Have you made your own "cook book"?

[Standrea]

I have alot of recipes that I've tried and absolutely loved. Most of them have been emailed to me, or I have found online. I printed them out, and put them in a folder.

I just recently realized that I should probably do something else with them. I bought sheet protects and a binder. I'm going to put them in there.

I was wondering if anyone has done anything similar? What works, what doesnt?

TIA!:)

[lauren f s]

I've done this for a while now .

At a friend's bridal shower, years ago, her mom did this for her. She asked everyone to bring their favorite recipe and she compiled all their family recipes, then put them in a binder, in protective sheets. I thought it was such a great idea that I started to do it as well.

I actually bought new binders Monday and have made separate ones for baking and dinner/"real" food recipes. I like the sheet protectors because I'm notorious for spilling whenever I cook and these keep the recipes clean and are easy to wipe up. And they cost less than a dollar, so it's no biggie if you have to replace them!

[karlatta]

I don't have a book, but I keep mine in an index card holder, with each recipe written on an index card.

I like this system because I choose what I'm going to cook for the next few days and pull all of those cards out and put them in the front. It helps me make my grocery list and then I don't have to go digging for cards right before I want to cook. I also like that they're just index cards, so they're small enough to not take up a ton of room on my tiny amount of counter space, and they're easily replaceable.

[Hello Kitty]

I keep mine on my PC, but then I do everything in Excel so this shouldn't be a surprise :o

I keep a word doc called 'Master Recipe' and I just add recipes in there at the end - they're not organized at all. Then in Excel, I keep a categorized list - by meat type or dish type. So when I want to look through and add a beef entree to our menu for the week, I'll scroll down that list to get ideas. When I'm ready to cook, I click on the entree's cell in excel, and it hyperlinks me to the place in the Master Recipe document. Or, it hyperlinks me to the website I found it on. Or it's got a note like MS Jun 25 (for my martha stewart everyday food from June, P 25)

I do the sheet protector thing for my magazines, but I never really go to it that much. I also have a little index card binder for handwritten recipes and ideas.

[AHammer]

I'm a sheet protector and binder kinda person. I only have one binder now (a cute one I got at a bridal shower 2 years ago) but it's getting full so I'll probably need to get another one!

[jarm]

I have had all intentions of doing the same thing. Never got to it. Maybe this weekend I will.

[Anna Low]

I did this for my mother and mother-in-law's christmas gifts. Apparently, I must have an enormous collection of recipes, because it completely filled one of the largest binders I could find. They both seemed to like it very much.

[MrsT]

For magazine recipes (I get Cooking Light and Southern Living) I use a page protector for each month and a binder for each year. I pull out (full page) recipes I like, also cut off the cover and the index (CL includes one in each issue) and use that to save magazines. I can easily reference the recipes using the indexes or CL online.

For any other recipe I use index cards (either written on or recipe glued to) in a photo album with slots for 4 X 6 photos. Like Karlatta I think the index cards are the easiest to pull out, use and replace if necessary. CL, Epicurious and a few other sites also allow you to print index card sized recipes from their website. If on a site that doesn't have the feature, I'll print out a recipe in Word (recipe shrunk to index card size) and keep it if I like it (that way I don't have to look up twice, rewrite/print, etc.).

I've also heard great things about the Master Cook software (you input the recipes and can pull up by ingredients, etc.). It supposedly also allows you (in the new version) to do a cookbook of sorts.

[off2skl]

I use the binder/sheet protector method. Now that I have time I am trying to create weekly menus by combining recipes and creating a shopping list for the group of recipes (got the idea from when I subscribed to Relish and I now want to do it with my existing recipes). No more menu planning after that!

[pacificbliss]

I'm another binder/sheet protector person. Frequently it's something I cut out of a magazine and I tape it to a sheet of paper (from the scratch paper pile of course) and put it in the binder in a sheet protector. Then, when I make the recipe I write notes about where and when I made it, what people thought of it, what I would change, etc.

[jenjunum]

I do the same as pacificbliss. Page protectors in a binder. Cut out recipes on paper with my notes written on the side. It's very helpful because I often don't follow a recipe to the T so it's nice to write in my variations.

[Lauren]

I did pretty much the same thing, but I used a photo album (the same size as a standard three-ring binder) with those self-adhering pages. I just cut the recipe out, stick it to the page and smooth the protective sheet over it. I also divided it into several categories -- weeknight meals, weekend meals (for meals that involve more prep time or are more elaborate), salads, desserts, etc. It's actually really useful.