After seeing the photo of my recipe binder in my day 5, 6, and 7 post, Monica asked for more info on how I set up my binder. So here’s the scoop. There’s a brief article on my site about my recipe binder which talks about the different categories I use and how it’s set up.
And…here’s another big tip, from yours truly who happens to be an over-indulger in recipes from magazines: Just keep recipes you’re likely to make! When I browse through cooking magazines I tend to over keep—pulling out recipes for things I’d love to EAT but would never have the time or notion to make. It’s like I temporarily think I’m at a restaurant, and all those yummy dishes on the pages of the magazine will magically be delivered to my kitchen table.
I have found that I really need to look at the ingredient list and the prep time…I’m a simple cook. So…here’s the take-away. If you cook with five ingredients, collect five ingredient recipes and forgo the five-course, in the kitchen all day options — no matter how delicious they look! Get the complicated stuff when you dine out. 🙂
One more thing I have to share is about adding notes to your binder, like the one I added to the fried rice recipe. See, I tend to forget these things—things like the kids no longer like fried rice. Since my kids used to love fried rice, in my mind, when I’m craving it, they still love it, too. So, now I have a note to remind me. Then, if I’m really up for fried rice, at a minimum I can go into food-battle-with-the-kids with my eyes wide open or make them something else.
Anyone else out there love to collect recipes? Any solutions other than binders that you’d like to share? We haven’t “officially” shared in a while…so I can’t wait to hear from you! And if you just want to say “hooray for the recipe binder” because you have one and love it, too, that counts as sharing. 😉
I have a recipe binder too and it’s my very favorite thing. I also over-keep so about every six months or so I go through it and weed out stuff that I no longer remember why it’s there. I could collect recipes all day long, even if I never make a single one of them! They just make me happy, and you NeVeR know, right???
And I confess to still using a box with 3×5 cards for a bunch of recipes that were my mom’s already recorded that way. I just can’t bring myself to do something else with them.
I was just talking about a recipe binder with my friend yesterday! I am planning on creating one because, yes! I am a recipe hoarder. I plan on using part photo album/part binder inserts if I can find stuff that fits together in one thing.
I plan to separate into 7 parts – weeknight love, weeknight try, weekend love, weekend try, dessert love, dessert try, & entertaining.
Oh, Aby, I LOVE this post.
You and I are exactly the same. I also only keep what I call “quick and easy” recipes. I know full well that if there are 2 steps or 3 steps, it is SO not going to be made.
I’ve released myself from the idea that I’m actually going to cook those things. You said it perfectly when you said that it’s because we want to EAT those gorgeous meals that we keep them!
Happy eating 🙂
I have a recipe binder that I love. I also started a second binder just for recipes that have ingredients that I will always have on hand for last minute, non-menu planning days. Love that binder! I just recently purged all my recipes that I had cut out of magazines but not yet filed in either binder…I got rid of a LOT of them. Love your blog!
I have a recipe binder, recipe box and a drawer full of recipes torn out of magazines – I like your thinking and will try to weed them out. But the best thing I ever did was when my daughters graduated from college I asked family and friends to send me recipes and photos of the food or of them. I then put together a recipe scrapbook as a graduation gift. I sometimes call them and ask for one of the recipes.
Well, I have WAY too many recipes. And I collect cookbooks, recipes and craft books and craft patterns! lol.. in my decluttering I have gotten rid of many but still not enough. I started this last week a binder with ONLY To Try recipes. I have categorized them and put them in sleeves. The plan is to use at least 2 a week and when the verdict is in, either move them to my recipe binder to keep or throw them out if we didn’t care for it.
Because I work outside the home, I too, like quick and easy meals, crockpot meals, the like. So I am trying to be honest with myself as I go thru them, as I REALLY going to try this?!!
I like to use a little cheap photo album from the dollar store to hold my recipes. Each one fits into the photo slot and I have a small album for each category of food. (I have to admit that I have too many dessert recipes, so I have TWO albums for that!) Time to declutter the dessert recipes I guess – LOL Thanks for lots of great tips!
Well, creating a recipe binder is on my round tuit list. You know, I’ll do it when I get around to it.
I have so many different stacks of recipes that I have never made and couldn’t find the one I wanted to make even if I had the time. DH suggested scanning them into the computer but at the time the scanner technology hadn’t caught up to my Mac and I would have spent a huge amount of time hand typing them in anyway.
A friend at a needlework shop asked me to help her put together a cookbook she could sell and I spent months on it getting everything in the sections, correct order, indexed correctly, etc and she shelved the idea because of too many pages (She had most of the recipes but didn’t realize they would create a good size book). Needless to say, that pretty much killed my desire to type recipes into the computer ever again.
A binder would certainly make it easier to keep track of our favorites and will have to be moved up to the top of my ‘create’ list.
I love the dollar store albums for each category that Rebecca posted! What a great idea! Must make a stop at the local DS and see what they have that would work!
Thanks ladies!!
Thanks for posting about this, Aby!
With magazine recipes … if it’s single sided, I just tape the recipe onto an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper and slip it into the page protector. But I have a bunch of Taste of Home recipes that I don’t know what to do with. After reading your reader’s comments, I think I will try slipping them into photo sleeves. I feel like this will take me months, so I’m procrastinating. Maybe I just need to rent a few movies, plant myself in front of the TV with my binder and recipes and recycling bin and go to it.
Hooray for the recipe binder (because I have one too). I also started writing notes on the recipes. Not only the verdict, but also any substitutions I made.
I also have a lined sheet of paper at the beginning of each section that I use to write down favorite recipes from cookbooks. So when I know I want to make “that spinach dish” but can’t remember which cookbook it’s in, I just check my cheat-sheet and I’m good to go.
I am in the processing of making my recipe binder. As i make dinner/lunch that we all like i write it up on the computer and any changes that i made to the recipe. Then my aim is at the end of the year put it all together. Then i will only have things that we actually eat! Not things we would like to eat.
Also i am thinking that i will make a family cookbook of every recipe we love and give it as gifts to our family.
I too have an ever growing collection of recipes in a binder-or two :-p! My older daughter has her own binder started and and my son and younger daughter both took home-ec so they have their class cookbooks. I love printing recipes that I find and think we’d like to try this or that but hardly ever do. It also seemes that I tend to obsess with one kind of thing or another(like pumkin anything this month or cheesecakes the next). I try to weed out recipes but since I’ve started the binder (10 years ago) I’ve only weeded it out twice! I think I need to organize it in the way that we eat, weeknight meals, weekend meals, special occasions, desserts and then easy meals or something like that. I find though that I need to have a “system” in my head before I tackle anything otherwise it becomes an all-day/week project instead of an hour or two. Anyway, I think I’ve bored everyone with my babbling. Thanks for the post, I love your site!
I keep a binder too. Actually I have *cough* two that are stuffed full! One I keep just for baking and the other is for everything else. I keep the sections organized by meats like turkey dishes, pork etc, or side dishes and I have a meatless section. My baking book is organized by type too like breads, cakes, cookies that sort of thing.It is so handy and having them all in page protectors makes it nice to just pop it out of the book and take it over to where Im cooking and not worry about splashes and spills. One day I would love to photograph all the dishes and make a hardbound cookbook of favorite family recipes for all 3 of my kids. Like the ones at TasteBook.com. That would be a wonderful treasure for them to have.
I’m more of a cookbook collector than a single recipe collector. I bought a very cheery recipe box recently. I kept some of the category separating cards (Chicken, Pasta, etc…) but I changed some to match our family’s eating habits (World Travel Night, Pizzas, Favorite Sunday Dinners…). Then instead of writing one recipe on each of the included cards, I wrote down all of my tried and true recipes that fall under that catagory, along with what cookbook they are in and a page number so that I can easily find them. Anytime I try a new recipe that we like, I immediately add it to the box. It makes it so easy to plan meals for a whole week, and reminds me of great meals that we haven’t had in awhile.
I love my binder…although, it needs some serious attention of late. Great post:)
I really like the idea of taking notes for certain recipes. Thanks for the tip:)
I just found your blog and it seems really great. 🙂
I also have a recipe binder. I’m still in the process of converting all of my old recipes over to it and your post is quite timely…thank you! I have lots of random recipes from newspapers or magazines and currently I just keep them in a folder separate from the binder. I don’t like to add recipes to my main binder until I make them (and decide to keep them!). But my stack of recipes to try is a bit overwhelming. Maybe I’ll take a look at them like you suggested and decide if I really would make each one.
I totally agree with you on making notes on your recipes! My favorite type of note is actual cooking time (esp. for baking). That way even though the recipe might say bake 25-30 minutes, you’ll know that it took exactly 31 minutes (for example) in your oven the last time you made it.
I have a binder that is also categorized according to types of dishes that is stuffed full with recipes I get out of magazines. I love the idea of two binders where one is just for baking and one for meals. I also had an idea while I was reading these ideas — a binder for all those kids ideas. You know, the ones from Family Fun, Parenting, etc that have all those cute birthday ideas, along with cakes, treats, etc. I never know where to put those and, therefore, they are never used because who wants to go through a huge stack of pages from magazines???
By the way Aby, I used idea for a recipe swap – however, here was my twist: I am doing an ONLINE recipe swap. I created an invite on evite, sent it out to about 50 women in my contacts list and asked for two of their stock recipes that are simple and yummy. I have had a fabulous turnout. I plan to compile them all in a word document and then send them out to those who responded. I have got such great feedback – they all loved the idea. Thank you, Aby!!! You are awesome!
You blog os fun but the pickle pictures have me laughing so hard I have tears in my eyes…
I keep TRYING to create a recipe binder. I really want one – it makes so much sense. But usually the binder ends up one big mess of paper. Ugh. However, thanks to your lovely post, I’m feeling inspired (once again) to try getting my binder together. I think the problem is that I rarely like to eat the same thing twice. Now what do I do with THAT?!! Gotta love the complications, eh?
I’m so late on this, but thought I’d add my two cents. This is going to be ridiculously long. I am a crazy recipe organizer and I use so many methods… so many.
1. I bought my mom a blank recipe book when I was in high school and through the years I’ve added family recipes in this book. I took it from her several years ago. It’s not filled up, but I like it anyway. I don’t really want to fill it up because I like that all the recipes are special.
2. I have a list of often made meals. I’m not much of a recipe reader when I cook, unless it’s the first time I made that dish. So my list (4 pages and counting) is of food names only. I know how to make everything without a recipe, but if I felt like looking up a recipe, I could always search online. This list includes thinks like spaghetti, fried rice, burgers and mac and cheese, chili dogs, schnitzel…
3. Anytime I do find a recipe I like, whether it’s in a cookbook I own, one a friend owns, a magazine or the internet… and I plan to cook the recipe that day, I rewrite the recipe on a 4×6 index card. I use the card when I cook and put it in a place especially for those cards. I can write notes on it without guilt. I don’t have enough of these cards to worry about organizing them yet, but I will once they out grow the current box their in (which will be when I have about 100 cards… I only have about 30 or so right now).
4. I recently started a private blog where I keep recipes I like. Or, if I really want to delve deep into my recipe search. For example, I want to try to make a smith island cake. There are many variations of this recipe, so I plan to post some variations together and then write notes as I try the recipes and make adjustments. this is also great because I can tag the post to what kind of a meal it is, main ingredients, or source. When I purged some magazines recently, I typed up some of the recipes in the blog. In the future, I think I’d just scan them in. Also, by the end of the year I will have a system to cross reference and blog post recipe I have with the hand-written 4×6 card for easy access. Untested recipes just won’t have a card until I try the recipe out.
5. I love traditional thanksgiving meals and I love it when most of the items are from scratch. Several years ago I planned a thanksgiving meal for 7 people and bought a small notebook for the planning. I found a lot of great recipes for my favorite dishes and put them in the notebook. I then wrote out a list of all the ingredients I need and separated that list according to when the best time to purchase the ingredients would be. For example, sugar and baking powder can be purchased early, but you may want to wait before buying the potatoes. Then I wrote a cooking plan of when certain foods need to be prepared. For example, I chopped up bread and let it dry for the stuffing a few days before thanksgiving. I made pie crust early. I cut all the onions I would need on one day for recipes that were going to be made over the course of a few days.
I keep the notebook in my thanksgiving decoration box (it’s my favorite holiday). It’s a great reference that really takes the planning out of planning.
and that’s it.
oh, wait… i used to have a method of cooking freezer meals. I’m planning to give that it’s own notebook so that I don’t have to try to remember what I do each time I do it.