Building a Recipe Database - NYTimes.com MORE than a decade ago, I was confronted with a crisis: planning a week's worth of menus and writing out the accompanying shopping list were gobbling up a humongous slice of my precious weekend. It stressed me out and caused a bit of marital strife. How, my new husband would ask, could it take me that long to make a list? My routine was this: On Saturday morning, surrounded by my cookbooks and recipe file, I would make dinner selections for each night of the week, then write a shopping list. While not unpleasant, it consumed most of the morning, and I had yet to even make it to the stores. Something had to give. I decided to build a computer database of all of my favorite recipes and use it to generate my weekly shopping list. In other words, I would bring my work skills home. Even here at The New York Times, which has hundreds of employees skilled in information gathering and technology, my job is at the extreme end of the nerd scale. I spend my days combing through databases - digital collections of public records - in search of evidence to support traditional news reporting. My home recipe project became an extension of that work: a rather high-tech way of doing a task that most people manage with pencil and paper. Think Betty Crocker meets Bill Gates. For years, I had been saving recipes and recording my favorites in a three-ring binder known as the "blue book." Now I had to type all those recipes into a computer database and decide how to tag the various dishes and ingredients. I began by settling on broad categories: breakfast, dessert, entree and side dish. Entrees were further tagged as beef, pork, poultry, pasta, seafood, vegetarian, soup or salad. I tagged side dishes as vegetable or fruit, according to the dominant ingredient. I added other categories for items like cleansers, bath items and paper products - things that I might need to buy but would not turn up in a recipe. When our son arrived eight years ago, I added categories for snacks and other items specifically for him. And I never looked back. My database constructs my shopping list in three phases: First, I push a button that produces a checklist of recipes by name, along with other household items. I then select the recipes I intend to prepare in the coming week, as well as other things I need to buy. The tags make it easy to select a dish from each category. When I've made my choices, I push a second button, and all of the items, including the recipe ingredients with their quantities, appear on one long list. If two recipes call for one onion each, my list will indicate that I need to buy two onions; it won't list onion twice. I flag items that I already have and don't need to buy. Then I plug my computer into a printer and push a third button to print my shopping list and a menu for the week; the menu goes up on the refrigerator door so I don't forget what I had planned to cook. For those familiar with databases, the buttons trigger macros, which execute a series of queries that join and summarize my data tables and send the results to a printer. This system trimmed hours from my weekend routine. But after a couple of weeks, I realized that I could further refine it: I tagged my items to group them by store because I like to buy my vegetables from a green grocer, my meat from a butcher and the remaining goods from a traditional grocery store. Then I realized that if I noted in my database the specific store aisle for each item, I would never have to backtrack. Ever. There is one unexpected side effect: If my shopping list indicates that I need three carrots, I buy precisely three. There is rarely any extra food in my home. My husband has taken to calling my method "just-in-time inventory," referring to a business strategy that increases profits, but introduces risk, by keeping inventory lean. I don't think he means it as a compliment. In this case, profit is reaped by avoiding waste and overspending. The risk is being unable to provide an impromptu snack or spontaneously invite friends to dinner. I can now produce a shopping list and buy everything in about an hour. The process takes more time when I try new recipes and am forced to add items to my list by hand. But when my family decides that a new recipe is "blue book" worthy, I add it to my database, insert a copy into my three-ring binder, and the dish enters the regular rotation. My husband occasionally accuses me of being obsessive, and I don't deny it. What bothers me is that he makes it sound like a bad thing. When he does, I make this request: "Could we just focus on my positive qualities?" That list is a very manageable one. Web Tools And Handy Apps Since I built my own recipe and shopping database years ago, numerous Web sites and smartphone apps have arrived that allow you to assemble recipes from your collection or online sources, then create a shopping list. You can also store menus or meal plans. Here are a few of my favorites: Ziplist get.ziplist.com Platforms: Android, iPhone, Web. Price: Free. Publisher: Condé Nast. Users can assemble recipes and products through a variety of portals: uploading personal recipes, clicking the "save recipe" icon on partner Web sites, grabbing recipes from other sites using the "recipe clipper," texting televised recipe codes from participating cooking shows or scanning a QR code. You can also add specific products to a list by scanning bar codes. Coupons are available on the site. Paprika paprikaapp.com Platforms: iPhone, iPad, Mac. Price: $4.99 for iPhone and iPad, $19.99 for Mac. Publisher: Developed for Apple by Hindsight Labs. An app with an uncluttered design, it can scale recipes up or down by altering the number of servings. The shopping list consolidates ingredients across recipes, listing each item only once. Shoppers can check off items as they are added to the cart; an "unpurchased" list displays the remaining items. The three platform devices sync. Recipes can be imported from other Apple apps. MyRecipes myrecipes.com Platform: Web. Publisher: Time Inc. Lifestyle Group. This site allows you to share recipes or mark them as private. Although there is no app associated with this Web site, you can share a shopping list by text message, and the site is mobile optimized. Entering a ZIP code lets you find deals at local stores. The site includes videos and recipes from Time Inc. publications like Cooking Light and Real Simple.