How to Use Evernote to Keep Track of Your Spice Rack...and other stuff

I have always been a geek at heart. Since my youngest days, I've glommed to technology. Whether it was typing thousands of lines of code into a TRS-80 for a game that would never work, overlaying graphics onto home video with a Commodore Amiga, or wishing my Palm Pilot was also a cell phone, I've loved my tech.

The only thing changed through the years is the amount of hair on my head.

Fast forward to today. I am a huge fan of Evernote, the virtual file cabinet/note-taking application. The more of my life that is paperless, the better. I've been using Evernote for years, and I've worked it into about every niche possible and as of this weekend, this includes our spice rack and freezer.

Too many times I've bought a new spice I thought needed and didn't, or didn't buy a spice I thought I had, and of course, didn't. No more!

Outside of some basic alphabetizing and organization, I captured photos of every spice in the cupboard using the Evernote app on my iPhone.

Every photo is an individual note within Evernote. Each of these notes are stored within a notebook called "Kitchen" and tagged with a keyword of "spice."

Now that it's organized, here are the two things I do. First, when pulling together ingredients for a recipe, I have an easy way to see if I have the needed spices. Evernote's search capabilities utilize OCR to scan the photographs. In other words, the picture is good enough to show what I've have got versus retyping the names off the spice jars.

Of course, if I were just using Evernote, this would be great. I also happen to use an iOS app called GroceryTrip to streamline my shopping trips. While Evernote makes it easy to search off the photographs, GroceryTrip requires text entered in the note body. By tagging notes with "GroceryTrip", the contents of the note are analyzed and automatically added to my shopping list.

If I find myself running low on something, I add the "GroceryTrip" tag to the note, and it automatically appears on my GroceryTrip shopping list. Win-Win.

Since the spice cabinet was knocked out, I've added in the oil/vinegar/sauce shelf, as well as the freezer. The mystery of the cabinets have been solved all with the help of a little technology and unlike the tech of 30 years ago, this tech resides in my pocket.

Finding the right ingredients for these chili rubbed grilled scallops can now happen anywhere.

Note: I am a paid user of both applications and talk about them only because I like them.