recipe organization

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

I have intended to organize my recipes for years. It absolutely drives me crazy that I have had to copy my mom's pie crust recipe three times because I can never find it when I need it. I also don't ever remember if a recipe I am looking for is on my computer or in a random binder.

I am a recipe junkie. I am constantly emailing myself some recipe I saved off the Internet. Sometimes I save it in my email, sometimes I print them, and sometimes I save them on my computer. If it has been printed out, it could be in one of many places: the kitchen pantry with the food magazines, tucked inside a random cookbook, inside a binder that contains recipes or folded up in an old recipe box I have. For someone who lives by the mantra "A place for everything and everything in its place", this is completely frustrating.

I have analyzed the many different ways of organizing recipes. There's Tastebook.com which seems pretty slick but not "expandable". I am constantly adding recipes so I need something not so permanent. I really like the Russell + Hazel Binder set, although I am not hundred percent sold on the binder thing. I have also considered a software program or just making a folder on my computer to sort and organize all of my recipes.

Last year I did start slightly organizing my recipes in a Word document. The problem with that is that every time I went to bake I needed to print a copy out or run back and forth from the kitchen to the bedroom. I finally realized that I really love when I can bake or cook from actual recipe cards. There's just something about it.

So that's when I decided that I needed a cute recipe card holder. I've been hunting the Martha Stewart recipe box but my local Macy's never seems to have it in stock. I also need to put all of my recipes on the same size cards. The thought of handwriting each one makes me ill. I'm such a perfectionist that I would probably end up starting over each time I messed up or if my handwriting wasn't very neat. Solution: Just run the cards through my printer, of course! I'm going to set up an Indesign file that will be the correct sizing and then I'll have to just type up the recipes.

I'm such a nerd but I'm totally excited to get my recipes all in one place and all matching!

Labels: in the kitchen

posted by kimberly, 7:05 AM