Thursday, November 5, 2015

Cooking Cove: Cookbook Organization



I am a huge fan of cooking and recipes. I am a hugely opposed to too much clutter, too many cookbooks and lament my lack of storage space in my smallish home. I can't be the only one who loves organizational fixes so here is my cookbook overflow solution. 

I have two cookbooks in my home. One for desserts and the other one. 


This is nothing revolutionary and I am sure you have seen something like this before, but it blew my mind when I first saw a cookbook set up like this when I was an ag teacher at Jennings Middle School. We had these mini book fairs that would come in the teacher lounges and sell us stuff. There was the cookbook you made yourself. As a newlywed just experimenting in the kitchen I snapped it up. It was a three ring binder that had blank pages, dividers, page protectors and pockets in it. I began to cut out recipes from magazines, tore pages out of cookbooks, printed recipes off the internet and even got some from family members in their own handwriting.


The sections of the main cookbook are divided into: Appetizers, Beverages, Breads, Eggs, Salads, Soups, Poultry, Meats, Seafood, Vegetables, Miscellaneous. 


I add any recipe that catches my fancy in the pockets and page protectors but after cooking it, if it is great I will either tape it onto a page or hand write it on a page. If it sucked or was only so-so, I toss it. No lingering recipes unless they are hits.


Since my Miscellaneous section was quickly filling with desserts I needed to make a Dessert Cookbook. I did not have access to the pre-made cookbook I had purchased years ago, so I made one. I bought a three-ring binder, dividers, page protectors and pockets. 


I divided the sections into: Cookies, Cakes, Candy, Bars, and Miscellaneous. If you are a huge pie maker or ice cream maker, you would want to customize your tabs as such.


I like to use every square inch of space as you see. And yes. I am very corny and add my own tips and tricks and.... hokey sayings. 


How do you organize your recipes? I miss the old days of the recipe cards and boxes that were yellowed with time and sprinkled with flour fingerprints. But supreme laziness overcame me and magazine clipping is easier than re-writing them all. 

Do you have any favorite recipes from loved ones? I have to say my Granny's Sour Cream Pound Cake is my favorite family recipe. 

14 comments:

  1. Love your books. I have several cookbooks but I never use them. I used to buy a lot of those small ones you see at the checkouts. You know, like Fall Favorites and A Bajillion Christmas Cookies. But most of the recipes I use are scribbled things on notecards, or clippings or printings....all in a notecard box in the cupboard. Maybe THIS is a project I can work on since none of my other projects hold my interest long enough.

    ~Deb

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    1. Thanks! They really are pretty easy to put together PLUS you could use your neat paper products, stickers and washi to decorate holiday recipes and stuff. You can use the really nice paper you got as a mat for recipes then you get to keep it and see it when you cook. And since it is Halloween print it would be cute on the Puppy Chow/Chex mix treats or Rice Crispie treats.

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    2. Genius! Oooh, I think I need to do this!

      ~Deb

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    1. <3 We foodies need to have a place for all our mouth watering recipes! ;-) Do you cook for Thanksgiving Nancy?

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  3. Wonderful handmade cookbooks! As a kid I had a recipe box stuffed full of cut out recipes and handwritten recipe cards. I also have over a dozen cookbooks, most of which are in storage. I find all my recipes on Pinterest these days; sure does save on space!

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    1. Thanks they are very affordable and easy to make. Pinterest is certainly a wealth of goodness! Food Gawker is a great app too, my friend Lauren introduced it to me. I still like books to hold though, plus I get sappy just thinking about my girls using it one day in their own home. I am sentimental that way.

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  4. Your books are lovely! What a great idea to use the paper crafting stuff. I am a recipe hoarder like my great grandmother :D I still have her 6 little card boxes, plus 2 shoeboxes full of recipes she got from newspapers, packages and those promotional pamphlets companies used to put out, all neatly categorized.

    For a while I kept recipes I tore out in those presentation folders, but my tastes have changed so much in the past few years, I ended up getting rid of a lot of those recipes and entering the ones I still make regularly into Evernote because it makes it easy to tag and search ingredients. Now I find most of my recipes online, so I usually pin them and then transfer to Evernote if I really like it (that's the theory, anyway LOL!). Pinterest is terrible as an organization system, though. They recently removed the ingredient search function, which makes it practically useless for me :(

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    1. How cool you have a lot of her recipes! That is a treasure for sure. Pinterest does have a few drawbacks. Another one is dead links. I have used a recipe only to find it removed the next time I go back to it. Epicurious is my all time favorite online recipe collection.

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    2. Ugh, yes, the dead links :( I need to check out Epicurious!

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  5. I've been creating my own binder full of recipes... it's a mix of hand written from grandparents & family favorites I've printed out.
    my favorite recipes are from my Noni... I don't cook them very often, but sometimes I just enjoy looking at her handwriting :)

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    1. Same here. I love looking at loved ones handwriting. I think my mom has a lot of my MeMa's and Granny Conrad's recipes. I may have to elbow her to get some. <3

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  6. Love your recipe organization! I need to organize mine better, but I never get around to it.

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    1. Thanks! If you ever want to make a MNI of it, let me know.

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