Need A Journal System For A Beefy Project

[iznogood]

Well I think I finally found a use for one of my notebooks. Well, another use apart from testing pens and inks in them....

We have just bought a incredible whole half of a Wagyu beef 100% pure breed. I think it was 470 ish pounds on the carcass and 230 ish done butchering. Came out at 40CAD/kl which is a ridiculous price for what this is.

Anyways, since this ton of delicious is packaged in hundreds of steaks in different cuts, roasts and everything else I want to be able to keep track of what I like the most and what I would like cut thicker next time or whatever observation I have. Also note cooking methods, temps, taste notes. The owner of the farm gave me a binder with information and sheets for feedback. Given that it was a important purchase and since he knows we can be long time clients (my gf was born in money and I have a private catering business) so producers have a interest in having a good and lasting relation with us.

So yeah simple just use a notebook! Done! Wait.. Which notebook... Then it hit me! My Atelier Musubi notebook that is hopefully on the way would be perfect! A artisan made notebook from the same country as the origin of my beef. A iconic design for a iconic beef.

What I still haven't figured out is how to organise it. I might start in another notebook and when I am satisfied with my system I transcript it to the good notebook and go from there.

Does anyone have any system that would suit what I want to do? Or is the bullet journal versatile enough?

THanks in advance and hope I am in the right forum!

[welch]

For note-taking, I use Palomino Blackwing notebooks, from the Palomino pencil company. Smooth paper that likes fountain pen ink. I have used Levenger's Notabilia.

 

However, both are best for plain chronological writing...pages do not remove and re-order. While you might use one page (or two consecutive pages) for one chunk of beef, these notebooks are not "friendly" when you want to cross-reference something.

 

I hate to suggest it, but a computer database system sounds right for you. You can index on a couple of fields, add a key of later you find you should have indexed on another field...or do a brute force search on a string of characters or words. A normal PC can whip through a lot of data...faster and more reliably than you can do by hand-and-eyeball.

 

For an example, download and try the pen database given through FPN. Yes, something free, written by a member here.

[iznogood]

Well about doing it on my pc. I'm actually a ex-programmer. Pretty much gave this up 2 years ago when I got a opportunity to do catering and have never looked back.

 

it would be quite trivial for me to do this on a computer and it is absolutely the most efficient way by far. Why I am not going this route, and I have not made that clear at, all is that:

 

I do not need to do any of this. We bought the beef to eat. I am doing it for my own food knowledge/passion.

I am struggling quite hard to find a reason to use a notebook/fountain pens since I do not write, keep a journal or have any capacity to use and follow a calendar. I just doodle and test inks/pens/paper combos.

 

About the notebook I plan to use I bought one from http://www.musu.bi . I do not have a affiliation with them but I am a member of another forum where the owner of this shop posts. He just started his business (employing handicapped to make notebooks by hand in Japan) and I bought one of his notebooks: tombo (dragonfly) in natural. They are made with Tomoe river.

 

Anyways, I thought it would be a wonderful use of the notebook to log my cooking of 232 pounds of wagyu beef. The design of the cover being as iconic as the Wagyu beef to Japan.

 

I'm really hoping to find some system to organise myself. In the end I'll find some way of course I mean I was a programmer. But as with programming why reinvent the wheel? If someone has done something like that I would love to benefit from their head start.

 

Now which of my pens I use is up to me I could use some ideas/suggestions for color. I want this to be legible so nothign light. The obvious color would be some very dark red/brown. Should order some samplers from wonderpens..

 

Thanks a ton for the suggestion!

 

For note-taking, I use Palomino Blackwing notebooks, from the Palomino pencil company. Smooth paper that likes fountain pen ink. I have used Levenger's Notabilia.

 

However, both are best for plain chronological writing...pages do not remove and re-order. While you might use one page (or two consecutive pages) for one chunk of beef, these notebooks are not "friendly" when you want to cross-reference something.

 

I hate to suggest it, but a computer database system sounds right for you. You can index on a couple of fields, add a key of later you find you should have indexed on another field...or do a brute force search on a string of characters or words. A normal PC can whip through a lot of data...faster and more reliably than you can do by hand-and-eyeball.

 

For an example, download and try the pen database given through FPN. Yes, something free, written by a member here.

[sandy101]

I use the Leuchtturm journals. They have page numbers, and an index at the front. I do writing practice, reviews and a mixture of stuff and anything I want to find later gets written in the index - the stuff I don't want to keep remains, unindexed in the journal. It works for me, anyway.

 

Make a mess with the notebook - don't try and make it all neat in beginning. You could come up with a proforma to stick in the book - ingredients, cooking method and so on, which will remove some of the tedium. If its all messy, you can always write it up neatly later on.

 

You can always add stuff to the computer later - either by scanning the pages, or redrafting.

[sidthecat]

Diamine Oxblood is the appropriate ink, of course.

What fun to have enough Wagyu beef to waste some! It's a product that can be used in so many ways.

Perhaps you can share your results when you start in.

Are you going to try dry-aging some of the big cuts?

[praxim]

It seems to me this is not so different from notating pens and inks. You wish to record cuts, assessed attributes of them, and related cooking information, I think.

 

With a journal you can easily index cuts and on related pages discuss their attributes. You can also index cooking approaches and discuss on related pages the cuts and outcomes. I doubt you will need many indices at all to be able to access information by the keys you want. In fact, don't over-complicate it.

 

It has been quite interesting to re-appraise much of what I previously imagined I must do on a computer, that can be done efficiently on paper. Computers are useful for free searching on text, and aiding complex numeric tasks. If the data mass is broadly manageable then use your skills to organise it to be truly manageable, and interesting as a process. There is no tragedy if you mislay a bit of information about another bit of beef.

[Flippy]

Diamine Oxblood is the appropriate ink, of course.

What fun to have enough Wagyu beef to waste some! It's a product that can be used in so many ways.

Perhaps you can share your results when you start in.

Are you going to try dry-aging some of the big cuts?

I love Diamine Oxblood. Such a deep, dark red.

[displacermoose]

Jetpens has Japanese looseleaf, binders, and dividers that are fountain pen friendly. You could use something like that to start and then transfer your notes into your nicer journal of you'd like.

[iznogood]

Jetpens has Japanese looseleaf, binders, and dividers that are fountain pen friendly. You could use something like that to start and then transfer your notes into your nicer journal of you'd like.

I'll look into it thanks! Have heard of jetpens but since I am in Canada and had such wonderful experiences with wonderpens have never needed to go elsewhere.

Diamine Oxblood is really the obvious and only choice if I want to go this route with the color. I'll have to acquire a sample to test. Or just get a bottle it would not go to waste anyways (or well anymore then all my other inks).

Still I find it a little morbid and kitsch to use blood red for a beef log book but then again it seems so "perfect", I'm almost tempted to go all in and use my midori style leather notebook cover and booklets. It would be more manageable (a insert for each cut/section/whatever). But I really like my iconic japan stuff theme.

 

About Tomoe river are there any obvious good/bad pens/inks? I'll make up my mind myself since in the end I'm the only judge of if some combo works for me. But I mean is TOmoe river famous for being bad with wet inks? things like that to save me time I guess.

 

Thanks to everyone for the advices so far!

 

Here's one (of tens) of my babies. Marbling... :

http://i.imgur.com/ypzhBdU.jpg?2

[ArtofEricGunty]

Forget about notebooks, I'm ready for a steak now!! I saw someone suggest the Leuchtturm, which was what I would suggest due to the index at the beginning. Hope it all works out for you.

[iznogood]

Forget about notebooks, I'm ready for a steak now!! I saw someone suggest the Leuchtturm, which was what I would suggest due to the index at the beginning. Hope it all works out for you.

 

The steaks are insane! I'm pretty set on using my japanese notebook when it finaly gets here. Ended up ordering Oxblood and samples of different reds and greens (greens for my Parker 51 which is forest green).

 

Cannot wait to try oxblood it looks perfect.

 

Thanks for the suggestion!

[iznogood]

Got my order from wonderpens. I love them so much! In the notes I had asked for some scrap/samples of tomoe river paper since I never used it and all they had where 100 sheets for 25$.

In my order with the DIamine oxblood and other stuff there were 3 pages that peoples use to test pens in tomoe river. Perfect for my needs (which where to get a chance to try pens/inks on this paper before my notebook from Japan arrives (if it ever arrives..).

Have to say Tomoe river is really slim. Almost like bible paper.

[Arkanabar]

Look up bullet journaling. It's a very flexible system. While most of the advice is designed around A5 sized paper, I had little trouble adapting it to 8x10.5 inch spiral notebooks. It shouldn't be too much trouble to adapt it to your format, either, especially if you don't feel the need to carry your new notebook everywhere.

[notsimar]

possibly order a stalogy a5 or b5 365 journal.

[Mardi13]

Coming late to this after a search for "musubi," I was hoping to find a review of the notebooks. What I want to know is, what pen did you use? I would have chosen my Genkai. How was the beef? And if you don't mind, what forum does Darryl post I ? I love the concept for his business and would like to know more.

[Kessel]

Coming late to this after a search for "musubi," I was hoping to find a review of the notebooks. What I want to know is, what pen did you use? I would have chosen my Genkai. How was the beef? And if you don't mind, what forum does Darryl post I ? I love the concept for his business and would like to know more.

 

I am he. Sorry, I don't check FPN very often these days as we're running all over the place - just finished exhibiting at the San Francisco Pen Show a week back.

 

Did you have a specific question you needed answered? We can always be reached at order [at] musu [dot] bi.

[Chris]

Be careful that there is no bleed through when using Diamine Oxblood

 

Any more?

 

But a great idea - enjoy your beef!

[iznogood]

Coming late to this after a search for "musubi," I was hoping to find a review of the notebooks. What I want to know is, what pen did you use? I would have chosen my Genkai. How was the beef? And if you don't mind, what forum does Darryl post I ? I love the concept for his business and would like to know more.

The beef is, of course, fantastic! But the project took too long to get on the way and I have used the notebook for something else. It is tomoeriver paper so everything you know about it is the same. I have used a lot of inks/pens and I never have problems except for the occasional "long time to dry" inks.

 

 

Notebook is great! Got a second free one since the first one had warped in transport and gave it to my mom for her daily notebook where she notes things she sees in nature. She loves it to death.

 

Oh hey Kessel!

[WillN]

I described my bootleg letter sized/A4 notebooks in the newbie section. 200 pages 100 sheets..... They print out well, then I bind them with hot glue. Been doing this for a few years, at least ten notebooks. Works well for me.

 

Indexing. Page numbers are already printed on each page in my notebooks. I also have line numbers 5,10, 15, 20..35

For indexing I do one of two things. (If you use composition notebooks and misnumber them.. You end up with just a longer page4 45 or something-- you just want to find whatever you wrote.)

Each index entry starts with Day, Date, Year and time I started (Time is just to make me feel guilty if I'm slacking off...) Then I write my nonsense....

To index:

1. I just go through the notebook. On a loose page I write down the page number, day, date and subject, project it belongs to, a brief summary. Any key information. I usually end up with 30-60 notes per 200 page notebook.

2. I'll transcribe this into a FileMaker Pro database. Simple flat file so it could be done in a spreadsheet or word processor document. You just want to put it into something that's easily searchable and other wised organized.

If I enter the index into FileMaker I'll print out a copy to keep with the notebook. (In Filemaker I have a field that identifies the notebook, in a pull down menu is a list of my notebooks. I even add older notebooks...)

 

A good step would be to make a note on each entry in the notebook at time or writing or during indexing. (Skip the paper index step--it's redundant.)

 

If you need to type enter long lists of information the best method I've come up with so far is to (1) scan the list, (2) place the scan into Adobe Illustrator, gray out the list so it won't make a mess of what you type. (3) Lock that layer, (4) make a new layer and then type right over the scanned list, usually just above or below the the scanned text. (5) I adjust the line spacing to match the scanned document lines. (6) When done, copy the text and paste into a document.

This is by far the fastest method for transcribing writing into the computer; the original and what you're typing are in the same place. Your eyes move not your head.

This method is however based on the expensive Adobe Illustrator vector design app, which most people aren't going to buy just for transcribing lists.

You can use anything that allows placing a scan, locking the layer, adding another layer and being able to type and then copy the text (I don't think Photoshop would do this very well). There's probably a free analogue application or a way of placing an image into a word processor and typing on the top of it...

 

I can make you a pdf for printing of a note book if you need something that isn't available, with page numbers) If you have a line spacing, dots, etc... paper size, etc... and need 200 pages (100 sheets) I can probably crank out a pdf. I make the lines gray that laser prints well, so they don't interfere.) Let me know.

 

 

 

[WillN]

I've turned a letter sized 200 page journal, 4mm dots DIY Notebook into a pdf file. It's 72MB.

Viewed in Preview or Acrobat it will look like page 1 right side up #1, page 2 upside down #200, then #2, #199, #3, #198....

When printed Two sides, it will print 100 sheets on both sides.

If anyone would like this in A4 or legal size, just say the word. What I don't want to do is less than the 200 pages, but ask. I know I didn't want to carry around 100 pages when I was backpacking. I can write up a storm, but I don't think I'd fill up 100 pages in a week.... Smaller sized paper would require cutting.

I've got a template for lines 5 mm with a 2mm gap then 5 mm (7/32 and 3/32). I had some notion that instead of skipping lines the small gap would be enough separation. My handwriting is pretty sloppy. I'm open to suggestions.

All the lines (subtly dotted) and dots on both notebook designs are thin and light gray. I barely notice them.