For years, I have taped my favorite recipes inside my cupboard doors. I know exactly which door to open to make my zucchini soup or my favorite party punch. This is normally wasted space and the insides of the doors are covered!
I also include handy tips, substitutions - almost anything I am bound to forget. I doubt myself too often not to have the recipe right in front of me. It's also handy for grocery shopping. If I want to make something special, I just glance at the recipe while making out my list so that I don't forget a needed ingredient. This saves time by not digging through my recipe boxes or any cookbooks.
By betty G from San Antonio, TX
This page contains the following solutions.
Each time I try a recipe and it works, I type it out adding my own personal thoughts or tips on the dish, including what goes well with it, whether it be a certain wine or side dish.
I am notorious around my house for forgetting to make certain meals after a while. Since I try so many recipes, sometimes I lose track of some winners that my family loves.
I live in a foreign country and also love to cook. So, when I visit my family in the states, I usually say from 2-4 weeks and because airline tickets are expensive, I try to stay a decent amount of time.
Over a period of 50 years or more, I have collected many good recipes. Some I have written down and stuffed in a zip lock bag and some are on index cards in a small photo album.
I have a lot of cookbooks. Sometimes I couldn't remember which recipe was in what book. Now I make a photocopy of the Index pages. I make sure the title is on the top. I highlight the recipes I want to use. I keep the indexes in a loose leaf notebook for that purpose.
You can take all your recipes and copy them with a scanner to a computer, print, or use copy machine at library and they become the same size page. Some pages will have more than one recipe, so make sure they are in the same category.
This is my idea for keeping track of good recipes; ones I find and modify, family recipes, and ones I make up myself. I buy those little hard-bound record books, Simplex Records, to write my recipes in.
I have so many great recipes and have wanted to get them into some kind of fashionable order. I used scrapbooking paper to start my selected folders.
I use many different recipe books. I don't always take the time to copy all the recipes onto recipe cards especially when it is something I make occasionally.
I clip many recipes from magazines, newspapers, etc. The pile can get quite large, and I end up never even trying any of them.
I've been an avid cookbook collector for over 40 years with literally hundreds of cookbooks! Because there are special recipes that my family likes in each cookbook, I used to find myself on the floor with piles of cookbooks around me as I tried to find a specific recipe.
I have many recipes that I use an appliance for, such as a crockpot, pressure cooker, or bread machine.
In an effort to cut down the incredible number of cookbooks I had amassed, I purposely went through each cookbook and typed out the few recipes from each that we really used and liked. I then compiled them in a 3-ring notebook with dividers (soups, entrees, desserts, etc.) and sold off at garage sales the cookbooks.
I am not a person who does any sort of cooking which requires intricate recipes, no cakes or anything fancy. I have my basic southern corn bread and my very basic instruction on how to cook white rice taped to the back of a cupboard door where they are kept clean for the next use.
To minimize hunting, I take a permanent marker and write on the back of the cookbook, or on the inside back cover, with the name of the recipe and what page it's on. It makes finding my favorites so much faster.
This is more a bit of information, a reality check if you will, rather than a tip. But then, should this post prompt you to buy the gadget of which it speaks, it could, loosely, be called a tip.
When going through the recipes and other stuff, instead of printing out the whole thing or writing it down, I copy it to a word processing program. First I open my office writer or Microsoft Word.
I've managed to accumulate a lot of recipes! I'm looking for recommendations on inexpensive (possibly free?) computer software to organize and manage the recipes better. It'd be nice if I could print them out and make a shopping list, too.
If you find that you are baking the same cookies, cakes, and other baked goods every holiday season, save them to a file on your computer by either typing them in or scanning them.
Photo books work great for recipes! Put all of your 3x5 inch recipe cards in photo sleeves inside an album meant for photos. You can buy tabs for notebooks and label with cooking categories such as breakfast, side dishes, main dishes, salads, soups and desserts.
My recipe file was too full! I like to collect good recipes. I could not find a larger recipe box so I made a larger box with a big popcorn box.
I keep cheap, bright and colorful spiral journals handy by my resting chair, to have close by when looking through magazines, in case I see a recipe I think I'd like to try.
Here is how I save all of my recipes. I have a folder on my hard drive called Recipes (very original, doncha think? LOL). Under it are sub-folders for categories, like soups, vegan, etc.
I have a series of annually produced hardcover cookbooks (based upon a published periodical) but I was having difficulty in finding the recipes I wanted once I had more than 3 of the books.
I used to be an avid collector of recipes and was introduced to the neatest little program called Treepad a long time ago. It's like a flowchart program but it's super user friendly.
To organize recipes, buy baseball card sheet protectors, and retype shorter recipes to fit in slots. For larger recipes, put in regular full size sheet protectors.
I have a hard time recalling the things for a diet and recipies I am to be working on. So one day, I collected all the recipe pages and diet sheets that I needed; some were on the computer so I printed out the important ones.
When I collect a new untried recipe, I put it in a sheet cover in a thin notebook. If after trying it, I like it, I put it in a photo album that has the large peel back sheets.
These are great for copying a recipe and printing it. If you don't like it pitch it out! If you have it in hand, you may be more likely to try it rather than save it to your computer, and forget about it. By Syd
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
I need help with printing. I get a lot of recipes sent to my email box. Some of them I like and some I don't. But some have 6 or more on 1 sheet. How do I go about printing out only a certain recipe, rather than all of them?
I'm wasting paper and a lot of ink (and paper). Any suggestions please?
Highlight only the recipe you want to print, or save to your database, then go to file and print, choosing "selection" under print range and it will only print the portion that you highlighted.
Copy and paste into a word processing document, ie. Microsoft Works; word processor, create folders to organize your recipes for example: main folder; RECIPES, then create sub-folders within the main folder. Name according to type. VEGETABLES, FRUITS, DESSERTS,(sub-folders) pies, cakes, frostings, cookies, etc., MAIN DISHES, etc. You can create sub-folders within these folders, also. Save your recipes here, and they will be ready to print out whenever you want them.
I save my recipes on floppies...use one for each category ie. Breads, Cookies, Main Dishes. I highlight the recipe and copy and paste it to my notepad. Then save to a 3.5 inch floppy. They are saved on the disk in alphabetical order.Then, when I want to try a new recipe, I insert my floppy, choose the recipe I want, and print it out. If I like the recipe, and think I will use it again, I put it in my looseleaf notebook that is used for recipes, cooking tips, ingredient substitutions and anything else that concerns cooking and baking. If I decide that I don't like it after all, I pitch the printed copy and delete it from my floppy disk.
What is the best way to organize recipes? Do you think its easier to buy 4x6 index cards and write all the recipes on them or type them on a full size sheet of paper and cut them to fit or maybe they have some software. Please share your method.
By Onesummer
