We love to find new recipes in our cookbooks or magazines. The trouble is where to put all those cutouts and how to remember where you got that great recipe that you want to make again. I am sure you have all had this experience. I have created a two-part system to organize our recipes.
1) Recipe binders: I file my cutout magazine recipes in hanging folders by type of recipe. A few times a year I then adhere those recipes to white paper and put them in page protectors. I then put those recipes into different binders based on types of food. We have binders for:
– Vegetarian entrees
– Meat, Veggies, Sides and Bread
– Foreign Food and Soups
– Desserts
– Light Desserts
– King Arthur Flour recipes (from their great mail catalog)
Within each binder, we divide the recipes with tabbed dividers as necessary.
2) Favorite recipes index: I use an index card binder with hole-punched index cards inside (you can find these at OfficeMax or Office Depot). I have two of these: one for weekday recipes and one for Shabbos recipes. The weekday recipes are divided by type: pasta, salmon, mexican, fake meat/eggs, beans, and meat. The Shabbos recipes are divided by course: main dish dairy, main dish meat, sides, soups, and desserts.
On each card I DO NOT write the recipe. That would take forever!
Instead I record:
– the name of the recipe
– the ingredients and amounts needed
– the cookbook or binder name
– the page number or divider section of that recipe
This system works great for us when we are menu planning. We can just get out our favorites binders and plan from them. For those weeks when we are too tired to make an elaborate menu or don’t have time to try new recipes, this is particulary helpful. We don’t have to get all the cookbooks out and we can easily remember where to get a recipe when the time comes to cook. It also makes creating the grocery list very simple!
This may be too much to do all at once. Choose one of the above ideas that works for you. The “Favorites Binder” is the easiest to create and simple to keep up with. When we make a new menu for the week, we just make sure to write down any new favorites from the previous week in the binder. The cute thing is that whenever we have a recipe that my older son really likes, he says “Can we put this in the Favorites?”
In case you missed it on my previous post about Menu Planning, here is the form I use to record our weekly menu and grocery list. Grocery List form
Surviving on a tight budget 
I just had to share – you know sometimes you are sitting look at a magazine that your friend owns, and oh “there is a recipe” I would like to try – try this next time – take out your phone – I have a android phone and I took a picture – you can always pull it back into your computer at a later date and you are saving a page in a magazine. 🙂
Thanks for the great tip!