Putting together a cookbook binder...

[jjarman]

I have been collecting recipes out of magazines for years. They usually end up getting stuffed in a drawer and thrown out. When I was visiting my aunt and uncle last weekend she went to her cookbook to get a recipe for me for some wonderful pickles. She had this binder with all kinds of recipes in it she had collected for years. They were written on paper, cut from magazines, on recipe cards, etc. Well I ordered a recipe binder by Paula Deen today from Amazon. I am so excited and spent the evening going through more magazines and cutting out recipes. I am thinking about how I want to do this. I think the binder comes with clear sheet protectors that you can put pages down into to preserve. Should I just put whole pages in the protector sheets? What about the smaller ones? Should I tape them to notebook paper and then put in the protector sheets? I am concerned about the tape though. Won't it discolor over time? How should I preserve them? I am thinking I might need to go to a hobby store and look at the scrapbooking stuff. I have never done scrapbooking so have no idea what they have.

 

[Hidden_Mickey]

I made one of these with just a large black binder and some sheet protectors. I typed out the important recipes in a large font so that they were easy to read. The smaller ones I put in a sheet protector and they floated around a little, lol, but then I used tape on the back of them (you know, in a loop?) to keep them in place in the sheet protector and now they don't float around in it.

I found some cooking oriented clip art and printed it on large address labels so I could stick them to the front of the binder.

If you look at the scrapbooking stuff, I'm sure you will find plenty of fun stuff to decorate your book with! They will also have plain or decorated books with sheet protectors in them, although you already have a book. The book you bought may come with stickers and recipe cards also, as I've bought them as gifts in the past and they came with stuff like that.

Have fun!

 

[cassiez76]

my friends and i all made binders too. we bought the big pack of clear sheet protectors, got cute stickers, clip art for our books.

also typed up our favorite recipes for the books. i've seen added so many too my book, i need another book! and it's the biggest binder you can find!!

have a separate binder for the cookbook of "famous" recipes too.

 

[Hidden_Mickey]

I should add that I also bought an inexpensive book holder, so I can take a page out of the binder and prop it up next to the stove while I cook

Something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Spectrum-Inc-...r_1_3?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1287807509&sr=1-3

 

[NMAmy]

I've had binders of recipes for years and I just use a regular binder and page protectors. A few years ago, after being unable to find a recipe I was looking for, I separated them out. One binder has recipes that we have tried that were a hit. The other binder has just a page protector per major ingredient--for example, beef, chicken, fish, vegetarian, desserts, and that's where I keep the recipes that we haven't tried yet. When I want to try a new way to cook salmon, I look through all the recipes stuffed in that page and try one. If we don't like it, the recipe gets thrown away and if we did like it, it is moved up to the other binder.

 

[bicker]

In this day-and-age, I cannot imagine trying to organize recipes any way other than via a computer. The ability to adjust recipes dynamically, make copies for friends with a single press of a button, and being able to bequeath exact copies to two loved ones trumps any paper-based method. And if you need paper, then just hit print and put the result, perhaps beautifully adorned with pretty borders and such, onto three-hole punched paper.

 

[PollyannaMom]

I love my binders!! (Yes, I have two. - One is divided into main dishes, sides, etc, and the other is breads and desserts.) If something I clip is a whole sheet, I just punch holes in it and stick it in the right section. Smaller clippings, I do tape to a piece of paper, and put in sheet protectors. - But if you're worried about tape, acid-free glue sticks are easy to find.

I also love making these as a wedding shower gift. I use the binders that have the clear covers you slip a page into, and print out "Mrs. ______'s Collected Recipes" with some clip art or a pretty border. The bride tends to get a kick out of seeing her new name in print, and guests can share a special recipe for it.

 

[jjarman]

Thanks so much. I do have the clear protector sheets so will go with those. I think there is acid free tape you can get. I am going to look at the hobby store for that.

 

[lovetoscrap]

I just redid ours a few weeks ago. My husband's parents gave him a Photo Album with the "magnetic" pages--where you pull the plastic back, with their favorite recipes when he went to college. It has been greatly loved over the last 20+ years and was time to clean it up.

As PP said, I also decided to split out the everyday favorites and the ones we don't use as often, so I bought another album. Every page of the old album needed a good cleaning with 409, and some were moved to the new album. I also had a bunch of loose things in there that I trimmed if needed and put in the new pages. This is one of the reasons that I don't use tape and don't like it. I moved some recipes around to a better order and it is quite easy with these types of pages to lift the plastic, pull it out and move.

I don't put untried recipes in these binders until they have been made at least once and deemed worthy! Most of my untried ones though are printed from the internet or are copies so they are all 3 hole punched and are in a separate binder with my cookbooks. Ones from magazines or newspapers just get slid into some page protectors in a big pile to be looked through later. I do try to keep the same category together like PP said-- Desserts, sides, beef, chicken etc...

But like Bicker said, I really don't worry as much anymore about keeping things from magazines or newspapers. For instance I love Food Network Magazine and was marking favorite recipes to copy when I decided to just look on their website. Yep, every one of them is on their site and you can put them in a virtual recipe box. Much easier. I am more likely to just go and search for something like if I have broccoli on hand and want something new I will just search for broccoli side dish and see what I find. If it is a hit, then it gets printed and put in the album. Made an amazing beef recipe this way last night! .

On my REALLY organized weeks/months I will sit down and come up with a menu for a set time period-- like I am having surgery on Monday so need to come up with one for the next 2 weeks. I have a small 3 ring binder for that and I put the menu in a simple calendar grid. I don't put days or dates anymore because something always happens to throw us off so it is more of just a calendar of the order we will use. Then I go through and get together all the recipes we will need and put them in order in there so it is easier to find them each night. Usually I post the menu on the refrigerator so it is easy to see what needs to be bought/thawed/marinated. I store all the old menus in this smaller binder also so I can go back to them for ideas, or just use them again!

As a scrapbooker I do know that putting all of these in these types of album is NOT archivally safe, but it is the easiest and cheapest way we have found that works for us. And I do intend to put most of them in the computer and make sure we have backups so they can be passed on, but for now we really haven't seen much problems with the pages yellowing and it is not worth it to me to spend the extra money to use my scrapbook supplies.

I think I have just figured out what I will do next week though while I am off my feet. I have 2 file drawers FULL of magazine/newspaper recipes from years ago that I have not gone through and was going to throw out. Maybe I will look through them and add them to my "things to try" binder.

 

[Pembo]

I like the old fashioned way....I use a recipe box with recipe cards or index cards.

 

[Northstar]

In this day-and-age, I cannot imagine trying to organize recipes any way other than via a computer. The ability to adjust recipes dynamically, make copies for friends with a single press of a button, and being able to bequeath exact copies to two loved ones trumps any paper-based method. And if you need paper, then just hit print and put the result, perhaps beautifully adorned with pretty borders and such, onto three-hole punched paper.

I know exactly what you mean... but I have to tell you, I lost my mom 3 years ago, but she is with me every time I open my disorganized old recipe binder. Recipe after recipe, neatly copied on index cards by her own hand.

There's no substitute for that! I'm never giving up my messy old family-history recipe files.

 

[LilyWDW]

In this day-and-age, I cannot imagine trying to organize recipes any way other than via a computer. The ability to adjust recipes dynamically, make copies for friends with a single press of a button, and being able to bequeath exact copies to two loved ones trumps any paper-based method. And if you need paper, then just hit print and put the result, perhaps beautifully adorned with pretty borders and such, onto three-hole punched paper.

I agree and I am actually starting to work on this. However, life keeps getting in the way. I really want to have it set up where I can organize it by different things, depending on what I am looking for. It's just a time consuming project, but will be a time saver when I get it finished.

 

[3TinksAndAnEeyore]

I've had binders of recipes for years and I just use a regular binder and page protectors. A few years ago, after being unable to find a recipe I was looking for, I separated them out. One binder has recipes that we have tried that were a hit. The other binder has just a page protector per major ingredient--for example, beef, chicken, fish, vegetarian, desserts, and that's where I keep the recipes that we haven't tried yet. When I want to try a new way to cook salmon, I look through all the recipes stuffed in that page and try one. If we don't like it, the recipe gets thrown away and if we did like it, it is moved up to the other binder.

This is a great idea! I started a three ring binder with page protectors for recipes about a year ago, but it's fallen into disuse a bit since it's got the "tried and true" recipes mixed in with "looks interesting" recipes. And in no particular order! I kept thinking I wanted to get it better organized and your idea sounds perfect for me. Thanks so much for sharing!

 

[OceanAnnie]

This is a project I am going to be undertaking soon. I have saved a good many magazines for recipes and ideas. I will be culling them and discarding much of the rest.

I do need to save some of the magazines for deconstruction by the kids. They have school assignments that sometimes calls for them. Some have met a grisly demise for the sake of school assignments, a few of my favorites at that.

ETA- I'm just going to use a photo book and insert the recipes. I haven't found a photo book I want for this yet, just browsing for one now and then.

 

[NMAmy]

This is a great idea! I started a three ring binder with page protectors for recipes about a year ago, but it's fallen into disuse a bit since it's got the "tried and true" recipes mixed in with "looks interesting" recipes. And in no particular order! I kept thinking I wanted to get it better organized and your idea sounds perfect for me. Thanks so much for sharing!

You're very welcome! I have to keep my organizing simple or I won't keep up with it. This has worked pretty well for me.

 

[Carly_Roach]

I should add that I also bought an inexpensive book holder, so I can take a page out of the binder and prop it up next to the stove while I cook

Something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Spectrum-Inc-...r_1_3?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1287807509&sr=1-3

I take mine out of the binder and put them on the fridge with a magnet. That way my counter stays clear when I'm assembling and the page protector doesn't get messy. But I can see where this wouldn't work for you if your fridge wasn't close to the cooking area.

When I lived at an apartment a previous tenant had an old metal clip glued to one of the kitchen cabinets. It came in handy for hanging a recipe at eye-level and keeping it out of my way. If I didn't have the fridge so close to my work area, I'd probably get one of those 3M stick on clips and put it at the bottom of one of my cupboards.

I know exactly what you mean... but I have to tell you, I lost my mom 3 years ago, but she is with me every time I open my disorganized old recipe binder. Recipe after recipe, neatly copied on index cards by her own hand.

There's no substitute for that! I'm never giving up my messy old family-history recipe files.

Ditto. I've lost so many old files and photos from my computer that I'm not about to trust my beloved recipes to anything electronic. And I'm glad my mother has never gone electronic, either. I'd miss her handwriting, her fingerprints in chocolate (oops!) on the recipes, or even her smell from the cookbook that's been in her kitchen since I was a child.

Passing down old cookbooks in our family is like passing down quilts, shawls and cooking supplies. That old skillet looks horrible, but it sure cooks up a mean omlet quickly with very little clean up! And I will never ever EVER get rid of the huge heavy green pottery bowl that my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother and I have used to make bread. It may be the ugliest thing anyone's ever seen, it doesn't go with anything in my kitchen and I have to wash it by hand because I don't trust it not to break in a dishwasher. But it's still the best bowl I've ever used for raising dough in.

Electronic is OK for some things, but for the art of down-home cooking with good recipes that stand the test of time, you can't beat the old binder cookbook or recipe cards. When my mother passes, it ain't gonna be her hard-drive that I'll be sitting in her house and hugging to my chest after the funeral.

 

[bicker]

Just wait until you and your siblings start fighting over the hand-written recipes.

 

[Carly_Roach]

Just wait until you and your siblings start fighting over the hand-written recipes.

I think we have an unspoken agreement between us:

I get to keep them if I agree to make the dishes FOR them.

Seriously though, I'm the baker in the family. I think my sister wants one or two of the original recipes and I'll photocopy those for myself, but DB has zero interest in cooking and they both know that I'll keep the book just like mama would want it kept: tucked in a corner but handy, and never dusted unless it's with flour or corn starch.

I think we'd probably be amicable about splitting up what's important to each kid when our folks go. We saw enough ugly, greedy, spiteful things happen on behalf of our Aunt and her family when our father's mother died to make us never want to behave that badly when our parents go.