Digital recipe management and Evernote’s “external brain”

Reading through Lifehacker’s list of Five Best Recipe Managers, I found some interesting apps that would also work well for anyone looking to improve their green lifestyle. Although the fondest (and often best) way of organizing recipes is still the not so eco-friendly method of putting pen to paper, the Lifehacker team also suggests some digital organizers to cut the paper clutter, including SousChef for Macs and BigOven for PCs, both of which are available for only $30.

The most interesting option for me, however, was the suggestion to use Evernote, a organizational tool that can keep track of just about anything. Acting as your “external brain,” Evernote is a free service that stores anything you want to remember, from phone numbers and addresses to URLs, photos, wine labels, to-do lists, notes to self, and even Twitter messages. Basically, if you want to remember it and have a way to capture it digitally—from computer to cell phone to digital camera, or even a hastily-scribbled napkin note that you later scan in—you can save it on Evernote.

Evernote had been recommended to me before by Craig Silverman, during a freelancing workshop I took via the QWF, but I wasn’t sure it would be useful to me. I’ve usually got a pen and paper on hand, or at the very least my cell phone can snap a quick picture, and now that I’ve got my iPod Touch I can even (laboriously) type up a little reminder to myself in the Notes app. Still, the thought of organizing my recipes without having to actually sit down and organize them all up front is definitely appealing. And think of all the paper I’ll save!

So I’ve signed up for the free version of Evernote and I’m on my way to download the desktop app right now right after I finally upgrade my OS to Leopard so that I don’t have to keep logging into their website every time I want to save something. I showed the site to my husband yesterday, and he was immediately wooed by the concept of saving wine labels, something that is relatively hard to index and search when it’s taped into a notebook, so it’s looking like Evernote will soon rule our household as the top organizational device.

Best of all, it’s only $5 a month (or $45 a year) if you want to upgrade to the premium version, which gives you an even greater monthly capacity for uploading items you want to save. If you’re the type who’s got tons of scribbled notes and can’t keep track of everything, this is probably a necessity. Personally, I’m giving the free version a whirl this month to see how much space I use, and if I need more I’ll sign up for the yearly package.

Do you use Evernote? Let me know what you think of their service, and how you use it!