Last week when I posted about making Taco Pasta for dinner, I mentioned our Family Favorites Binder and I promised I would post about it – and here we are!
I started this binder a little while after Handsome Husband and I moved in together (Who I am kidding? I left my apartment, internship, and new life in LA and RAN-not walked-to his house, and never left). I love trying new recipes, and we kept forgetting the ones we really liked and wanted to try again. So, I created our very own Family Favorites Recipe Binder!
I simply got a plain white binder and made a cute cover sheet to slip in the front.
Then, I typed up the recipes that we had chosen so far that we really liked - with two simple rules before recipes could be added: we both had to like it (HH eats everything) and it couldn't be insanely difficult. I created a format I liked as a simple document in Word, and re-typing the recipes kept them looking uniform (I'm a little OCD about some things) and it helped me to simplify the recipe since I knew only I would be reading it (and maybe HH a few days a year). I put each finished recipe in page protectors, which have certainly come in handy - you can wipe them down right after you finish cooking (am I the only one who's kitchen looks like a bomb went off after every meal?).
I purchased dividers with pockets so that I could slip in new recipes if I am out of page protectors at the time, and chose 5 categories - Appetizers, Side Dishes, Veggie, Main Dishes, and Desserts.
For the Main Dishes category, I used smaller dividers to further classify the recipes here - Chicken, Beef, and Seafood.
Currently, our binder is a little empty since we aren't cooking much here, but I am hoping to fill it up over the years with meals we love, and then someday, meals new members of our little family might love!
How do you save your family's favorite recipes?
I save many of them in my head:) Not very practical I know! I have a decent cookbook collection and I have post-it notes sticking out of recipes I like. And I have a recipe box for the random recipes that I get from people:)
ReplyDeleteI need to do this! I'm obsessd with Cooking Light magazine and am constantly ripping pages out of them. Therefore, my "recipe" cupboard is a pile of magazine pages with a cookbook here and there.
ReplyDeleteI love this idea! We have a stack of cookbooks with torn papers holding spots of some of the most used recipes. In addition, we have scraps of papers including an unused envelope and whatever else was handy to write on. All the papers are stuffed into one of the cookbooks! Your idea is so much more organized!<3
ReplyDeletethis is reminding me a lot of those cookbooks we were forced to make back in 8th grade home ec with ms. steele! as for my recipe handling, i still have not gotten over the appeal of cutting cute things out of magazines, so i take a cute notebook and on one page collage to my hearts desire and on the other page, paste or write a recipe. i also use a different notebook and do the same thing, but instead of recipes, i paste cards (birthday, christmas, etc) that i have received over the year. it makes a great little scrapbook that doesn't take too much time and gets rid of that pile of cards and puts it into something you can just throw on your coffee table!
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