My life seems to be a series of events all based around “Getting Organized”. No no, wait, STAYING organized might be a better title since my kids seem set on destroying said organization as fast as I achieve it!
One area I cannot blame the kids on, is my recipe cupboards. Yes, cupboards with an S.
As in, more than one, embarrassing, unorganized mess to be dealt with.
I cannot be held responsible for the shocking images you are about to see:
This is my stack of “To Try” lurking in my desk to hide the shame of it’s disorder.
{hides face in hands}
Here is one of my recipe book locations, there are two more, one far worse, and one much better than this particular one:
{I’m so ashamed.}
See those black note books? That is how I used to stay organized.
{Before I printed off 500 pages of new recipes online.}
Inside these particular notebooks, are all our family recipes. Before I got married, I spent MONTHS typing out my mom’s recipe boxes, so I’d have them in my future kitchen. I had NO idea just how much of a Foodie I was going to become, or that Dale and I wouldn’t repeat a recipe for the first 9 months of our marriage!
And that is how my love of trying new recipes began……
This is my “To Try” drawer, it lives in my kitchen island. Recipes are moved from the ugly stack hiding in my desk, to out here per season. I pick the ones I really want to try in the very near future. IF they pass the test, they will be typed out on Tasty Kitchen and shared with you. Then printed off, with photo, from Tasty Kitchens site and moved to the new organized notebooks I am about to show you!
Yay! A plan of action!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My first step in organizing was to take all the recipes I have blogged and print them off of Tasty Kitchen. (Find me here.) I wanted them in a notebook of their own because they passed the test and had made the blog, which means we really, really liked them! Plus, if I am going to go to all the trouble to photograph a recipe, I want to see what I am picking when I flip through my notebooks.
This is what my desk looked like on Organization Day:
I didn’t get a picture of it, but Dale helped me one evening, and there we sat in the midst of hundreds and hundreds of pages, slipping recipes into clear plastic sleeves. There was quite a bit of muttering and mumbling under his breath, but I’d say overall he was a real trooper!!! 🙂
Uh oh! Bad news! Apparently just ONE year of Foodie Blogging, fills up more than 1 notebook. Time for Plan B.
Transfer all my hard work to multiple notebooks like I did before.
And here they are, subdivided into separate categories:
I used the same system I did for my first set of notebooks.
(I need to remake some of these labels to reflect this last-minute changes….)
This is how I break them down:
Main Dishes: Casseroles
With sub categories inside:
Italian, Mexican, Chinese
Meat Dishes & Sides
Sub categories inside include:
Chicken, Beef, Pork & Fish
Side Dishes
Soups, Salads & Sandwiches
Appetizers, Breads & Brunch
Desserts
As I blog recipes, I will print them out and slide them into a clear plastic sleeve before finding their new home in one of these notebooks.
The “To Try” stack of shame will stay in the desk, just because I don’t know how else to do that. I don’t want to go to the trouble of putting those in notebooks until we have tried them, because we may throw the recipe out after tasting it!
I am a bit worried how many more notebooks I will be needing at the end of 2012’s year of sharing recipes, but I guess we’ll just cross that bridge when we get there!
~T
4 little Fergusons 