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A few years ago I started keeping a cooking/food journal. I write in it periodically if I’ve cooked a special meal and review the dinner with notes to myself. When traveling, I write memorable meals from restaurants. It’s fun and useful to look through, get ideas, remember something we loved and plan meals. For example, my Thanksgiving menus remind me what worked well, favorite sides, how I cooked the turkey, and the best way to reheat leftovers. Enjoy your journal!

For more than ten years I have recorded everything I bake; breads, cakes, biscuits (the UK kind not the US style dumplings/savoury scones kind), pies, pizzas, etc. Against each one I record dates made and finished, the day of the week, how many days it lasted, the source of the recipe, comments on the making, and general comments. Being somewhat dyspraxic with fine motor control issues none of this is written down because no one, not even, me can read my handwriting instead I use a spreadsheet. There is a sheet where each type of bread is tallied and the date last baked displayed; a simple spreadsheet formula.

Meals are not recorded in such detail or as diligently. About the same time as starting the baking spreadsheet I kept a weekly list of what I cooked but this was more notes on what was to be made from the weekly shop. I started this because there was little variety in my cooking and these notes helped to change that. For reasons I no longer remember regular dinner prep passed to my spouse and I stopped making these notes but six months ago I resumed that responsibilty and have again been tracking what I cook with date, day of the week, recipe name, recipe source (book with page numbers or URL), and any special variation/alternative for dietary reasons. Again there is a tally sheet but only with the number of times each specific dish was made. Without changing the spreadsheet over the last few weeks I have been using it to plan a week's worth of meals.

Even my weekly shopping list is a spreadsheet again because of my handwriting. Compiled over the course of those same ten years or more it now runs to over 1,200 rows on each of three sheets for the supermarkets I buy from, two of which are exactly a mile from my home but in opposite directions. Updated on my desktop or laptop the spreadsheet is accessed via "the cloud" from my iPhone while walking around the supermarket.

A dream is to combine all those spreadsheets together and plan the week's cooking and baking, use EYB searches and time-series processing to help update the shopping list, and maybe analyse the nutrional valies of the meals. Though I would rather be baking and cooking that hacking spreadsheet formulas.

I have kept a cooking journal since 2007, mostly as a planner/record of meals for holidays and dinner parties. At the start of the pandemic I became a bit obsessive, writing down each daily dinner. This included all the ways I improvised to avoid the grocery store.  Now I sometimes go weeks without recording anything. When I do I will refer to my notes on EYB. I am on my second volume now. It makes me happy because the cover says "Be the person your dog thinks you are".

danlaik - are you aware you can add a "I cooked this" date when adding a recipe note? You then have a record of everything you cooked, when you cooked it and what worked and didn't and it is searchable.