This Tutorials Forum says "Net Cooking Talk Members offer up tutorials on what they are best at." Well, I certainly don't claim to be best at managing recipes, and I wouldn't call this a tutorial but I didn't know where else to post it.
At first it was fun leafing through my small stack of recipes and cookbooks, but somehow over time that small stack turned into Mount Vesuvius. I would spend hours searching through all that for a single recipe that I remembered seeing 'somewhere in the stack'. The recipes I loved became the recipes I loved to hate.
The only way I could think of to solve the problem was to buy two notebooks and some plastic sleeves. I made a cookbook of the recipes I had tried that were good, and a notebook of recipes I wanted to try in the future. After all was said and done, the recipes on newspaper clippings and such ended up in the trash, and the recipe leaflets and cookbooks went to the second hand store where they most likely ended up in someone else's Mount Vesuvius.
This involved some time and a lot of typing, but in the end it was well worth it and there weren't nearly as many recipes that I kept as I thought there would be. That is because I set some rules for myself.
In the cookbook, I only allowed one recipe for each item. ie one meatloaf recipe, one pancake recipe, etc. That is because I only need the best one.
If any recipe in my cookbook is good, but not great, I keep looking and trying new recipes until I can replace it with the one that I consider to be as good as it can get.
I knew the 'to try' recipes could become a Mount Vesuvius of it's own, so when determining whether or not to keep a recipe to try, if I knew in my heart that I would never try it, or if I thought it wouldn't be as good as my current cookbook recipe for that item, I didn't keep that recipe.
I would go through my 'to try' recipe notebook every month or two. I have found that as time goes by I will look at many of those recipes and think 'Why did I ever think I would want to try this?' When that happens, I get rid of that recipe. I was very surprised to see how many 'to try' recipes I eliminated that way -- with no regrets.
Every couple of weeks I would pick 2 or 3 'to try' recipes and force myself to make them 'today and/or tomorrow' -- no excuses.
Currently there are only 2 recipes in the 'to try' notebook and they came from this site, but I have only just begun to check out the recipes here.
How do the rest of you manage your recipes?
At first it was fun leafing through my small stack of recipes and cookbooks, but somehow over time that small stack turned into Mount Vesuvius. I would spend hours searching through all that for a single recipe that I remembered seeing 'somewhere in the stack'. The recipes I loved became the recipes I loved to hate.
The only way I could think of to solve the problem was to buy two notebooks and some plastic sleeves. I made a cookbook of the recipes I had tried that were good, and a notebook of recipes I wanted to try in the future. After all was said and done, the recipes on newspaper clippings and such ended up in the trash, and the recipe leaflets and cookbooks went to the second hand store where they most likely ended up in someone else's Mount Vesuvius.
This involved some time and a lot of typing, but in the end it was well worth it and there weren't nearly as many recipes that I kept as I thought there would be. That is because I set some rules for myself.
In the cookbook, I only allowed one recipe for each item. ie one meatloaf recipe, one pancake recipe, etc. That is because I only need the best one.
If any recipe in my cookbook is good, but not great, I keep looking and trying new recipes until I can replace it with the one that I consider to be as good as it can get.
I knew the 'to try' recipes could become a Mount Vesuvius of it's own, so when determining whether or not to keep a recipe to try, if I knew in my heart that I would never try it, or if I thought it wouldn't be as good as my current cookbook recipe for that item, I didn't keep that recipe.
I would go through my 'to try' recipe notebook every month or two. I have found that as time goes by I will look at many of those recipes and think 'Why did I ever think I would want to try this?' When that happens, I get rid of that recipe. I was very surprised to see how many 'to try' recipes I eliminated that way -- with no regrets.
Every couple of weeks I would pick 2 or 3 'to try' recipes and force myself to make them 'today and/or tomorrow' -- no excuses.
Currently there are only 2 recipes in the 'to try' notebook and they came from this site, but I have only just begun to check out the recipes here.
How do the rest of you manage your recipes?
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