Recipes | Keeping up with the Moys

The challenge for this month over at I’m an Organizing Junkie is to work on organizing our recipes. (I’ve only recently visited the site, and didn’t get a chance to do the Monthly Round-Ups, but here’s my attempt…next month is memorabilia/pictures.) I put it off until the last minute, but I’m happy with the results that I got in the end. It’s not perfect, but will help me in menu planning and meal preparation, which will leave me more time for myself and my family and friends.

BEFORE

I had recipes that we printed from online sources, pages torn from magazines, scratch paper pieces, and a lot of Post-Its. I’m going the route of the recipe box, so these will be handwritten on index cards and put in a card box.

Two-fifths of these cookbooks aren’t even mine (I took them from my parents’ house from my sister and brother). The one I use most is the Betty Crocker Cookbook that I got as a wedding gift. Norm just got the Kitchen Playdates one over Christmas, so it has yet to be used. I have not tried any recipes from the Good Housekeeping Bake It! book that I got from my bridal shower. I’m not the best baker, and most basic recipes are in the Betty Crocker book already. This book has recipes that call for too many ingredients (that I wouldn’t use for anything else). For now, I’ll return the other two.

These are some random magazines that I have. I only paid for two of them (Everyday and Cooking for 2) and the others are free, so I figured I should keep them. So why do I even have 2 issues of Comida y Familia when I’m Chinese? The previous owners never forwarded their mail, so whoever they didn’t notify about their address change still send mail to the house. It does say “or current resident” on there, and the post office does not return mail like that, so I have 2 issues of cooking magazines in a language that I can’t remember too well. (I took 3 years of Spanish, but you know what they teach in those classes. ?Donde esta el bano?) Most of these are going. I just have to sift through them.

Now that we got through that. Here are my materials for organizing:

You have your standard 4×6 Rubbermaid Index Card Box. It holds around 500 cards I think.

Then there are the index cards. I had to buy the 500-card pack because it was either that or just 100, but I think I will have more than 100 cards in there. We can use extras for other things…over the years.

And last, the dividers. These are actually the ones that are already labeled A-Z, but it was between this or buying 100 dividers, which I don’t need. I just flipped them to the back side.

I had all my “ingredients” for this “recipe”, so now what?

I spent some time writing down all the recipes from the pile of papers. As of now, since I haven’t tried a lot of the recipes from the magazines, I will write down which ones I plan to try, and if it becomes a favorite it will go in the box. Okay, I’ll pass on the Comida y Familia…although I must say that there are some scrumptious-looking food in there. I’m keeping the 3 cookbooks, but will most likely just end up keeping the one I use most, which is the Betty Crocker one.

AFTER