Do you have a home-made cookbook or recipe collection?
My grandmother took the time to write out all her recipes by hand, of course. Many of the earlier ones are nib and ink. Over the years she tucked them into an old parchment book. They are falling apart, mostly unreadable, but very treasured.
My mother has a mish mosh of recipes. Some handwritten on lined paper in biro, some typed copies from a mimegraph – those my age may remember the purple ink that was never quite dry, and often smeared so badly we couldn’t even read the sentence. And the smell! As years progressed she added magazine cuttings and these days, she sends me recipes via email.
Mother in law re-writes the spaky’s childhood favourites onto cutsey notepaper and send them to me in the vain hope that skipper will remember what a wonderful cook his mother was and forget about my abilities for posterity.
Mine is a clutch of memories. Ones I gathered in my childhood in my grandparent’s hand, my parents hand, my childhood schoolgirl girl scrawl. Pages ripped from magazines, odd cards kept from subscribed ‘collections’, smeary newsprints from papers of years long passed.
I have a large, fat journal given to me as a Christmas present a few years ago. (Oddly, it features a 3 dimensional coconut tree on the cover, not very ‘cookish’). It’s drawcard, however, is that it contains about 1000 A4 size blank pages in a lovely quality ivory paper, and bound by a lovely leather. So, I forgave the coconut cover and began handwriting my own recipes and family favorites in there years ago. Stupidly, when I began the book, I didn’t think to create categories or divisions so lemon butter is nestled above Thai fish cakes, and adjacent to green beans with pork and chilli.
I also have a huge plastic folder from Kikki K that contains neatly organised sections and categories. They house clear plastic sleeves, and each sleeve holds the magazine cut outs I have taken the time to sort from the aforementioned clutch. The rest, probably 200 or so torn offerings, huddle together in a basket waiting to be rediscovered for the potential they showed when they were first ripped from their initial resting place.
My dilemma is now, whether or not to house them all in one place.
I have been leaning towards removing the Kikki K inserts and pasting them into the big book.
TFM has his opinion. “I like YOUR recipes in the big book, mum”, he says. “Just have a book and a folder”.
I am not sure.
What would you do? Or, what do you have?
I have a variety of methods! I have my grandmothers handwritten, leather bound book, which is ever so precious. I have an old purple exercise book that I used to record recipes when I would watch cooking shows on tv, and now I have two ring binders with plastic pages that I cut out way too many recipes from magazines and file in categories that make sense to me. They all have a place on my recipe book shelf(or shelves). Of course there is also the pile of recipes I have torn from magazines that I haven’t yet gotten around to filing, and the giant pile of magazines under the bed that I haven’t gotten round to tearing out from yet! I might need hired help! haha
I have some recipes hand written in a book that I began at least 30 years ago when I was a young bride.. LOL I have another book that has folded bits of paper in it of some favorite recipes I have collected from other places. If I lose some of them, I call my mom. Works great now but not a good forever plan unfortunately. I also have some favorite recipe books. And then there is a few in my head that I have made over and over again. And after I have said all that , I have to say I don’t enjoy cooking very much- I would rather quilt… and eat bread and cheese and fruit with a little piece of chocolate thrown in for good measure… Didn’t know I wasn’t very organized did you?
Warmest regards,
Anna
I have one of those kikki-k binders too! someone gave one to me as a gift and it’s actually been really handy to file away all my pieces of paper with print outs and hand-written recipes I just had sitting in a plastic sleeve. I have a few random books I have also written things in, but it was more of a “this book is the nearest thing for me to write in” rather than 1 specific recipe notebook. which is why there are more than one. I’m eagerly awaiting eatyourbooks.com to index all the magazines I buy so I can just search recipes in them. I don’t have the heart to cut things out from them, so they just sit on my shelf for when I want to flick through them. Not to mention I have a million cookbooks weighing down the shelves too. >.< Much to my husband's dismay lol
It is a perennial issue, isn’t it! I started off with 5 by 3″ cards, some of which I still have, for the family pastie recipe (haven’t made it for umpty years), then graduated to recipe collection books, which, for the dedicated cook (I used to be one) are never big enough. You run out of pages for soups, main courses, desserts, etcetera, so then have to buy another one, And then another one. then you need the time to sort through all those magazines and newspaper tear outs. The oldest of the folders badly needs re-writing, as it is so faded, and the paper is wearing thin.
I used to be a good cook with a varied repertoire, but no more, alas, as the ‘clientele’ was extremely fussy, and cooking for one is hardly stimulating.
I’ve got software. When I find a recipe I love, I transcribe it into the software. I can then print it out if I need to or just use my computer to read the recipe from.
Of course, that makes me sound so very organised, doesn’t it? Ha! It has been well over a year since I have typed anything in there and all of my photocopies, hand scrawled recipes and magazine tear outs are all shoved into one purple plastic folder (available from officeworks for about 60cents) waiting for me to cull them.
One day, when I have finished transcribing all of my Greek mother-in-law’s wonderful recipes, I will be printing them out and binding it as gifts…but I doubt it will be this Christmas. :)
I have a ratty tatty cookbook I started putting recipes in over 20 years ago – and that sentence makes me feel like I’m 892! I love it – the kids now love it and like yours it isn’t indexed, but I know that I will always find my asparagus morney recipe with the white sauce smudges next to the honey chicken recipe I wrote out from High school cooking class. Even when I cook from the computer I write it onto a scrap paper first – and then end up jamming that scrap paper into my book! Can’t help myself – bad habits!
I have a recipe journal, but I haven’t filled it out in a very long time. I have a plastic pocket full of print-outs, hand-written recipes, ripped out of magazines etc., I’ll do something with all those recipes one day – I do like the idea of a scrapbook but too much like hard-work for me. lol One day…one day….
Oh my goodness, you all put me to shame. I have nothing. Just recipes books I usually only ever look at for inspiration.
I have ring binder notebooks. Sometimes I’ll find something and print it out, sometimes when I’m making something up I’ll write it on lined notebook paper. Once when I was feeling compulsive, I spent a day organizing everything catagorically. I also have my grandmother’s “Gnome’s Gnotebook”-a blank journal that she wrote recipes in..I love that. I also have the favorite recipes in all my cookbooks marked with a flag so i can find it easily. Have you ever bought a cookbook because of one recipe in it?
I have a nondescript green box that belonged to my mother. I cram a lot of stuff in there. I also have a couple binders. The different handwriting makes me feel cozy inside.
And that, Dear Rhu, is good enough to compensate for the whole lack of organization thing, for me anyway.
I have a recipe box wherein my recipes are filed in alphabetical order. Only the “keepers” are kept in the box. I tossed out a large quantity of untried recipes during our kitchen reno. I figured that if I hadn’t tried them already, I likely never will. I have my favorite recipe books & haven’t placed the keepers in the books in my recipe box. Otherwise, I google new recipes periodically if I want to test-try something new. If I received an interesting recipe by email, I have a recipe box in my Inbox for organization purposes.
I write mine in a keepsake book. Can I suggest that you use an archival quality pen? Worth the price as the ink withstands the ravages of time better than an ordinary pen. Scrapbook stores sell them I think.
I have a bookmark section on my computer these days – if I find something wonderful enough, it goes into the “dinnerTonight” folder!!
I have my Mom’s handwritten recipes in her recipe box. She gave them to me when moving to assisted living. Just recently I made several loaves of her banana bread, yum!
I have a folio with plastic inserts that I have typed up recipes inserted into. However, I prefer the journals that have handwritten recipes in order of the time that you discovered them. Should only the time tested recipes as you make them, not as they were originally in the cookbook or whatever. Must go back to that.
Oh I also have this problem. Eeekkk….. I am using a Kikki K box for handwritten recipes and then cutting out from magazines in a folder. It’s an ok system- but I’m also wondering whether there is a better way! Magazines also cause a few problems because of the amount of space they take up.. so I suppose what I’m really saying is that I don’t have any solutions for you, only more questions. Also, I might mention ( i hope it makes you feel better) that I stood on the scales yesterday and was utterly shocked with the result. I am FIVE kgs heavier than I would like to be, and what’s worse is my lack of motivation to lose any weight or stop eating.
I have a folder into which I have stuck magazine & newspaper pages, and hand-written some recipes into, and I never look at it. Thinking about ditching it actually. I also have a little book full of my own made-up recipes from about a million years ago. Never look at that either, but will keep for posterity. I pretty much refer to trusted cookbooks, and google recipes now.
My mother has a little folder from when she was first married, and I tease her about it all the time as she had hand-written in a recipe for “Baked Bean & Sausage Casserole.” I ask her when I’ll be able to get my mitts on the sacred family recipe, and she gets a little huffy, explaining that she was married very young (which is true). Fun times!