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Hello everyone!

I have been on and off this site for quite awhile. I really struggle with meal planning I am a high raw vegan and instead of prepping i just eat out a lot. I also have ADHD with the whole process of meal prep to cooking to deciding what to eat when you have dozens of books and onlne resources becomes quite overwhelming. I thought of this crazy idea today... I was thinking of going through all my ebooks and hardcopy cookbooks and writing all the recipe names out and honestly picking a few out of a jar that week and no exceptions that is what I am making. Having it separated with breakfast (mostly juices, smoothies, smoothie bowls) lunch (raw wraps, salads) dinner (free for all)  I know it sounds crazy but this is where I am at with meal prep. Is there a way for me to do that on this site by inputing all my ebooks and books then just printing the recipe title names. I don't see the indexes of all the books available that I have already purchased. Or maybe it is just me and I am not looking in the right spot. Please help! This girl is desperate lol. 

Hi Anita - please don't write out all the recipe names on pieces of paper - or even print them out from EYB. All you have to do is decide on a random number e.g. page 5 and 10th recipe down. Then do your search of your Bookshelf recipes and find that recipe. If you decide none of the recipes in your own collection appeal, we have 40,000+ online vegan recipes in the Library. You can mix it up by changing the sort order - the sort options are:
A-Z of recipe title
A-Z by author name
Buzz (combined number of ratings and notes)
Date published (most recent at top)
Ratings (top rated at top)
Recently Added

You should find something you like amongst all these options. If you want to restrict the recipes to just Main course, select that from the filter in the right column under Courses. Or Salads under Recipe types / Side dishes. Or Wraps under Recipe type / Dish types / Sandwiches & burgers. You can also add and exclude ingredients from the same filters to fit what you have available.

I love all the various ways to search for my recipes in EYB. But related to Anita's comment, is there a way to jump to a specific page of recipes? For example, my recipes are listed on 985 pages.  Is there an easy way to quickly jump to page 324 (to pick a number)? 

Hi Anita! Another option to really keep things random as you were originally considering, is to utilize a random number generator (such as random.org) -- input 1 as the minimum and the total number of recipes on your EYB Bookshelf as maximum. If you go to My Bookshelf --> Recipes and leave the default view, it shows 25 recipes per page, so it shouldn't be too difficult to jump to a specific "number" recipe in your collection. For example, if you randomly selected #220, you'd go to page 9 of your Recipes and then count 20 recipes down that page (the first 8 pages encompassed 200 recipes + you'd need 20 more on the ninth page to get to #220.)

You could also narrow your search first (ex. - filter to only show Breakfast recipes and then use the total number of breakfast recipes as your maximum for the RNG). I think this would mimic your idea of putting recipe names in a jar, but with a lot less work!

Yes! https://www.eatyourbooks.com/bookshelf/25 -- in this link example 25 is page 25 of your Recipes -- just change that number in the URL to whatever page number you would like to get to quickly.

I like your idea! I just also have A LOT of ebooks that I can’t seem to get on EYB. I started searching today and couldn’t find them. How would I go about organizing those?

Did you search by title or ISBN? Ebooks can be hard to locate by ISBN. Also, if you find a hardcover edition of a book that is indexed and the ebook edition is not indexed, let us know and the two can be linked.

anitadeanne - we haven't added every eBook edition. You can request that it is added by importing the ISBN in Import Books (accessed from the My Bookshelf tab). Though we can only import data for Kindle books as our data comes from Amazon. You then need to let us know you imported it and it needs to be linked to the indexed print book. Or you just add the print book edition to your Bookshelf and add your own bookmark eBook.

I access EYB on an Android smartphone, and I cannot edit the URL in the search box. What I do is call up the list, go to the 2nd or 3rd or 4th page, then copy that URL into a clipboard app (I use Clipper).

Then  I edit the the URL I've clipped, and copy that into the browser search box.

I still have to use a roulette-like strategy to get at the recipes from unindexed sources.

Jane, I like your idea of picking a page number and how many recipes down. I tried it today and came up with oven fried chicken. However, when I'm choosing from all dinner recipes in my books (excluding online & magazines), I have almost 400 pages. Is there a way to add on option to type in a page # to go too, or maybe by clicking on the dots, we have a scroll that we can select a specific page. Otherwise, we are advancing 4 pages at a time. I've also felt this was useful when I was just paging through recipes and needed to close out and come back to it. I remembered I was on, for example, page 35, but I didn't have a way to skip right to that page.

MarcIK - you will see a page number in the URL for whatever page of search results you are on. Edit that page number to the page you want to jump to then click Enter. For example:

https://www.eatyourbooks.com/library/recipes/6?online-recipes=true - change the 6 to 100 and you jump to page 100 of online recipes.

Ah ah ah I do something similar, sometimes I pick them but I use different tricks, I try to select two or three in the bookmarks (where the numbers are less overwhelming and I can be more certain it is a recipe I will like), two or three in non indexed books, and I buy the ingredients to make them on any given day in the next 10 days or so, but without assigning a day to it or fussing too much if I skip one as long as I do most of them

To ease out prepping I sometimes do my recipes in two steps, cut the vegs and similar in the morning, eat something easier at lunch and then on the evening all the cut and prepping is already done so all I have to do is the actual recipe

It varies though! Recently I have a lot less time to cook in Paris,with my new job very demanding, all my cooking ustensils stuck in London (just what little there is in the flat I am renting and what I couldn't live without buying again), and additionally the food offer is so great here that sometimes you don't even want a recipe (for example my butcher accross the street is exceptionnal, so you really just want the meat, not too much prep around except maybe for the side), or, there is a lebanese takeaway where you just buy these delicious dips like hummus, labneh etc and just eat with a galette type bread, or just cheese platter and ham would do with a side salad. As a result I plan a lot less maybe just one or two recipes at any one time