them? Every cookbook I have is covered in splatters and drips, especially on the "good pages".
Don't know what kind of laptop/printer you have, but my laptop is set up with the printer to print wirelessly. Can't tell you all the technical details, actuall, DH is the one who set it up. But our printer is a laser printer, not just the basic inkjet models that lots of people have.
I know what you mean about the cookbooks. My "good" ones are a mess. I'll have to figure a work around for keeping flour out of the Kindle. Hmmm.
Both the printers in this house are so old we are lucky they work. Wireless? Not.
I first got the iOS version of Apple's spreadsheet app Numbers to go on my iPod Touch. Since loading the app on an iPhone and iPad backed up to iCloud I have had access to recipes entered from Baker's % data given in Suas, Hamelman, Reinhart's WGB and other sources on both larger and smaller devices. For some mixes I can enter the amount of starter I happen to have on hand to figure how large a batch I can make, but for most simply enter the desired weight of dough.
Although I've lately tried using what I understand to be the BBGA's preference for successive builds and mixes (poolishes, soakers, etc.) being displayed horizontally across a page, on these small devices (even the iPad) I find a vertical arrangement fits better with my inclusion of step-by-step reminders after each mix's formula rows. This roughly follows the formating for formulas in Michel Suas' "Advanced Bread and Pastry" and also better incorporates the mixing log of temperatures and times I keep at the end. There are probably good arguments for keeping a log of all mixes consolidated into a single document, but not switching back and forth between two documents has its benefits.
So far I have managed to keep flour and dough off the devices, but just determined that typing through a sandwich bag and even scrolling and pinch-zooming are all possible with Apple devices.