After days of gorging on holiday goodies, food might be the last thing on your mind BUT come next year you'll wish you had gotten that veggie dip recipe from Aunt Milly or that fantastic soup recipe from cousin Bob. Now's the time to gather the goods and compile them into an easy-to-use recipe binder. Not only will this save you time (no more searching through paper piles or trying to remember which of your 15 cookbooks had that great turkey gravy recipe) but it will also keep your favorite recipes preserved for years to come (Great Grandma's hand-written sugar cookie recipe deserves more than being shoved in the junk drawer with butter finger smudges).
For your recipe binder you'll need the following:
- 1-1/2" or 2" 3-ring binder
- clear, plastic, acid-free sheet protectors
- 8-1/2 x 11" acid-free card stock
- scissors
- photo-safe double sided tape
Sort all the recipes you've printed off your computer, ripped out of magazines or collected from friends and family. Make photo copies of pages that have recipes on the front and back. Start by organizing into simple categories: Dessert, Snacks, Breakfast, Appetizers & Sides and Dinner. If you're are a culinary artist and have a massive recipe collection, use totally separate binders for categories (Meat, Dessert, Appetizers, Pasta, etc) and dive deeper with your categories; your meat binder should have separate tabs for beef, poultry, fish, lamb and pork. There's no right and wrong here so go ahead and add or subtract categories based on the types of recipes you have. Once sorted, take the time to cut small recipes from full magazine pages so you only see the recipe and not extra unrelated text. Tape small recipes onto the card stock with double sided tape and slip into the sheet protectors. If you have 2 recipes you use for corn bread, put them both on the same page for quick comparisons. Full page recipes can simply be inserted into the sheet protector. Add them to your 3-ring binder and use your favorite divider tab method to label. I'm a big fan of
Post-it's durable divider tabs, they come in different colors and you can always peel them off if you change your mind.
Initially, this will take a bit of time, but once the bones are in place the upkeep is a breeze. Keep a few extra sheet protectors in the back of the binder to quickly add new favorites. Happy cooking!
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