Weekend Assignment: Rescue Your Recipes

September 10, 2015

I spent yesterday afternoon helping my client wrangle her collection of loose recipe pages, and it’s made me decide to assign the task to all of you because.

weekend assignment to get organized: handle that collection of loose recipes once and for all.

Among the collection were handwritten notecards a couple of decades old, crumpled newspaper and magazine tears, print outs of recipes exchanged between friends over email, from websites and cooking blogs. Some contained notes in the margin, reminders to adjust the bake time, substitute ingredients, or just “excellent.”

It wasn’t a massive stack, but still–among the piles of paper were treasured formulas, followed on numerous occasions; fail safes for social gatherings yet to occur. Especially those deserve all the love and care you can give them. They are, after all, the dishes over which your family and friends have made memories. They have and promise again to unite people through food.

Whether you have fifteen or one hundred and fifty, it’s important that you elevate the status of your recipes from rumpled-stiltskin to beautifully arranged for maximal use. Because, like anything else, if you can’t see it, how are you very well going to use it?

Okay, I’m ready. 

– Gather your recipes accumulated over the years: ones you’ve recently torn or printed out, ones given to you post-dinner party by your amiable host, ones handed down from your granny, and so on. (Although it might be a sacrilege to some, I say if you own cookbooks from which you have or only ever will make like, 1 or 2 recipes: tear those suckers out and pass that book on.)

– Sort through the recipe pages you possess, discarding any you’d never now have an interest in making, and placing into categories such as, “desserts,” “salads,” blah blah.

weekend assignment to get organized: handle that collection of loose recipes once and for all.

weekend assignment to get organized: handle that collection of loose recipes once and for all.

– Then, implement a comprehensive system for storing them. Whether that’s digitalizing them all or placing into sleeve protectors and a 3-ring binder is up to you.

But be thorough, conquer that whole stack, and then, you know, once your collection of recipes, itself, is beautiful enough to drool over, get busy cooking.

 

Pssst: if you’re going the binder route, you’ll want to check these out. 

 

Image credits: Funnelcloud RachelBrookstone

3 Comments

  1. Heather on September 10, 2015 at 7:03 am

    I NEEDED this post today. My recipe binder is a mess! I love the idea of sorting out into separate binders by dish – definitely trying this asap!

    Heather
    Pineapples and Pearls

  2. Deborah on September 10, 2015 at 10:17 am

    A couple years ago I printed, placed them in sheet protectors and put them in a binder. BEST decision I’ve made in a long time! I do have a small Index card type box that I keep w/a handful of recipe cards that are near and dear because they are handwritten by people who have long since passed. I’m sentimental that way.

  3. b_parker on September 10, 2015 at 11:08 am

    Great assignment! We have recipes in binder(s), in sleeve protectors, indexed by eight major meal categories … but where do you find the pre-printed tabs? Or did you make them?

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3 Comments

  1. Heather on September 10, 2015 at 7:03 am

    I NEEDED this post today. My recipe binder is a mess! I love the idea of sorting out into separate binders by dish – definitely trying this asap!

    Heather
    Pineapples and Pearls

  2. Deborah on September 10, 2015 at 10:17 am

    A couple years ago I printed, placed them in sheet protectors and put them in a binder. BEST decision I’ve made in a long time! I do have a small Index card type box that I keep w/a handful of recipe cards that are near and dear because they are handwritten by people who have long since passed. I’m sentimental that way.

  3. b_parker on September 10, 2015 at 11:08 am

    Great assignment! We have recipes in binder(s), in sleeve protectors, indexed by eight major meal categories … but where do you find the pre-printed tabs? Or did you make them?

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