How do you store your recipes?

[kad613]

I have to admit to keeping recipes willy-nilly in a drawer. I keep telling myself I will put them all on my computer to keep them organized but I still haven't. I started a binder and put some of my recipes in it, even labelled each section, but I still find myself throwing recipes in my kitchen drawer because I don't have time (sigh!).

 

[Ohyesuare]

I don't have any family or personal recipes if those are the kind you are talking about. If I did and had the only copy I would get them backed up on the computer and an external hard drive as soon as possible. You might think nothing will ever happen to it but you never know and if you have the only copy and don't know it off by hard you do not want to lose that. Plus I think there are some good online sites that organize them all for you and make it really easy to look up when you want to use them.

 

[MzMonka]

I have them in a number of different places. The family recipes I have on cards in a box, a back up on the computer and a printed copy in a binder. There is a folder with ones that I have ripped out of magazines and never did anything with and of course there is an entire shelf of cookbooks. The printed ones are the easiest especially if someone wants a copy. I just scan it and email it or make a photocopy of it. I find at this point in my life I keep them more to remind myself of the recipe if it is something that I don't make often or if it is something that I just can't keep straight in my head. My daughter have hers in envelopes by category and sticks them in her cookbook. If it doesn't drive you hazy to have them that way until you have the time keep them as they are.

 

[trefle77]

I usually get my recipes online and just make different folders according to cuisines which is further broken down to breakfast, lunch, dinner or dessert/snacks. I have my recipes stored on Google Drive so I can easily access it on my tablet from the kitchen or my phone when I am over at friends' house cooking too. It's just convenient for me to have everything online rather than search for recipes manually.

 

[Babble64]

I have a mess, too, I must admit! I don't have recipes all in one place. I have a metal card file box, a plastic folder with recipe card sized slots, and a binder. I did take the step to create the binder last year after visiting my nephew and his wife. She had a lot of recipes printed from the Internet and she had them all in plastic sleeves. Since I am a messy cook I thought that was a great idea! So I put all my 8 1/2 x 11 recipe pages into sleeves and organized them by type of food (main dishes, appetizers, cookies, etc.) It's been a big help and I'm glad I took the time to do it.

I'd say in general I'm only a loosely organized person...I can never get it all together and keep it there, no matter what I'm organizing!! I think I'm just made this way so I try not to make myself too nutsy about it.

 

[natb]

Oh my goodness, my poor recipe book. I’m still old fashion and have most of my recipes hand written in a special book. Now my special book has clipped recipes tucked between the pages, also have a couple very old cook books, that have had notes written in them over the years, example, what is a good recipe, what to add or take away to make it better. My joke is that recipes are just a suggestion, to build on. The last couple years or so, I’ve started looking for recipes online, and wow, a whole new world, now I have a folder with many in waiting to be printed and put in the old cook book.

 

[viewpointcitation]

Most of mine are on index cards in a box, to be honest. They are organized by what the main ingredient is, or what type of dish (i.e. Dessert, entree). I keep telling myself I'm going to organize them into a binder, but it hasn't happened yet. I also intend to make a digital copy on my computer, but we'll see what happens. If it works, don't mess with it I guess. I would still like to have some backups in case these get ruined.

 

[jeanne90]

I store my recipes in microsoft word and I also have a bunch of hand written recipes ( I've written them behind receipts, a good way to reuse receipts). The handwritten receipts will come in handy when I want to buy ingredients from the store because they are small enough to slip into my purse. But handwritten recipes are only for simple cooking or baking recipes.

 

[Babble64]

Oh my goodness, my poor recipe book. I’m still old fashion and have most of my recipes hand written in a special book. Now my special book has clipped recipes tucked between the pages, also have a couple very old cook books, that have had notes written in them over the years, example, what is a good recipe, what to add or take away to make it better. My joke is that recipes are just a suggestion, to build on. The last couple years or so, I’ve started looking for recipes online, and wow, a whole new world, now I have a folder with many in waiting to be printed and put in the old cook book.

This actually sounds just LOVELY!!!! Do you have someone you can hand this stuff on to? I can imagine if you have kids or grandkids there is someone out there who has marvelous memories of watching you use your recipes!!

Your words make me think of people who talk about their old, worn out Bibles....covered in writing in the margins and pages falling out....means it's been well used over the years!!

I, too, like to modify recipes. I have people who laugh at me for that, but it very rarely happens that I follow a recipe exactly each time. I tell people who are new to cooking...you can always modify it to your own taste; don't be afraid to experiment!

 

[Dorothy]

I used to keep them in my drawer on index cards, then I actually put them in a box and in order and all. But just last month I finally put them all on my computer and have them all in one place and all I have to do is open up the folder when I need them, so it works rather well so far. I would like to find a software that would let you add you recipes and save them in a way that it would be easy to pull them up by typing in what you want, Does anybody know of any?

 

[Becky]

I have an A5 binder with tabs for different sections (veg, meat, starters, baking etc) and I write down recipes and put them in there. Most of the time I look up new recipes online using my phone, and if the recipe is good it goes into the binder... eventually. I always seem to have loads of different pages open in Safari which are waiting to be written down before I close them!!

 

[Suplex790]

Our recipes are mostly scattered around in a drawer. There are recipes from the 1960's alongside recipes from a few years ago all mixed together! We should really sort them out one day, but I tend to still use a lot of them even for just a quick reference.

 

[Brandon Marshall]

I had a binder with all the recipes that I three-hole punched and organized by meal type and alphabetical. Recently, however, I have moved to Evernote (a wonderful note-taking program) and have it synced with all my devices so I can have all my recipes on the go and can look at them from any computer or device that has access to the internet.

 

[brittany]

I have mine in notebooks, various pieces of paper, and I actually keep them all on a shelf with some of my recipe books. I actually need to get a file cabinet.

 

[Soliloquy]

Usually scribbled in the margins of cookbooks! Although lately I'm trying to save them on my computer. These days, when we try new recipes it's usually something we saw online and then emailed to each other. So I end up checking the email outbox to find it again.

 

[ACSAPA]

I have one accordion file for recipes I've printed off the internet. I have another accordion file for recipes I've clipped from magazines and product labels.
Then I have 4 Pinterest boards on Pinterest of recipes, several bookmarked websites, and one box of cookbooks.
I think I might have to start being more critical and selective, because how many of those recipes will I realistically make in this lifetime?
I recently donated a few cookbooks to Goodwill because I was only making one or two recipes from each of those books.

 

[Babble64]

I think I might have to start being more critical and selective, because how many of those recipes will I realistically make in this lifetime?

ACSAPA....I hear you, but I have such trouble getting rid of recipes! When I organized last fall I did toss out many that I have clipped from magazines and never used. But I still have all my Taste of Home and Kraft mags. (I forgot about them when I first posted here.) Several of those have only one or two recipes I make regularly, but I still can't bring myself to toss them. I mean, I MIGHT make other recipes from those mags some day, right? LOL

 

[TwinkleBell]

I use MacGourmet to store my recipes. I manually enter my old recipes from recipe cards. Sometimes, I copy and paste recipes from online source like Food52. I store it in my Mac Notebook and then sync it to my IPad Mini.

 

[mochaisis]

I've have actually taken the time to transcribe all of my favorite recipes to Word files on my computer. Since I normally have my laptop with me in the kitchen while I cook, having my favorite recipes right there on easy-to-find files is so helpful.

 

[ACSAPA]

ACSAPA....I hear you, but I have such trouble getting rid of recipes! When I organized last fall I did toss out many that I have clipped from magazines and never used. But I still have all my Taste of Home and Kraft mags. (I forgot about them when I first posted here.) Several of those have only one or two recipes I make regularly, but I still can't bring myself to toss them. I mean, I MIGHT make other recipes from those mags some day, right? LOL

Yes, it's hard to get rid of recipes because there are so many great looking dishes out there. I did donate some cookbooks after Xeroxing the two recipes I regularly make out of each cookbook. But I'll probably always have a few too many recipes because I keep finding stuff on Pinterest.