Monday, 14 July 2014

Our Favorite Recipe Book

I have been blessed over the years to accumulate many recipes from friends, co-workers and relatives.  Rarely are the recipes ever in the form of a recipe card like the ones that my mother kept.  Rather, they were scribbled on pieces of paper, or shared online, or passed down from a great grandmother on stationary, then copied by grandmother and passed to my mother, and then copied again to be passed to me.  A few years ago, I decided to create a recipe notebook.

Great Grandma Violet Rowley-Teunick's War Cake Recipe

Not only did I like that I could organize the recipes by type, but I could also preserve the handwriting of my friends and family.  I know many women love to make their notebooks pretty, but I really needed mine to be functional.  I wanted something that was going to be durable and I didn't want to worry about spills and messes while I was cooking.

My Recipe Notebook

Supplies you will need:

a heavy duty, three inch, three ring binder
page protectors - begin with a pack of fifty
page dividers
your favorite recipes

Organize your recipes in the way that makes most sense to you.  I keep it simple.  I have a category for:

Soups/Stews
Chicken
Beef
Pork
Fish
Veggies
Baking (Cakes, Pies, Cookies, etc...)
Secret Family Recipes

I have a friend who decided to organize her book based on who gave her the recipes:

Grandma Smith
Great Grandma Taylor
Aunt Christy
Kate
Ellen
Paula

My friend has an amazing mind and she can recall who gave her which recipe and she knows right where to look.  But me?  I'd be lost!  So choose a system that works for you.

Once you decide how to organize your recipes, label your page dividers, and begin filling your page protectors with recipes.  Don't skip the page protectors!  We all mean to be careful, but spills and splotches happen!

Keep an extra supply of page protectors on hand.  I usually try a recipe at least twice before I add it to my notebook.  My notebook is only for the recipes I want to keep for regular or future use.  It has a pocket in the front, so I usually keep untried recipes there, and then if we decide we like them, I pop them into a page protector and file it in its proper place.  I try to remember to make a note on the recipe about how well my family liked it and if I needed to make any changes to the ingredients.

I enjoy the order my notebook has brought to my kitchen.  I no longer have to rummage through a tiny box for folded, oil stained scraps of paper.  Nor do I have to guess where I last left a recipe, "Did I leave it in the kitchen drawer? Or did I fold it up in the cookbook?" - while my hungry family waits for supper.  A little bit of organization now prevents much frustration later.  Who knew a notebook could help us be happier homemakers?

Many blessings,






Yvonne Ferlita has been married for nearly twenty-five years and is mother to four children ages 22, 20, 16 and 11 years old. She is a follower of Jesus and gratefully relies on His grace. Having overcome perfectionism, she has embraced the imperfect excellence found in the ordinary life God has given her. Yvonne has homeschooled her children since 1998 and has helped them enjoy their unique gifts, while overcoming various learning and life challenges. Her therapy is writing, crocheting, swimming and laughing. She and her family reside in Brandon, Florida surrounded by four orphaned cats and a lovely, but bossy, labrador retriever. She blogs to encourage at Not Perfect - Just Ordinary.

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