Welcome to the first day of Retro Cooking Month! A month to share recipes, try new things and maybe make a plan to cook more at home with simple, healthy ingredients as opposed to take-out, pre-package foods and convenience foods.
Nothing to be afraid of, though, lol! Everyone is invited to play along at any level of participation – don’t want to cook your own bread all month? No one is going to cry foul! Kids aren’t going to live for a month without Pop Tarts? We won’t tell! Share one recipe on your blog, or share every day – it’s all good!
Along with themes for the day, Retro Cooking Month is also going to feature guest blogs and giveaways!
Today’s theme is sharing your recipe system! Whether you have a organized recipe box, keep them on your computer, or have them shoved in a box, lets hear about them!
Note: somehow my comments are now posting ABOVE my blog posts. I’ve not been messing at all with my code or template, and I have NO idea how this happened. So if you are having trouble finding the comments, button, look up!
Here is my system for recipes:
The first step in my cooking ideas is a spiral notebook. In this notebook, I tape or glue recipes from magazines, recipes from websites (all hail the glorious Food Network website, lol!) and ideas that pop into my head.
They sit here in this notebook until I decide that I’m ready to try them out. When I’m ready to cook, they move to my fancy kitchen cabinet accessory:
Also known as a clothes pin that holds them to my cabinet handle! Here they hang so that I can follow them while I’m cooking. I keep a pen in this cabinet, so I can make adjustments to the recipe as I go through it – because I always have something that I want to change, leave out or add. I make a little note right on the page about my changes.
After we actually eat the dish, I jot down notes about anything else I might want to change (there’s always something!) after we’ve tasted it. Adjustments in seasonings, maybe I want to try using leftover meat instead of cooking it fresh to speed up the recipe, etc.
When I’m completely happy with all the changes and have the final recipe that I’d like it to be, it gets printed or written down and added to my binder.
They get placed in a plastic sleeve, so that they can travel back and forth to the kitchen and not get ruined. If the recipe belongs in more than one section, I make a note on the divider in the other sections on where in the binder it resides. For example, a pork based wonton recipe might live in the “Asian” section, but I make a note on the divider of the “Appetizer”, “Pork” and “Party Foods” sections so I think of the recipe when I hit those sections for ideas!
And that’s my system in a nutshell! What’s yours? Share your a link, or a recipe on your blog, then leave your link here:
Oh MY! That very high tech recipe holder kitchen accessory thing is a must have! I'm going to go get one right NOW. Back, from the clothesline.. Mine is red
hehehe
I'm a three ring binder with clear document protectors girl! Hopefully, I'll have a picture up on my blog this afternoon!
I really don't have any system
But I'll link my recipes on my bog.
Ive searched boxes for my cookbook but it was in my face the whole time (ok, not in my face, but about 2 feet above it) So now I can take pics and show you, yay!
I do the three ring binder thing from the very beginning, adding my notes as I go along. It occurs to me that your system might help me avoid the crunchy, stained, sugar-crusted mess that sometimes gets slipped into the protectors. Hmmm….
Well…I've cut recipes out of magazines and past them on paper and put them in a ringbinder
Very cheap huh? hehehe!
love the clothes pin idea … i will have to try that
Seems we all love three ring binders – I also use one, off I go to do my post for show and tell.
I use 3 ring binders with page protectors. I've gotten a bit lax lately and haven't bee writing them down and have been saving them in documents online instead. I need to print them out.
I'm too lazy to print things out. I will grab the relevant bits and stuff them into my Evernote folder. When I get a chance to try it out, I just use the kitchen computer to view the recipe. If it is a keeper, I add it to MacGourmet.
I'll be posting later with my system which is really more a work of art coupled with a hodge podge
I'm the one with random recipes all over the house in random areas.
Mmmm, I have an equally high tech system of sliding the paper into the little gap between the trim and the face of the cabinet. Sometimes I go so far as to add a piece of tape at the top. Sometimes they even stay there for days!
I may even get something onto my oft ignored blog. 'sigh
I haven't developed a good system yet. A lot of my family recipes are in my head, I store some on the computer, every now & then I find an index card in a drawer or laundry room and I have a few on facebook that I shared with my friends.
I have a binder and a box and a pile of loose papers. In other words, no good system. I do have one of those fancy recipe holders for while I cook (NOT). Yea its a magnet on the side of my fridge, fancy right? I may steal your method, especially the plastic sleeves. I have pages of recipes with crud spilt on them.
I have a ton of cookbooks that I never use lol. I've pared it down to the ones I absolutely think I need. Ones I get online or in magazines go in this big ass binder I have. I also put tips and stuff from magazines in there too. They will have their own homes eventually!
I have several cookbooks with post it flags on my favorite recipes. They are color coded for those that I have tried and for those that I am interested in trying. If I get a recipe from a friend/magazine/online etc. I write it on my recipe cards – they were my "wishing well" for my bridal shower – and they get placed in their own recipe box (another gift from my shower). The box itself is divided into sections by the main ingredient. I'm a bit of an organization nut. If I can get pictures uploaded to my blog, I will.
That is kinda like my system. I have a hardback sketch journal I bought and I glue in the recipes from magazines and websites in it, but it is in no particular order. Then I have my wooden box just big enough to hold my issues of Everyday Foods (best thing Martha ever did) and then my shelf full of my antique cookbooks, I love the ones from the 50's back,I have one dated 1892 from the Boston cooking institute.OH and instead of the clothespin on the handle I use a magnet on the vent hood.
Very cool! And so organized!
Well, as usual, I'm lagging behind.But I really love your recipe book ideas. Very organized!