Kitchen

[qualitygal]

I have repeats on salads.  Mostly the pasta salads, and and so many variations!!  I just kept them and scurried on through the rest of them. I had NO idea I had so many, it's so funny.  They are in no order, (big old 3 ring binder).  Need to get in some order.

Now, do you always keep a recipe you come across that is a same name recipe.

Oh and Monster Cookies!!! Sheesh I need to get a handle on this. LOL

Anyone else do the same thing?  

[noodleann]

Yes. I have a lot of cookbooks, but am always searching for recipes that I think will recreate a particular dish I had many moons ago and loved. One is ham loaf. I've bought whole cookbooks for a ham loaf recipe. Another is roasted potatoes with lemon and garlic that I had in a Greek restaurant in NYC that closed over 30 years ago. I'm always on the lookout for a carrot/raisin/pineapple slaw recipe that I think will replicate the flavor of the one I bought for years from a local deli. And I'd love to find a dupe for Swanson's Chicken Salad Seasoning Mix. I have what might be the last packet of mix on the planet and am always looking for something that will approximate the same flavors.

So how do you plan to cull your recipes, @qualitygal ? Are you going to review them to see what look most promising and try them out? Or will you simply sort them by type and keep them all?

[qualitygal]

@noodleann  I think one at a time, I may just do each one, till they are gone.  I have books so, I won't lose anything.  LOL  

[noodleann]

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@qualitygal wrote:

@noodleann  I think one at a time, I may just do each one, till they are gone.  I have books so, I won't lose anything.  LOL  

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Sounds like a plan. I just got my incredible Wolfgang Puck mixing bowl set, so now I want to actually make something that requires mixing just to put it to use. But I'll probably wind up eating tater tots for supper while dreaming of that carrot slaw. 

Good luck with your sorting. I love thinking about food, flavor, all the possibilities.

[RespectLife]

I started by putting them in page protectors and then notebooks for each category right away.

Sadly, the project got away from me!

Now I have a monstrous pile of recipes on the counter staring me down!

[wagirl]

I had alot of cookbooks too--most of them I only used 1 or 2 recipes out of---so I donated most of them last year. I did copy those few recipes first----I still print alot from pinterest or allrecipes or a few other sites like that----and now I have a pile of loose recipes that I've never used--so its time to recycle most of them too. Lately I just save them on my ipad---then delete if needed.

[ECBG]

@qualitygal I use a 3 ring binder.  Some of my recipes are from magazines but I never think to look through them, even though they are years old!

[Mom2Dogs]

I am a bit of a neat freak and so I made a template recipe card and then typed my recipes out, printed them and put them into categories in a small recipe size binder.

Fast forward, I now have many that I printed out on  just a regular size sheet of paper....the big dilema is do I type the newer recipes out to match my old recipe cards?

I guess I can do that in my new found extra time on my hands.

I will try each recipe before I go to the trouble of typing the out.

[peachesncream]

My downfall is printing out recipes from the Internet. (In the old days, it was cutting out recipes from magazines). I overdo that. I could never cook all of those recipes.

Trying endless versions of the same dish is another problem. I'm such a compulsive recipe tester that when I say "there's meatloaf for dinner," DH has no idea what he's actually getting!  

My problem is, I always think there could be a perfect version out there. I'm trying to get better at deciding, "this recipe is good enough."

[Sooner]

I tear out a lot of recipes but I cull them at the end of the month--or at least the season. So they don't stack up so much. I also have come to grips with what we will really use, and what we would not--so I am simplifying life all around now.

Letting to, getting rid of and saying goodbye to! And to be really truthful, I have cooked and studied cooking a lot over my long life, so mostly I just look at a recipe to clarify cooking time or see if that's really the way I'd make it anyway!