Recipe Files

I love baking. I love cooking. I keep many recipes. Mostly from the internet ; good cooking websites and reliable foodie blogs. I learn not to trust recipes posted in the magazines too much. They don't really work. Either they omit certain direction (crucial) or they're incomplete like an ingredient is missing from the method (have you ever experience that, when do i put x, where?)or they're just not as great as it made to look. They post a very different picture alongside the recipe and now I've found out they even stole pictures from people's blog.

So I turn to trusted sites where real people post their family's recipe and viewers try those recipes and rate and comment them including changes they have made to improve the recipes. This way I know it's a true and tried recipe. I love allrecipes.com for this.

How do you keep your recipes? I like the idea of recipe cards. It's cute and very mobile. But it's too much work for me to resize and protect the paper. How? Laminate? Isn't that too much.

I use clear folders. I have 2 files, one for cakes and the other for main course. But the files are bursting. I exceed the folders, I have loose clips plus they are not properly divided. I need to add more files and redefine the categories and then further divide the sections for easy reference. I also have cookbooks, some really good ones, some just having a couple foolproofs and some not ventured yet. I need to tag this book somehow or maybe retype the good recipe and file it into the new file. How many times I want to make something and can't remember where the recipe from. I can't remember if it's in the folder or in the cookbooks and which cookbook. I have to make time to sort all this out. I HAVE time but I keep putting it off because I know it means a lot of retyping and rearranging. I'd be pulling out the files to start and then look around and just sort of collapse in dread imagining all the writing and shove it back.

But this time I am determined to get it done. I will sort the files out once and for all.
Step 1 - get the extra files. After some thinking, I decide I need 4 categories. And I name them : Cakes n Cookies, Pies n Pudding, Main Meal, Home Tips. However, labelling is just about the only fun thing here. Right after that, is pure headache. But I am determined (mantra).

I approach the process robot-style. Don't think, just do. Scan, select,  retype, refile. Repeat.

I am also taking into account the probability factor. I have recipes that's been sitting around for ages waiting for the miracle moment when I attempt them, I have now discard those recipes. Since I'm on robot mode I'll be heartless.
Recipes like kek lapis requiring 20 eggs and 6 hours process and complicated meals needing 26 ingredients and multiple stages that I know I'll never attempt are going into the bin instead of crowding my file. If I do keep a file, it'll be named Highly Unlikely. I'm done with over-ambitious, thank you. Only realistic, doable stuffs in these files from now on.

The Home Tips file, since you ask, contain, tips for using cooking products for house cleaning or beauthy/health regimen. It has been very useful for me knowing the uses of vinegar and baking soda in cleaning so I dedicate a file for such other useful tips. This year I resolve to try the tips on beauty/health. Most times I don't remember about it until I threw things away. Stuffs like using leftover bananas/papayas for face mask or lemons for nails. I only ever remember to reuse teabags for eye mask. Yes you can turn overripe bananas into muffins but sometimes you just don't want to because you are not up to baking and because you are thinking of ..ermm..your muffin top...so it's left rotten and thrown away. So that's one reminder.

I have done sorting one file and is halfway into the second. I should be finished in a week. I already feel good. Go robot.

You all have a nice day.