A personal database of patterns and recipes

I was recently confounded with a serious problem. I needed to organize my patterns and recipes in a database as things were pretty much out of hand. They were all over the place - in books, magazines, in notebooks, on 5 different accounts sitting on 3 different computers and even some residing in my memory, waiting to be documented. A little dire, yeah.

So I put together a wish list for my database:

- centralized so I can access it from anywhere in the world without having to keep separate copies (no installed applications, please.)
- easily searchable
- highly categorized
- picture upload capability
- possibility to include comments in journaling format
- feature that allows emailing of my recipe/pattern at the click of a button

First, I looked up online personal databases for recipes. Kraft Foods has one. FoodTV has another. What I did not fancy was the requirement that I 'submit' my recipe to the message board to be able to add it to my collection. That, or I had a limit to the number of recipes I could collect. In anycase, what about my knitting patterns?

So I contemplated starting a new blog. Which reminded me of another important item for my wishlist:

- restricted access

Blog with authentication was a candidate. I did much research. The issue here? Only TypePad has an authentication service. And it's too expensive for me. Wordpress can be installed and configured for access but what about the domain name and web account I'd need? Much too much overhead.

I slept over this issue and woke up with a solution which I tested out today: Gmail. This is how it'd work: Start a new Gmail account. Write out the pattern/recipe in a new mail and send this to yourself. Upload pictures if you like.

Gmail's response to my wishlist:
+ Great search
+ Easy tagging (using labels and filters),
+ I only need to 'reply' to the main message to include additional comments to the recipe/pattern,
+ thumbprint of uploaded image shows up in the body of the mail. Perfect for recipes and patterns
+ emailing the content out to family/friends is the original intent of Gmail!
+ restricted access is part of the deal

Oh, and the best of all, I can finally make good use of the content-sensitive advertising!

The catch though is that I am not aware of how to export a bunch of mails in a document format so I can create a PDF or e-book of sorts. You see where I'm getting at? A personal printed cookbook or pattern book with my gmail account as source. Wouldn't that be awesome? Any ideas?