Stefanie Ackerson, October, Organize Recipes

I love to collect recipes!  I have shelves literally overflowing with cook books and recipe card boxes.  But I also had tons of random recipes I've collected over the years from Relief Society activities, newspaper clippings, printed off the internet, copied out of library books, and from my mom and other friends and relatives that were piling up in an old grocery sack because I never seemed to have the time to organize them into a binder.  I bought a great big binder years ago and even made a cover page for it, but it just never happened.  So for my October project, I decided it must be done!  I wish I had remembered to take a "before" picture so you could see the mess I was in, but I forgot, so you'll just have to use your imagination.  

I thought about organizing the recipes with all the same great tabs I've used in the past for recipe card boxes:

• Appetizers
• Beverages
• Breads
• Cakes/Cookies
• Candies
• Desserts
• Eggs
• Fruits/Veggies
• Main Dishes
• Meats
• Miscellaneous
• Pancakes/Crepes
• Pies
• Salads
• Sandwiches
• Side Dishes
• Soups

But then I realized that it wasn't going to work because a lot of these random floating recipes are compilations of various foods that could go into multiple categories (e.g., Relief Society Christmas dinner menu recipes).  So I decided to keep it simple and sort them into five very basic categories:

• Appetizers
• Side Dishes
• Main Dishes
• Desserts
• Holidays

It took some creativity, but eventually every single recipe found a home!  Here is the finished project (and yes, the cover has my maiden name on it, that's how long ago I meant to start this project!):

The best part of finally finishing this project is that I found a lot of really fun and EASY recipes I had forgotten all about!  Even my husband was intrigued by some of the recipes he saw in my book.  Looks like we'll be trying old-world manicotti and crock pot lava cake in the near future.  I've made a goal to try a new recipe from it each week. :)