organize my recipes

I still have old recipes to enter, but we’ve now established a family habit of recipe maintenance, so it will get finished – and I like checking things off. I have a weekly reminder system set up so I enter a few recipes whenever I am waiting on hold or something.

Joining the free WeGottaEat.com website continues to make a huge difference for my family. We used it constantly through the holidays to find and develop new recipes, record family favorites, and share recipes with friends. I am not even close to done entering recipes from my old collection of magazine clippings and recipe cards. But I do a few more every few days. I am not going to consider this goal done until I get those old recipes sorted.

When I plan to cook something, I print out the recipe and tape it to kitchen cupboard door next to the stove. My family can make comments and suggestions in advance. I remember to add the ingredients to the shopping list. I can make notes when I cook it, if I adjust the recipe – then I make the changes on the website and toss out the old recipe. No more spattered cookbooks propped up on the toaster oven.

I feel really good about the progress on this goal. It has improved the way we cook and eat, in addition to simply reducing the paper clutter in the kitchen. And I love a goal that doesn’t cost money to achieve!

We have cookbooks, and recipe boxes, and three-ring binders, and magazines with post-it-note bookmarks. We have online recipe bookmarks, food blogs, and email newletters. And every time we see something good on the Food Network, someone prints out the recipe and adds it to the stack.

I needed to DO something, so I went looking for an online solution to organizing recipes/ I am very fond of technology. I stumbled on http://WeGottaEat.com – which is a free online recipe organizer.

I am really making progress now! I have almost 200 recipes organized and tagged according to ingredients, who likes it, what kind of meal, etc. I still have a lot to go, but I plug away at it for a little while every day. Even if I only enter one recipe a day, that’s more progress than I made before!

I am able to print them out whenever I want. I sometimes print out a stack for a weekend of cooking ahead, and then make notes on the copies to add to the recipe notes online. The site also has a shopping list feature I am starting to use more.

I can also share recipes with friends and family there. My partner and our kids and I all cook, so I am hoping this will be a way that we can keep in touch with the kids as they leave for college and their own foodie lives – we can keep sharing food traditions and discovering new things to try.

If you join WeGottaEat, ket me know and we can add each other ad friends. There is also a FaceBook group for WeGottaEat, if you are a FaceBook user.