Reasons to catalog your recipes:
1) When you make a great recipe, you will remember to use it later.
2) When you remember a great recipe, you will know where to find it.
3) Making a menu becomes as easy as opening a folder. You no longer have to search through cook book after cook book trying to solve the weekly mystery of "What's for dinner?". Though the initial organization takes some time, it is fairly easy to maintain, and it saves me about thirty minutes each week in menu planning. (see Lesson 3)
4) If you catalog online, evil military movers cannot lose your cookbooks!
Now, for HOW to organize those recipes.
I personally use online recipe boxes, so I will start with those. I find SparkPeople Recipes to be a very helpful site for finding nutrition information on recipes I have at home. This site also has thousands of pretty healthy recipes to browse. This site is not quite as user-friendly for organization as Better Homes & Gardens Recipe Box, but you can create "cookbooks" that serve the same function as BHG's "folders."
If this process seems overwhelming, break it up into one-hour segments. You can do this while watching your favorite weekly drama, because it's pretty mindless!
Step 1: Compile
Online Method: Whether you use an online recipe box or a paper one, collect your recipes in one place! I started with the recipes that I know I love and want to make again. If that is a large number, try starting with just dinners. That will at least make your dinner menu planning easier. When entering them online, you will probably have a main recipe box that lists everything alphabetically. This is useful when you don't remember which folder your recipe is in. (For instructions on adding recipes to bhg.com, see my comment)
Paper Method: My favorite paper compiling method uses a 3-ring binder with plastic page protectors. Recipes are typed & printed, photocopied, or handwritten onto 8" x11 1/2" paper. I prefer this to recipe cards, because you can see the entire recipe at once, rather than flipping a card back & forth. Plus, if it's typed, you have an electronic copy as a back-up.
Step 2: File
Online Method: Create folders, cookbooks, or whatever your site calls them. I have folders titled, "Week 1" through "Week 5" in which I place my dinner recipes. I rotate them, and I usually have 1-2 new meals each week that are not on this pre-made rotation, to prevent boredom. I group my recipes in such a way that if I have, say, two recipes that use half a can of tomato juice, I'll cook them both on the same week. This prevents waste. I usually group together two of the same type of meat, too. For example, I may make hamburgers and spaghetti in the same week. I can buy 1.5 lbs of meat, use .5 lb to make a couple hamburger patties, then brown the rest for the spaghetti.
I also have folders such as, "Recipes from Mom," "Thanksgiving," and "Dessert." The great thing about online filing is that you can have five copies of the same recipe and not waste any space in your kitchen! I have my mom's Pumpkin Pecan Dessert saved in all three of the folders listed above, just for ease of reference.
Paper Method: You may choose to have two copies of each recipe, as I do automatically in the online method, or you can just try to remember where you file your recipes. I would use either stick-on tabs or tabbed inserts to label the section divisions. Your "folders" will just be different sections of the binder. If you're using a traditional recipe box with cards, you can use labeled tab inserts, also.
Step 3: Maintain
You will likely not use the same twenty dinner recipes for your whole life. Whenever I try a new recipe, I add it to my folder, "newbies." That is, if it's already a BHG recipe. Otherwise, I just make note on my weekly dinner menu of where I can find the recipe (cookbook & page number or website). After I've cooked it, I either note on the recipe that it's bad, or I enter the recipe into my BHG recipe box in the appropriate file. Every once in a while, I go through my "newbies" folder and delete gross recipes. The remaining ones get sorted into a weekly folder or an appropriate folder for future reference.
Ideally, this sorting would be done every week or two, but I'll usually remember for a few months if something was gross enough to not make again. The perk to doing this maintenance sooner, rather than later, is that you can make notes on the recipe about how to improve it if you make it again.
The important thing about maintenance is that you put your new recipes into your main compilation!
Paper Method: Wait until you have made the recipe to make a copy of it. If you like it, add it to an appropriate folder in your binder or box.
If you have an IPhone, my uncle says there is an app that does this and also allows you to create a customized grocery list form. (see Lesson 3) I don't know what it's called, since I don't have an IPhone, but you may want to look into it.
I had a question in Lesson 3 about how to enter recipes into bhg.com.
ReplyDeleteOnce you've registered, go into the recipe box (the link is on the upper right part of the food & recipes page). At the top of the list of recipes, hit the "add recipe" button. The site will direct you to a page that gives you boxes to type in your recipe title, source, description, ingredients, directions, etc. Click "save" when you're done, and it should appear in your recipe box! Let me know if there's anything else that I can clarify.