I love reading cooking and baking blogs and imagining eating all the delicious, mouth-watering food.
Anybody else?
Well, if you have good intentions as I do, those recipes and recipe books pile up very quickly and start to overwhelm you.
So I thought I'd share what works for me.
1. I only buy cookbooks that feature my specialties.
I don't cook meat dishes very well; I don't know why, I just don’t. I also don't do cakes - that's a personal preference because I'm too lazy impatient for mixing this, and mixing that.
I love cooking stir-fries, pasta dishes and muffins, though, so that's where I focus my energies.
2. I learned to let go of my good intentions.
I am now coming to terms with reality and realize that I am never going to make a triple-layer chocolate cake even for my husband's birthday. I also deleted all the free recipe books from my hard drive that I now know I'm never going to use, like 101 recipes using coffee.
3. I have a Word document called Blog recipes to try.
When I'm browsing blogs and see a recipe that is (a) easy, (b) looks yummy and (c) that I am likely to try, I copy and paste it into this document. Then when I'm doing my menu planning or I feel like trying out new recipes on the weekend, I quickly print it.
This cuts down on the paper clutter!!!
4. I have a limited space in my kitchen for non-kitchen stuff.
Between the cupboard and my microwave (see picture), that's all the space I allow for recipe books, appliance manuals and my Household Organising File with blank menu plans, shopping lists, travel lists and so on..
The basket is also easy to carry to the TV when I need to declutter it every couple of months.
How do you keep on top of the recipe & recipe book clutter?
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Organising your recipes
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3 comments:
I have a 3 ring binder with clear plastic sleeves and tabbed dividers (appetizers, veggies, meat, soups, etc.) inside. When I print a recipe off the computer, I just hole-punch it, and put it in the right section. If I find a recipe I like in a magazine, I rip it out and put it in the plastic sleeves, and I put two in each sleeve (back to back) to save space/money with the dividers. My binder is probably my favorite recipe book because there's not a single recipe in it I don't like!
My system is similar to Sara's two three-ring binders divided into categories. Right now my recipe binders are more of a wishlist than a cookbook I use regularly. There are more untried than tried recipes.
As I find magazine recipes to try, I tear them out and keep them in a file folder. Two or three times a year I put all the new recipes in my binders, and take out any recipes I'll probably never make.
Oh..Oh...Oh...Oh... I love this topic (not because I am very good at it, but because I love to hear what other people do).
I actually invested in the Betty Crocker Program for my PC. I catalog all the recipes I have tried and like.
The ones I clip are what I struggle with and how to keep them. I usually just stick them to the fridge until I use them... Not a good system, so I am all ears!
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