apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

A couple of years ago, my mom gave my sister and I a handmade recipe notebook of recipes from our childhood. It's just a little 4x6 photo album with notecards in it, but it's perfect and has some great go-to recipes in it. There are blank spots in it, so I can keep adding favorites to it.

Right now I have a wad of computer print-outs--recipes I found online, or things my mom emailed to me--jammed in between my tallest cookbooks. I need to remedy that.

oh heavens, yes, and it's exploding: it started out as a leather-bound lab notebook from the Harvard coop---it's bursting with taped-into-place clips, scribbles, notes on dinner parties we had and what we served (and what did well, and what failed). I just decided to move it all into a leather 3 ring binder that I used as a child---it was my father's school looseleaf, stamped "1923, Patent Pending" on the inside.
The more it's used, the happier I'll be.

I use .txt files in a folder to store my recipes. They take up little space that way. But are still very versatile. I can put them on a thumb drive and take them around easily. I can put them in the notes folder of my iPod and use that as a small compact recipe reader in the kitchen. I can paste the recipes onto my blog or recipe sites with minimal editing.

that's a good question - I'm just starting my reciped collection and am open to suggestions. But I think doing it digitally would be hard to transfer to the kitchen without printing it each time.

tabitha from http://www.fromsingletomarried.com

I do!!! I find it so special that I can have hand-written recipes from my mother and grandmother. For myself, I keep two notebooks - one spiral bound and one moleskine. In the spiral bound, I write down grocery lists, culinary to-do's, references to recipes in magazines I would like to try, etc. After cooking a recipe at least twice (to work out any bugs) I then write them into the moleskine where they stay organized along with a few pictures of family members cooking together and a list in the back pocket of what kitchen items I have (ie, Viv wine glasses from Crate&Barrel, qtd: 10) just incase something breaks. :-)

I save online finds as bookmarks, or email them to myself--not very organized there, but I can find them when I need to.
My "notebook" is a wooden pear box. I pull recipes to save from food mags before recycling and toss them in. I later sort the stack--eliminating those I won't realistically ever make. I have a notebook with all of my dessert recipes quite nicely sorted (fall fruit, summer fruit, chocolate, frozen, pudding, etc.). My non-dessert recipes go into an accordion file: fall, spring, summer, and year-round recipes. This box is a constant work in progress.

I started off with a blank book. The recipes were in chronological order which brought back memories of where I lived when I added them. Now they've been converted into a (still handwritten) set of recipe cards in a small binder. Easier to find stuff. I always write down the name and date if someone special has given me the recipe.

my mother gave me a book filled with her favorite recipes as well as mine from childhood when I was in college. Back then I hardly cooked at all, but now it's my favorite cookbook and I reference it often. I add recipes to it only after they've proven to be worthy of space in my most treasured book.

I put print-outs and magazine clippings in a binder with plastic sleeves. It's grown so much that now I've got a binder with recipes I've tried and a separate (much bigger) one for recipes I'd like to try. I used to organize it by type of food, but now I just put the newest ones in front and that pretty much works for me (otherwise I procrastinate about adding recipes--too complicated).

I currently have all my recipes (which are mostly printed out from either Word or internet...) stuffed into a large envelope, which is jammed between the microwave and my stack of tin foil/saran wrap/sandwich bags.

For some reason, I also keep free recipe cards that I get in the mail. It's not like I'm ever going to cook beef burgandy, but you never know! I also started putting any food/drink articles from magazines that look good in there.

I started collecting recipe cards when I first moved out. My mom and I spent an afternoon copying my favourite recipies out of her own box.
I recently received a little pine recipe box from my mother in law that allows me to organize everything much better.

I converted most of my recipes onto the smaller cards, and i'm trying it out. I miss reading my mom and grandma's writing though. I might just get a book or folder that I can keep the original cards in.

My favourite cookbooks are the ones my mom made notes in. Lots of "YUM! Try again!" or "BLECH! This was terrible!"
Her cookbook collection dates back to 1959 when she was 14 and was told to come home from school and start supper. I can't wait for her to let me start snagging some of her most prized cookbooks. They are so laiden with family history!

Just last week I got fed up with the mess my overflow my food magazines, printouts, loose pages, and random pieces of paper were making. So i bought a 3-ring photo album with the magnetic/sticky pages and have started trimming the recipes and putting them in there.

So far it's working out nicely. And I can take the recipe page out and prop it on my counter when I want to make it - the plastic protects the recipe from splatters and such too.

Right now my recipes are in a folder. Some are printouts from online, others are torn from magazines, the rest are in my head or still floating out there in cyberspace. I'm taking a week off this month and one of the things I hope to accomplish is finding a storage solution for the recipes. Ultimately by the time my daughter goes off to college I would like to have cooked and photographed most of them and have the whole thing printed up for her.

I use a word document. The top of it has links to all the recipes listed at the bottom. It's broken up by 'genre'. Nothing too formal just a breakdown I would understand. I started it after I realized that I forgot recipes that I hadn't made in a while and both my mom and MIL are the worst recipe givers. "I just add stuff" is not a legitimate ingredient.

I keep mine online on Google Documents. Searchable, browsable, available on my blackberry when I'm in the grocery store. Awesome.

...and when I'm browsing recipe blogs at work (like now... shh...) I add new recipes to my google docs archive. Then I can pull 'em up at home.

i have lots of bookmarks, and save a lot of recipes on my computer's hard drive;

but all the good ones get printed out and put into my 3-ring notebook.

it's separated first by tried and not-tried,

and I've numbered them (but there's space in the numbers for growth- like in a basic program: each different chapter starts out in the next decade)
and given them chapters.

and one chapter is articles and tips.

it's my most used cookbook

I have a neat little notebook I use to write down recipes that I've tried, enjoyed, and would cook again. That way I know only good (IMO) recipes will be in that book.

As for new stuff, or fancy things that won't get made much, I have a file folder where I store tear-outs and print-outs and I rifle through it every now and then for new ideas.

When I first come upon a recipe I want to try, I capture it with the Firefox "Scrapbook" extension. If I get around to making it, I print that out to take with me to the kitchen. If after one trial it seems like the recipe has potential, I make notes on that paper and keep it with a stack of "in-progress" recipes.

I keep making it until I've tweaked it "enough," and then it goes in another stack of recipes to enter back into the computer. I type it into a Word document sized to fit on a 4x6 index card, print it, and stick it in a 4x6 photo album. This way, all the recipes have the same format and fonts, and I get to rephrase instructions to make them clearer.

When someone asks for a copy of the recipe, it's easy to print one out for them or forward them a copy (I like to convert it to PDF when I send a digital copy).

One day, I'd love to use only the digital copies... mount an LCD monitor on my wall and a CPU under my cabinets, get a wireless mouse and keyboard... If I had the time and energy, I bet I could just take apart an old laptop and mount it on the wall with the monitor facing out. (People post similar projects for doing this to make a digital picture frame; I don't think it wouldn't be too different to make a digital cookbook.) I'd just have to buy the wireless mouse and keyboard, and maybe a USB hub if I start running out of ports (I have to keep one available for plugging in a thumb drive to add new recipes, unless I gave the machine Internet access).

I've got a notebook that a friend gave me, a photo album where I stick recipe cards, and binders... way too much. I find recipes online sometimes but mostly not. I'm not quite into having a computer in the kitchen... sure the keyboard would look great with my floury hands.

whytephoenix - I still have the recipe book from you : )

I keep a collection of word files - typed recipes that were favourites when I lived at home, and recipes from cookbooks that I've taken out of the library. The recipes that I refer to most frequently, I write on index cards and keep them in small photo album with my cookbooks.

I get lots of paper from my Uni (since they only print on one side, I asked if I could take home discarded documents, etc and they were ok with it, so now, unless it's something I have to mail somewhere, I use it to print.)
I print my recipes on the empty side and stick them to my fridge with my timer-magnet while cooking. When I'm done, if I think this is something I'll make again, I just copy it to a notebook, with my notes, and leaving space to add more in the future.
My mom gave me a notebook where she wrote my 20 favourite recipes, and I made it a point that only she could write on it, so when I need a recipe from her I'll ask her to write it there, ha!
She has an over 300-pages book with handwritten pages. She writes them as she goes, but keeps an organized index at the end. I hope my brother won't fight me over that book when my mum doesn't need it anymore!