The recipe project

I said earlier this year that I would NOT become a foodie and that decision still stands. Despite my interest in trying new recipes and gathering together other recipes that I’d like to try sometime, I’m not a foodie. Used to be crazy about cooking, but not so much anymore.

Still, I like to try things. And if a recipe sounds good, then I’ll try it!

That said, I have many recipes for things I’d like to try. But I have quite a few other recipes, too. Some of them are recipes we tried and loved, some of them are family recipes and still others are recipes from friends and family who wanted to share them with me. There’s also a few of my own creations.

That collection of recipes got to be pretty big. That was one problem. Another problem was that they were scattered everywhere – in my drawer, in a box, on the computer or on the Internet as a bookmark. Whenever I wanted a certain recipe, I would have to go hunting for it or get back on the computer to look for it. A third problem was that some of them were not all clear or very legible. In fact, I had to hunt down the original of one recipe because the copy I had was not very clear.

So, yeah. My system wasn’t perfect. It was time to come up with a new system!

The problem was, I could not figure out what kind. How would I organize ALL of these recipes? How can I possibly find the time to do it?

Well, it seems that Life took care of solving the problem. I despaired over this for a long time and then, it was like the answer to my problem was born within. Out of nowhere, I started the process of organizing this ginormous recipe collection. I started gathering the things I needed and started editing/retyping/organizing all of the recipes. That’s what I actually started to do today. I spent some time last week getting a few things I thought I’d need – an 8-subject folder as a temporary storage, a LARGE binder for the final collection and subject dividers – then, today, I took some time working with the recipes themselves. I’d gone through about 80 pages of the recipe collection and I haven’t even made it halfway through all of them yet. But that was as much as I could do today. I still need to go through others in my hard drive and print out a bunch of others which I have bookmarked.

After working on this recipe project today, I realized that the 8-subject folder will not work for me. I am using it temporarily, yes, but there are 12 categories of recipes altogether. So I will definitely need to use the binder. I just have to get my hands on a 3-hole puncher. (I seem to have misplaced mine.)

These are the recipe categories for the final collection:

Breads

Salads

Appetizers & Snacks

Desserts

Main Courses

Breakfast Recipes

Side Dishes

Sauces & Dips

Drinks

Sandwiches & Wraps

Soup & Stew

Seafood

It’s definitely going to be a large collection. I already have one binder filled with recipes but that one is not as organized as this one will be. So I’m looking forward to putting this all together and completing this project. It’s going to take me some time because I can only find time to work on it during the weekends (as I only work on non-writing projects during the weekends) but if I stick with it, we will have yet another binder of recipes to turn to anytime we need them. The bonus is, this time, they will all be found in one place.