Building your own recipe collection gives you a great deal of flexibility when making your meal planning choices. You can keep things very simple and just track family favorites. This is extremely useful if you have picky eaters in your household. With proper referencing, you can also build meal plans around what's on sale this week. For those who garden or have friends who garden, the ability to locate that cucumber salad or zucchini bread recipe can also be extremely handy. No matter your eventual goals, being able to easily find recipes that suit your budget, time available and ingredients on hand can make life and mealtimes much easier to manage. Families will feel happier when they are eating great recipes from your collection.
Finding The Right Recipe Book
Your recipe book can be quite simple to start. A photo album book can serve as a place to stash recipes cut from magazines. If you have hand-written recipes on cards, you can use an index card box to stash your recipes. One of the challenges to making such a recipe collection work is finding a way to protect your recipes and cookbooks from getting dirty with cooking foodstuffs. An acrylic cookbook stand that allows you to see the recipe while you work can save a great deal of bother.
When you first start compiling your recipe collection, make sure you build an index of sorts that will make it easier to sort your recipes. A simple start would be a list in excel that will allow you to sort and search. You can also customize your listing. For example, if you need to make ahead recipes or if you use your crockpot on busy days, create a section just for those options.
Online Recipe Sources
To build your personal list of go-to recipe sources, carefully consider your cooking strengths and your favorite style of cooking. If you love the idea of preparing gourmet meals but are lucky to have the time to whip up a box of macaroni and cheese, consider trying some of the recipes focused on just a few ingredients. The major online recipe sources, such as
- Taste of Home
- Bon Appetit
- Food Network
also offer sections that feature recipes that are both tasty and quick to prepare. If your family is dealing with
- Allergies
- Sensitivities
- Alternative dietary choices, such as vegetarianism
you may have to dig a bit deeper. Those who need to avoid dairy may need to look outside the world of traditional western food and build a stock of Asian and African recipes. If you prefer not to eat red meat or eggs, learn to cook Indian food. Your recipe collection will be much more interesting if you focus on the many foods you can enjoy instead of looking at what you have to avoid.
Creating Your Own Recipe Collection
To create your personal collection of recipes that you and your household will enjoy, take a look at your
- Tastes
- Food budget
- Available time
- Storage
If you can never get anything more into your freezer, clean it out. Once you have the space, you can start looking at make ahead meals, or single serving prepared foods that you can freeze to take to work.
For small households on tight budgets, a big challenge is figuring out what foods you enjoy enough to cook in bulk. Cooking in bulk and cooking ahead can save a great deal of money and time, but it can be a bit tiring to your taste buds. Freezing single servings to enjoy in the next few months can increase your options.
Split your recipe collection by your available kitchen tools, by the time it takes to cook the food, and by any unusual ingredients. For example, if you always have mushrooms but never buy green onions, make sure you tag green onion in the title so you can purchase some when you're in the mood for that dish.
