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The Everyday Food Appeal
Ok, I confess: I belong to a cult. No, I don’t drink Kool-aid, but I do eat plenty of good food. That’s because I belong to the ever-growing segment of the population that is utterly obsessed with Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food magazine.1 Members of this cult anxiously await te arrival of each new issue, devour its contents, and plan detailed menus around its contents. We even buy back issues on e-bay—shelling out a ridiculous $50 for the out-of-print premiere issue.2
You might be deterred—or intimidated—by the whole Martha Stewart thing. Don’t. This magazine isn’t geared toward anal homemakers or domestic divas. (I am neither.) It’s for anyone who just ikes good food. You don’t even have to cook all that well. Pre-Everyday Food, my pasta-making skills were questionable, my dessert repertoire was limited to Crisco-laden chocolate chip cookies, and the concept of adding a side dish to my thrown-together dinners was foreign to me.
Now, thanks to the magazine’s basic ingredient lists, straightforward instructions, and inspiring photography, I can make a killer vegetable lasagna3 icident free. I’ve successfully recreated butterscotch pudding,4 tres leches,5 and even molten chocolate cakes.6 And whipping up side dishes has become my favorite way to pass time as that lasagna bakes.
The Dilemma
In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit one teens hang-up to the Everyday Food library: there is no comprehensive index. Not even online. (Come on Martha, welcome to the 21st century!) And since I lack a photographic memory, I’ve often had difficulty finding the exact recipe I’ve needed for a particular occasion. Case in point: when my local market had limes on sale 20 for a buck, I had to browse every issue to find recipes for limeade,7 lime-glazed cookies,8 salmon with lime and cilantro,9 and coconut-lime rice pudding.10 And when I wanted to find a dessert I could make in just 15 minutes, I spent twice that time flipping through back issues before deciding grilled peaches with sweetened sou cream11 was my best bet.
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| '''Figure 1:''' My colorful and ever-growing Everyday Food library.|border |
The Solution
As my Everyday Food library grew, the problem got worse. Flipping through 20-plus issues to find that great roasted paprika recipe12 sort of lost its charm. So I created a solution: an organized spreadsheet containing every single recipe fom every single issue of Everyday Food, including key information like course and preparation time.
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| '''Figure 2:''' Screenshot of the Index.|border |
Now, instead of browsing my 35 issues to find lime recipes, I just type "lime" into the spreadsheet’s "Find" function, and voila — I have 20 lime-based recipes to choose from. And finding a 15-minute dessert is as simple as using the spreadsheet’s fully customizable sort tabs.
The first release of the "Everyday Food Fanatic Index" contains all the recipes for isues 1 through 28 — the magazine’s first two years.
Everyday Food Fanatic Index – Issues 1-37 13
If you like food (and who doesn’t?), check out the magazine and the spreadsheet. But be forewarned – you might become part of a following you just can’t escape.
1 "Everyday Food". MarthaStewart.com. Accessed July 2006 from http://www.marthastewart.com/page.jhtml?type=learn-cat&id=cat17922&rsc=msonav. Official site of the Everyday Food magazine.
2 The premiere issue of Everyday Food, from January/February of 2003, sometimes sells for more than $50 on eBay.
3 "Vegetable Lasagna". (May/June 2003). Everyday Food 3: 20.
4 "Butterscotch Pudding". (May 2005). Everyday Food 22: 106.
5 "Tres Leches Cake". (September 2003). Everyday Food 5: 34.
6 "Molten Chocolate Cakes". (December 2003). Everyday Food 8: 131.
7 "Watermelon Limeade". (July/August 2004). Everyday Food 4: 156. & "Cucumber Limeade". (July/August 200). Everyday Food 24: 152.
8 "Lime-Glazed Cookies". (July/August 2004). Everyday Food 14: 110.
9 "Salmon with Lime and Cilantro". (March 2004). Everyday Food 10: 77.
10 "Cocunut-Lime Rice Pudding". Ibid., 94.
11 "Grilled Peaches with Sweetened Sour Cream". (July/August 2004). Everyday Food 14: 37.
12 "Roasted Paprika Chicken". (October 2003). Everyday Food 6: 111.
13 This link was updated on 10 December 2006 to include a more up-to-date index.
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Martha Stewart on OmniNerd by tomtolman :: NR6 :: Show
I must say, I never expected to find a customizable index to Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food magazine on OmniNerd. I guess in between studying rootkits and programming a bootstrap loader someone’s got to eat right? I’m quite impressed.
Kathryn, is it your intention to release monthly updates to your list?
Marthadex by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
Oh my gosh, another person as crazy as I am. I’ve got Everyday Food 1-19 (I’m behind on updates) indexed at the Marthadex, along with most of the other Martha Stewart mags. It’s got a database backend, so it’s web-searchable, plus some bells and whistles like you can choose just which issues you have from the list and it’ll only search those. I don’t have the prep time and everything, though. Wow!
—Maitreya
Just to Make Sure by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
I wasn’t sure if I am missing something so I thought I would ask – do I still need to have the issues to get the recipes? There isn’t something I can click on to get the actual recipe, is there? It would be really cool if each recipe had a link to an actual copy of the recipe.
recipes online? by tomtolman :: NR6 :: Show
In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit one teensy hang-up to the Everyday Food library: there is no comprehensive index. Not even online…I’ve often had difficulty finding the exact recipe I’ve needed for a particular occasion. Case in point: when my local market had limes on sale 20 for a buck, I had to browse every issue to find recipes for limeade, lime-glazed cookies, salmon with lime and cilantro, and coconut-lime rice pudding.
Using the recipe search on the Everyday Food website I was able to find several recipes. For example, a search for limes returns 80 results including limeade, lime-glazed cookies, and salmon with lime and cilantro. I didn’t see any coconut-lime rice pudding however.
Are the recipes on the website the same as the ones in Everyday Food? Are there more in the magazine? More online? If the recipes are available online is there still an allure to the magazines?
More Online Recipe Options by tomtolman :: NR6 :: Show
TechCrunch has a review on a new site, recipematcher.com which helps you solve the problem of finding recipes to match the ingredients you have on hand. From the review:
Thank you by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
Thank you so much for indexing the complete set of Everyday Food!! Wow, you are so generous for sharing. My mother, sister and I have subscribed since issue 2, of course, the story of our family. In any case, we have had many discussions as to why there is not an index. You have solved one of our problems. Trying to remember where we got a terrific recipe for dinner and having to sort through 35 issues was just too much! Now we can find it in an instant. Thank you again.
updated version with hyperlinks by sjtpharm :: NR0 :: Show
Hi all from another Everyday Food junkie!
I found this post while searching for TOC’s of Everyday Food to add to my spreadsheet- this is terrific! Since I got most of my TOC’s online it had many of the recipes pre-hyperlinked (I found links for many of the others as well on the website). I combined my hyperlinked spreadsheet with Kathryn’s much more detailed one (and updated it up to issue 36). I’m too lazy to manually put in the page #s for the new issues, but the issues and dates are there.
Being web-challenged I’m not sure how to share it, but I’d be happy to email it to someone to post.
Take care,
Stacey (sjtpharm AT hotmail.com)
Updated spreadsheet, now with more improviness! by fryfrog :: NR0 :: Show
I’ve taken the spreadsheet above and updated it to include up to issue #38. I also converted all the times from a format such as "1 hr, 30 min" to "1:30" which makes it possible to sort by prep / total time. I’ve added a new "rating" column for YOU to use to rate the ones you have tried. More trivially, I removed the extra workbooks.
You can find the file at http://fryfrog.com/files/everyday_food_fanatic_index_through_38.xls or if you would like the smaller, zipped version http://fryfrog.com/files/everyday_food_fanatic_index_through_38.zip
cool thanks by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
I have subscribed since the very first issue and been a devotee since. I have always lamented the searching it takes to go through and find a recipe. No idea the first issue is worth so much! wow.
Wow! by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
You’re my absolute HERO!
Hugs for you! :)
THANK YOU! by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
You’re fantastic! I thought I was going to have to make my own EF index, but you already have (and much better than I would of, might I add). THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!
THANK YOU by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
I knew that i couldn’t be the only one who spent more time flipping through my many many many issues of everyday food looking for that one particular recipe than i spent actually cooking the damn recipe! This is great!
Updates planned????? by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
A great big thank you for the person or people who put this extremely valuable (to me) information together. Any chance of updating???
I am definitely in your cult by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
I love it so much I give it to people who love to cook…and who can’t cook for Christmas. and birthdays. and sometimes just for fun. Thanks for the index!
yeah! love this. by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
this is such a GREAT idea! i was thinking of doing the same thing when i found out that MS has not published an index (which is not very smart, in my opinion). now all i have to do is update this one which will save me a lot of work! thanks!
Everyday Food Recipe Index by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
this is great, thanks.. it helped me easily find a recipe i was looking for that for some reason won’t come up using the search engine on Martha’s website
although they actually did publish a recipe index for the magazine, “Everyday Food Recipe Index 2003-2006”, which i got free when i started my subscription to the magazine back in 2007.. but it’s basically useless to me since i only have issues from 2007 and on lol
so i would guess they’ll put another one together before too long
Just Awesome by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
I can’t understand why EF does not have an index to cover multiple mags & years. You rock for doing this.
Thank You from ANOTHER frustrated page-flipping EF Fanatic! by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
My friend gave me EF subscriptions for Christmas for 4 years and it makes me nuts not to have an index! Thank you! And thank you flyfrog for the useability improvements and extra issues!
everyday food spread sheet by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
God Bless You, can’t believe I found this link
thank you so very kindly,
DD