Recipe Organization

Back in April I started to organize and weed out my recipes...here is the link to what I did with my wonderful recipe box - 

Recipe Box Memories  Back when I was first married and collecting recipes almost all my recipes were in this box .  All 3x5 cards, written out by hand by me or whomever shared the recipe.  Sometimes I would clip a recipe from a magazine or newspaper and tape it to a card.  And..sometimes I would find a good recipe and type ( remember typewriters?) it onto a card.  Then, 4x6 recipe cards came into fashion and I did not have a holder for those.  So I started tucking them into my cookbooks.   Eventually typewriters were replaced with computers and the world of the internet.  So many recipes, from all over, and you could print them!!!  For a long time I kept those recipes in a plain binder - but then I found this wonderful binder created by one of my favorite authors/illustrators/bloggers - Susan Branch.  If you have not discovered her and her wonderful books, products, and blog - you can find her here - Susan Branch  When we downsized and moved I donated almost all of my cookbooks EXCEPT for hers.  They are keepers!  

For the past few years I have been just shoving the recipes I printed into this beautiful binder.  I has wonderful dividers, adorable stickers and illustrations, and I was ruining it.  Just shoving things in...sometimes putting them in with holes punched in and sometimes just shoving the recipes in between the pages.  The binder held all my favorite, often made recipes.  But it also held "hey, this looks good" recipes that I had never made.  So...it was time to "clean house"!

First thing I did was to go through and make a pile of pages to go into the recycle bin.  I found duplicates of favorites, recipes that sounded good at the time, and some that made me think "what was I thinking?"

That left me with a pile of recipes I wanted to keep that were not organized.  Some had been in the right category and had the 3 ring holes punched...but I would pull them out to use and then shove them back inside the cover....shame on me!

So, the first thing I did was make sure each recipe had holes punched in to fit in the binder...

Then I removed my horrible, quick attempt to fix the dividers with painters tape....I have painters tape in my kitchen drawer because that is what I use to mark things I am putting in the freezer.  It is easily removed from plastic or glass containers. I repaired the dividers using clear packing tape.

Then I went through the entire binder and was ruthless about recycling recipes I just knew I would never use...

Pulled out the ones that I saw needed new holes punched in...

then looked at all the stickers and other pages that came with the binder and picked out what to use and stored the rest in with "nice paper" file.  I used reinforcement labels on the pages that had been ripped through the holes...

And used some labels to divide up the baked good categories...

Then I used some of the cut outs and stickers to dress up the divider pages...

Shoved in the binder I found this bookmark I made back in the early 1990's.  Any other educators out there ever take those summer courses where you could make crafty things for your classroom ( for me, for the library) and there was always tons of materials and a laminator to make sure everything stayed fresh.  My friends would laugh at me and say they could tell I had gone to Parochial School because I used up every scrap of material and all of my posters/displays were double sided....wasted nothing.   This was a stencil of my Pfalzgraff Yorketowne pattern that I used to make a cookbook bookmark. 

I had to laugh when I turned it over....shortly after I made it we sold our home, without a realtor, and I wanted a SOLD sign to put on our home made "FOR SALE" sign.  So this bookmark did double duty, too.

And then it was finished...and not jammed with recipes I will never use again or never did use.  

It now fits so nicely in my pullout cabinet...

Love these pullouts...this cabinet is my baking center and also holds my crockpot.

I was so inspired with my newly organized binder that I pulled out my recipe for halupki - stuffed cabbage - and made a batch that night!

Yummy!  Perfect with pierogi ( not homemade, thank you Mrs. T's), peas...and a cold beer - enjoyed on a summer night on the porch! You can find the recipe here   

Halupki

And, while I no longer have a garden or flowers to cut, neighbors are very generous with sharing veggies and beautiful bouquets...

Lovely zinnias!

Have you been working on any organizing projects this summer ?  I would love to hear what you have been doing?  Please share a comment below - I really love hearing from you!  Hope you are enjoying August and the rest of the summer...and thank you for stopping by Our New Vista!