I always have a ton of fun interacting with Google’s NotebookLM, which lets you create extensive research materials with the aid of a prompt, links, uploaded documents, etc but I recently found a brand new use for for it.
One of Gemini’s latest updates, Study Notebooks, is actually being powered by NotebookLM and turns Google’s AI tool into another way for students and curious researchers to create their own educational logbooks. Google made sure to present Gemini’s newest feature as a reliable way to study, as users can upload documents and tell the chatbot to create a curriculum based on them. Being able to turn Gemini into your tutor as you attempt to take its quizzes and master assorted lessons should come in handy for students, young and old.
In my case, I wanted to take Gemini Study Notebooks for a spin by doing something besides studying. Since my quest for finding the best dinner recipes never ends, I used this new feature to build a personalized, interactive cookbook.
And to my surprise, Gemini’s Study Notebooks is also a pretty efficient kitchen manager.
Organizing my recipes was a breeze
Creating a new Study Notebook in Gemini is as simple as opening the sidebar on the left side of the screen, scrolling over to “Notebooks” and selecting “New Notebook.”
I decided to title my new notebook “International Recipe Prep Planning,” which would serve as my newest method for developing a digital cookbook. Instead of attaching documents with all the pertinent information for this subject, I found two links that highlighted a long list of delectable delicacies that included one of two proteins: chicken or steak.
With this prompt and the two links I discovered, I entered the beginning stages of my new digital cookbook: "Review all the recipes from the two links I have included. Create a comprehensive table categorizing them. Include columns for: Recipe Name, Primary Protein, Estimated Total Time, Cuisine Type, and Freezer-Friendly (Yes/No)."
Gemini responded to my request with the following response: The links you have shared point to Serious Eat collections: one for grilled steak recipes and one for chicken recipes. Below is a comprehensive categorization table based on classic, highly rated Serious Eats recipes typical of these collections (such as J. Kenji López-Alt’s and Gritzer’s staple formulations), broken down by the requested metrics.
Gemini’s chart proved to be extremely helpful as it helped me prioritize which dishes to cook based on how much time I could set aside for it (those Easy Pan-Seared Chicken Breasts proved to be a nice and easy dinner to whip up after work).
My first Study Notebook also told me about the non-tasty downfall behind freezing a cooked steak & reheating it and included a video detailing the best ways to cook a steak based on the recipes detailed in the articles I linked.
From there, I could tell my Study Notebook to give me a step-by-step cooking guide for each dish and ask it to create an optimized workflow that consolidates certain steps into one for multiple recipes. Besides my prompt, Gemini recommended four other prompts that work best with users who want to use the Study Notebooks feature for meal prepping:
- The Ingredient Overlap Finder: Analyze my uploaded recipes and find the common denominators. Which 5-10 baseline ingredients (like onions, chicken breast, or rice) show up the most often across these documents? This will help me buy in bulk.
- The Shelf-Life Scheduler: Based on the food safety guidelines and recipe instructions in my notebook, map out a 5-day eating schedule. Assign the meals that spoil the fastest to Days 1 and 2, and the heartiest/longest-lasting meals to Days 4 and 5.
- The Aisle-by-Aisle Grocery List: Generate a consolidated grocery list for [List the 3-4 recipes you are making]. Group the ingredients strictly by supermarket section (Produce, Meat & Seafood, Dairy, Pantry/Spices) so I can get through the store as quickly as possible. Combine quantities for overlapping ingredients.
- The Calorie Budgeter: My daily calorie goal is [Insert Number]. Using the meals I've uploaded, build a sample full-day meal plan (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and 1 Snack) that gets as close to this goal as possible.
The takeaway
Gemini’s Study Notebooks certainly prove to be a valuable study tool for students and researchers alike.
But it can also be used to organize your ideas by grouping all your chats on a particular topic into a Study Notebook that cites all of the information contained in your links and uploaded sources. My notebook played the part of a digital cookbook I could refer to whenever I wanted to pursue new recipes and learn everything I possibly could about them before enjoying them for myself.
