Without 43 Things, I’d still be “wanting” to do this but doing nothing about it. Well NOW, I’ve started doing something about it. There are several steps in this plan, the first being I need to organize what I’ve got!
This long weekend, I found a cool stripey binder sort of like this one. I got all my scattered recipe printouts into the binder, marked the “good” ones so I know for sure which recipes I’ve tried, and replaced my TWO old awful recipe boxes with ONE beautiful Mary Englebrecht large box. I also started sorting through my clipped recipes and was ruthless in discarding recipes that would no longer suit us – too much fat, too complicated, too many strange ingredients, etc. I recopied some recipes that I love onto new big beautiful cards.
As soon as I make my way through the entire pile of clipped recipes, the next step will be to transfer recipes that are on old small or dirty cards onto new large clean cards. I’m even considering getting a small laminating machine so I can laminate the cards and make them spill/spatter-proof!
Next, I will tackle the dreaded “small recipe booklets” that I have collected over the years. I may dismantle them and salvage only the best recipes if there are just a few decent ones. Or, if I am going to save the whole book, I’ll stack them together and go to Kinkos to have punch-hole bindings put on them so they are all together unified as their own recipe book. :)
I will end up with two definitive personal recipe sources – my binder and my box – and organize/narrow my cookbooks down to fit into one cabinet. Then it’s on to the “family” part of this recipe madness!
