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by Cherie Logan
Organize Recipes in One Day!
That sounds like an easy or a daunting task depending on what stage of life you are entering. As a child it meant being able to find Mom's recipe and read the instructions between age old splatter marks.
When a new adult on my own it meant deciding what fast food restaurant to drive through or what box to open.
As a new bride, organizing my recipes meant a return to my mother's cooking, my mother-in-law's cooking (and their home) and when I had to do it on my own it was a careful venture into altering recipes to fit a twosome.
As my children came along, recipe organizing went quickly into the old closet because I could only find the time to pull recipes out of my head: Peanut butter sandwiches, Top Ramen, boiled potatoes, hot dogs and spaghetti.
Meanwhile, every so often the "I've got to do something different, creative, GOOD!" would creep in and I'd buy cookbooks. And more cookbooks. And magazines. And those little grocery check-out cooking booklets. Every once in a while the recipe gathering became a frenzy and would end in exhaustion. And more material in the cupboard waiting for the time to organize life.
As the children grew, something happened. THEY want to cook! Or they HAVE to cook because Mommy insists. Now the recipe organization becomes a little easier. It is a simply task of deciding what to have them fix. What night to have them do it. When to shop for the meals. Where to put the food for a dozen people and their friends. Did I say easy?
I found myself becoming frustrated with trying to remember which cookbook had which recipe. I discovered that for all those resources, I used very few of the recipes. Oh sure, a few of the books were priceless and almost every page worth keeping. But the majority was really just clutter. Clutter that had cost me money to collect. That had cost me frustration to wade through. That had cost me guilt because I never tried them. That had cost me space!
I discovered a Good and a Best way to organize my recipes. Good will do in a hurry or when a flood-gate of recipes come crashing down at once. Best is for when you have a moment to think and an hour to type. They go hand in hand, you don't have to give up one system to work the other.
Very simply put:
GOOD is to tear apart that book or magazine. Take the pages you want and slip them into protector sheets. Go ahead. Be vicious! Rip that enemy to shreds! There is a rule that you use 20% of something 80% of the time. So, go for that 20%. Kitchen Chaos will diminish rapidly.
When you want to prepare your menu you have a small library in one notebook. When you want your children to cook they have one book to look through. Easy. And nothing can be faster!
BEST is to go through your newly created personal family cookbook and while sitting at the computer, type in every recipe. As you type alter the quantities to fit your family. Add what you like to serve with the dish. And organize them into categories that suit you. I have cooked ground beef, raw ground beef (OK, so that sounds gross but meatloaf and meatballs need raw ground beef. I precook 50 pounds of ground beef and put them into ziplock bags all at once. This means I have to separate the two types of recipes.) I have chicken breast and chicken pieces recipes. I have fruit and I have vegetable recipes. I have vegetarian recipes and of course deserts.
As you get the recipes into the computer and then printed out, throw away the sheets from the books. You may have up to eight recipes on one double-sided paper instead of up to six pages of magazine in your personal cookbook. (Just think how many pages that would have been to sift through before you did the GOOD organizing!) Once you know what a recipe should look like you don't need the fancy pictures. It then becomes even easier to glance down the page and decide what to shop for.
Once you begin the BEST method, the good continues. At Christmas time you are always flooded with lots of delicious sounding recipes and no time. Slip them into protector sheets in your book and wait for the day you have time for the BEST approach.
Use the same notebook to place your menu schedule, your cooking schedule, your repetitive shopping list, your mega-cooking plans. You might have to buy a bigger notebook someday. Good. Easy. You might have to replace some of the sheet protectors when they have been wiped clean to death. Good. Easy.
Little recipe cards are nice when you are starting out. Perhaps they will be nice when I am finishing up. But I doubt it. I'm sold on what is fast, easy and durable. And I'm at the stage where my children will begin to leave. I already have one daughter at college. All she has to do is print out the recipes when she comes or that I send cut and pasted into an email. Easy!
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The articles were written in the hope that they will help mothers realize just how normal chaotic life with children really is and how priceless the journey.
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