Get Cooking with PDFs for Recipes and Meal Planning!

When you find a good recipe, you want to keep it — whether online, in a book, or something handwritten you’ve been given by a friend, or colleague, or passed down through generations of your family. Collating a recipe collection doesn't need to be a hodgepodge of old recipe books, pieces of paper, and/or random websites or blogs that you’ve bookmarked in your web browser that may not be there at a later date when your tastebuds are telling you it’s time to make it!

Using PDFs for your recipe collection not only makes it easier to locate that recipe that you know tastes great, but can help with meal planning, sharing your favourite recipes with others, and collaborating on new culinary creations.

What you’ll learn.

• Why recipes matter.
• The advantages of digital recipe books and PDFs.
• How to create PDF recipes.
• Making meal plans and collaborating on content.
• A few technical skills to help with PDF recipe success.
• Using PDF templates for recipes and meal planning.
• How to organise and store your recipes and PDF meal plans.

Why recipes matter.

Good recipes are amazing things. Recipes help you combine food ingredients into dishes and meals that not only fulfil the basic need of providing fuel and nourishment to your body but can also bring you together with family and other people to create memories and shared experiences that will last a lifetime.

Whatever your level of cooking skills, — still learning to cook, basic cook, avid foodie, or gourmet restaurant-level chef — organizing a recipe collection into PDF files can help with —

• Meal planning and ideas of what to cook and when.
• Budgeting and cooking and sourcing ingredients that are seasonal or you may only use them at certain times of the year.
• Sharing, teaching, and collaborating with others on creating food that you love.
• Creating great gifts of customized recipe books of someone’s favourite foods or special dietary requirements.
• Preserving treasured recipes into cookbooks for others to share and use in years to come as well.

The advantages of digital recipe books and PDFs.

We live in an ever-increasing digital world — there’s no avoiding that these days. Pretty much anything that has previously been put on paper is now also available in digitized form. One of the challenges with digital documents is using a format that will still be accessible over time and by different types of electronic devices. That’s where PDFs come in.

PDFs are designed to be accessible and portable. The Portable Digital Format (PDF) file was specifically developed by Adobe back in the 1980s so people could easily share and access documents between different systems and devices easily via a free PDF Reader. You’ll see the option to save or print an online recipe as a PDF file for that very reason.

PDF recipes are shareable and easy to access offline or online.

PDFs are easily accessible and can be stored on multiple devices, making it convenient to plan meals on the go. You can keep your PDF files on your phone, tablet, or computer to access offline whenever want to, or store and share them online in the cloud.

PDF recipes are eco-friendly.

PDF files can be printed out if you do choose to, but creating, saving and storing recipes as digital PDFs help reduce paper and printing costs and waste. This makes them an eco-friendly option for recipe collections that is kind to the environment.

PDF recipes are customizable.

Recipes often get tweaked as you make them. You may substitute ingredients or adjust quantities to make more or less of a recipe as needed. PDFs are editable. You can alter the text, make comments and notes, and even insert pictures of your own finished creation after you’ve made it.

PDF recipes are combinable.

It's easy to create and store individual recipes as PDF files. You can also combine and merge PDF files to make up whole cookbooks or combine and collate your recipes according to a theme or category — breakfasts, lunches, dinners and desserts, a take-a-plate idea for pot-luck get-togethers or BBQs, or all courses for a more formal menu for a dinner party from whoa to go.

PDF recipes are organizable.

Organizing PDF recipes and meal plans into folders that you can access and organize from your phone, laptop, computer or online cloud storage further simplifies finding what you need, when you need it. You can name and organize your PDFs in a way that works best for you, allowing for easy navigation and quick searches for specific recipes.

Creating PDF recipes.

It’s true, we eat with our eyes just as much as we do with our mouths. Just as you might take a few extra steps to add visual appeal to something you create in the kitchen, you can do this with PDFs as well to make your recipes easy to read and great to look through.

It doesn’t take long to accumulate a bunch of recipes on pieces of paper, in cookbooks and from online sources, such as blogs and websites. Having them all in PDF format is a great way to organize them so you can keep track of them, find them again when you want to, and plan your meals.

There are a few ways you can get your recipes into PDF format.

Create new PDF files for your recipes.

Write out your recipes straight into PDF format. You can also create your recipe templates in PDF format to make it quick and easy to just drop in your ingredients, method, and food photos, and you’re good to go.

Save and print online recipes as PDFs.

Many recipe websites and blogs give you the option to save/print straight to PDF format from the webpage. If not, use the settings in your web browser to print the page to PDF. Job done.

Digitize your paper copies of recipes.

There can be a lot of sentimental value in a handwritten recipe from someone you’ve known and loved. For example, a family recipe from a family member that’s been used for generations, like the one above. Preserving those memories is priceless. You might also have recipes in a physical cookbook that you use regularly but don’t want to keep the whole book.

Paper copies of recipes can be scanned into PDF format using a scanner or multi-function printer. Or you can take a photo of your paper copy recipe and then convert the photo format, such as a jpg file to PDF.

Convert other file types to PDF.

You can convert many different file types to PDF, either from within an Acrobat app or drag and drop into our online PDF converter. The conversion process will work its magic, so your original formatting and layout are retained.

Making meal plans and collaborating on recipe content.

Planning meals, whether for one person or one hundred, can take time and collaboration. Catering to different dietary requirements and preferences and portion sizes, and doing it all within a budget, can be a challenge for cooking at home or if you’re organizing an event, PDFs recipes can help streamline your meal planning process and get others involved.

• Set up a system — Make it fun for you and your family to select recipes for meals for the week ahead so you can plan your shop, cooking and meal preparation time and schedule.
• Coordinate a shared meal or event — Have menu ideas and recipes in PDF form in online cloud storage for people to pick and put their hand up to say that’s what they’ll make on the day for an event such as an extended family Christmas dinner.
• Collaborate with others — Add notes, comments, and reminders in PDFs with tips and tricks for how you may have adjusted a recipe to taste or for others using your recipe collection.

A few technical skills to help with PDF recipe success.

Get to know some of the tips and tricks you can use in PDFs, so your recipes are easy to find and follow. This includes a few basic skills for —

• Navigating — add bookmarks, hyperlinks, and annotations to help you navigate through your files and find specific recipes or meal plans.
• Formatting — choose fonts that are easy to read, layouts that clearly show ingredient lists and quantities, space between sections, and illustrations or pictures of what steps look like.
• Protecting content — if you’re sharing your PDF files with others but don’t want others to make any edits, use the security features such as password protection on your segments of your recipe content to stop others from making changes.

Using PDF templates for recipes and meal planning.

Using templates for recipes, meal planning, and preparation can make the process even simpler. Create your own PDF templates or adapt and use existing templates from trusted sources for recipes, shopping lists, and meal plans. If you’re a true foodie and want to go the extra mile, there are stunning templates available for recipes, e-cookbooks, and menu planning with Adobe Indesign.

Customizable and interactive meal planning and recipe templates.

Customizable recipe templates are a great way to get started with a recipe collection. Add your own images, notes, and instructions to get a set of recipes with a look and feel that matches you and your culinary creations.

Interactive meal planning templates use the features of PDF forms. They can allow you to easily adjust portion sizes so you can plan out menus for various numbers of people. Created with built-in formulas that will calculate what you need, they can be a great way to work out exactly what you will need to buy and reduce food waste. Interactive features may also include calculations for calorie intake and ways to customize your meals according to your preferences and dietary restrictions.

Shopping list templates.

Shopping list templates help keep your grocery trips organized and on budget. Grocery list templates work well when they’re separated into sections you walk through around the supermarket – fresh fruit and vegetables, dry and packaged goods, meat and seafood, milk, dairy, frozen and chilled.

Organizing and storing recipe and meal planning PDFs.

Organizing and storing recipe and meal planning PDFs is manageable. Think about where you’re going to store your PDFs, how you want to categorize them, and the way you want to name them. Don’t let your recipe and meal planning PDFs become like the kitchen drawer or cupboard (or both) with files everywhere!

Store your PDFs on your device, a separate storage device, or online.

You can organize and store PDF recipes on a device, such as a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer so you can access them at any time. You can use portable storage devices such as USB sticks and portable hard drives.

Online storage, such as Adobe Document Cloud, or other similar cloud-based storage systems, such as Google Drive, are excellent ways to share and collaborate on recipes and meal plans with others in real time. It’s always a way to keep your recipes in PDF format in a safe place. You can share links to your files with others, and you and they can access the files at any time from any device with an internet connection.

Organize your recipes and meal plans in folders.

Creating separate folders for different types of recipes or meals is a smart way to keep your PDFs organized and easy to find — and not so different from an old-style recipe card box.

Consider creating folders and subfolders with descriptive names for different types of meals, cuisine, dietary needs, or special occasions. Categorize your recipe folders however you choose but keep the way you name them consistent to make it even easier to find your recipes.

Use consistent naming conventions.

A consistent naming convention for both folders and PDF files is crucial for finding what you need quickly. Visually, this makes them easier to read and see at a glance. It also makes them easier to find when you do an electronic search through your files. Keep the case consistent, file names in all capital letters are harder to read when you’re looking through them in a folder.

Whether you’re creating your own recipes as PDFs, or you’re saving and printing PDFs from blogs or online websites, change the filename to one that matches the way you refer to your recipes. For example, a chicken recipe with garlic and lemon could be named “Garlic Lemon Chicken.pdf” to make it easy to find by looking and searching for the main ingredients. You can also include meal categories, such as breakfast, lunch, and dinner, to make it simpler to find specific recipes.

Get creative and cook with your recipe and meal-planning PDFs!

Managing your recipes and meal planning with PDFs can save time, physical space, and stress. Using PDFs for recipes and meal planning offers the convenience of accessing your favourite recipes quickly and easily offline or online, and creating and collaborating on customizable meal plans on your own or with others. Just as food is a well-known connector of people, so too can PDFs connect your cooking!