I don’t know about you, but I get overwhelmed with my lack of recipe organization. I have a recipe card box where I keep hand-written recipes from friends and family, I have a binder with adhesive photo pages where I stick things I tear out of magazines and print off from the web, and then I have a multitude of cookbooks lining my shelves. I have five Barefoot Contessa cookbooks alone, and while I love to thumb through them from time to time, I get tired of trying to locate a specific recipe when I’m ready to make dinner.
Then one day in my perusing of blogs, I came across this post from don’t call me becky.
I thought, how COOL would it be to have ALL of my favorite recipes in one place?
So I headed to Staples and bought a bunch of these top-load sheet protectors and a pack of tabbed dividers. I used the binder that I already had, but I emptied it and started fresh.
I started out by taking the online recipes I had been collecting, and I slid them into the sheet protectors and filed them in their proper category. Then I started going through my blog and printing out my Tried and True recipes. I’ve been finding a lot of new recipes on the “real food” blogs that I read, so I usually copy and paste those into a Google Doc. And every time I make something from one of my cookbooks, I go online and find it and print it out. If it’s not in a good printable format, I either type it up or copy and paste it into a Google Doc and then jerry rig it until it looks nice. I try to include at least one photo and I print in color so it’s pretty to look at.
The plastic sleeves keep my recipes nice and clean, and I keep a stack of sticky notes in a junk drawer so I can easily make notes on my recipes without messing up the page. Sometimes I’ll even go back to my computer and alter the recipe with my changes and print out a clean copy. OCD much?
It’s also an easy way to keep your recipes current. If I don’t like a recipe that I try, I remove it from the book. Soon I plan to go through my recipe card box and toss any recipes I haven’t made in a while, and I’ll type up the keepers and add them to my binder.
The cool thing about this is, over time, I will compile our very own family cookbook with all of our favorite recipes. My only regret is, I’m sort of wishing I had been copying every recipe into a Google Doc and printing from there because then I’d have an electronic version of our family cookbook as backup, and also for easy sharing. If I get really bored, I may go back and do that.
Here’s a quick video my husband took of me showing off my latest project — our family cookbook. Works for Me!
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I SOOOO need to do something like this! I have a pile ontop of my microwave of my mot used recipes! – it’s a mess and it keeps growing!!
~TidyMom
Thank you for the awesome idea! This is exactly what I need to do as I have printed off so many recipes from the computer and they are just folded and stuffed in a bag. I am going to get the necessary items and work on this project this weekend while we are camping!!
I just started one of these myself!
Great idea! I had not thought of using a binder, but it would work perfectly as many of my recipes nowadays are those I find and print off of the Internet. I currently have a recipe box stuffed with 3×5 recipe cards and folded pieces of paper….not such a workable plan!
What a great idea! I, too, have a box of hand written recipes that rarely get sifted through unless I’m looking for something specific. I also need to vary our menu a LOT (we pretty much eat the same basic dishes week after week). I like the idea of putting the recipes from the web in Google docs and having them available to print &/or share easily! I think this might be an upcoming project for me!
What an awesome recipe binder. I never thought to take pictures of the food to add to the recipe binder. Thanks for the tip!
Jo-Lynne, I like that idea. I started doing a similar thing a few years ago with the pre-printed recipe binders and filling in the recipes that I make a lot. The bummer is, no photos. I have one for breads and desserts, and one for “food”, lol. I am currently making one for my sons girlfriend of our favorite recipes and I wanted to add photos to that one. It does help to find what you want!
My aunt encouraged me to do this too, and I’ve been building my cookbook over time. The one thing I would encourage you to do is not to throw away any of the recipe cards that were hand-written by a friend or family member. Tuck them in the page protector with the typed out recipe so that you’ll have the card to keep as a memory. I cherish all the recipe cards with my mom’s handwriting.
Jo-Lynne, I am also a Barefoot Contessa fan. I have all of her cookbooks and every single recipe is delicious. I even got to visit her Barefoot Contessa store when it was open in East Hampton, NY. Great shop and I wish it were still open.
I already have a notebook like this with the intent to do as you described. So, this will be my kick in the bottom to just do it. Most of my printed recipes have become messed up with various ingredients that fell on them as I was making a recipe. So, I love your idea of using sheet protectors.
I’m loving this idea and appreciate your video and photos that help make it simple.
Emily, good point! In fact, in my recipe box, which is really a smallish binder, I would rewrite them and keep the original behind the new one, to keep the originals from getting messed up.
You are way too organized. LOL
Love this.
I have lots of recipes cut out of magazines, and currently “stuffed” (technical and appropriately cooking related term!) in no order inside a binder.
I like the thought of printing them from online, so all would be neat and the same size (!)
I doubt all could be found online, and I know I will never EVER retype them all. Maybe I should scan in my cuttings. If I ever get around to that, I will let you know.
However, any recipes found online from now on with definitely be getting this treatment.
Confession – I have yet to use Google Doc – am I really missing out?
Janmary, I love Google Docs!! So easy, and it’s all available online.
You can put your magazine clippings right into the sleeves!
See, you ARE organized!! What a great idea to include recipes you would usually look up in a recipe book. I’m going to start using that idea right away. Thanks for sharing it.
i have something like that – only not so pretty! great idea!!
I really need to do this with my recipes too.
I have been thinking about it for awhile, but haven’t yet gotten the nerve to take on the task! I have a binder where I have been storing my clippings, but they are certainly not organized and most don’t have pictures.
Do you take pictures of your own completed dish or try to find a pic online instead?
I love your idea for a Google Docs backup! That really is a great tip, since putting the book together takes a good bit of time and effort and it would be sad to see it lost.
Great post!
You know what I love about your cookbook? That you USE IT. I put all my recipes in a binder a while back, but I don’t USE IT! I make the same meals over and over. No matter how many times I plan to make something new…I fall back on the same old meals I don’t even need recipes for anymore!
What an awesome binder! It never occured to me to find something that would hold 8.5×11 sized documents-writing long or involved recipes on those small cards is a struggle!
We’ve taken to giving something like this as a wedding gift, particularly when the bride and groom have both been living on their own for a while and already have a fully stocked kitchen.
I love this set up for recipes! I went ahead and splurged on a TasteBook and it was totally worth it!
http://www.tastebook.com
I have that EXACT SAME recipe binder. I got it ages ago and have been looking for a 2nd one… do you happen to know where you got yours?
My recipe book needs purged very badly… but I’m not taking on any more projects right now…
Sarah, that’s so funny! I got mine ages ago too, and I remember it was this store called Organized Living or something like that. It closed.
I so did that when I was organizing my kitchen a while ago! The only problem I have now is remembering to put recipes back in it (I don’t have enough counter space to have it open on the counter when I’m cooking – how lame is that?). BTW, your creeping crust fruit pie looks like it will be going in mine. Along with that baked oatmeal!
Thank you for sharing. This is truly a great idea! I am going to get working on this ASAP!
Angie
Leane, sometimes I do take a photo, myself. Often I already have pictures that I’ve posted along with the recipe on my blog, so then I just go to the blog and copy and paste the whole post, picture and all.
How do you find the time for all of this? I need to learn a thing or two from you about managing time!
Nell
Ha. I don’t think I’d call it time management. I think I’d call it running around like a chicken with her head cut off.
I keep starting a project just like this and never finish it. My mom gave a me a cook book of her favs when I got married, I am wanting to create and keep up with my own for each of my girls. I am jealous of what you have done – CONGRATS!
I’m a day late and dollar short as usual but I just wanted to tell you how much I love, love, love your idea of using Google Docs to store the recipes I usually copy, paste and print in a text doc. Using Google Docs takes up no room on my hard drive, easy to search, share and print. I set up my recipe file and started putting recipes in it last week. LOVE IT!!
Must be recipe “re” organization time. Leigh Anne & I laughed that we posted our simple recipe organizing tips last week too! My 3 binders need some clean up work.
Didn’t mean to make this so long but I’m just finishing reading “Real Food” and we’re taking baby steps to make changes in a house of picky eaters. Love the granola bars and the baked oatmeal! Thanks for all the great ideas and links.
This is for ClassyFabSarah, who was looking for another recipe binder like the one Jo-Lynne used. It looked familiar to me, and sure enough, I had bookmarked it while searching for recipe binders for my daughter’s first wedding anniversary (paper!).
Here’s a link to the binder:
http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Recipes-Binder-European-Meadowsweet/dp/B000W88OS0/ref=pd_sbs_hpc_14
Sorry to hijack your blog, Jo-Lynne, but I didn’t know how else to get the info to Sarah. I don’t even know how she’ll find this post.:(