The Recipe Dilemma

My name is Lauren, and I collect recipes.

There, I've said it. That feels better.

I subscribe to Bon Appetit, Food + Wine, and Real Simple (which isn't a food mag, but does have lots of "mom" recipes. They aren't always great, but they easy and the time is usually accurate). I read Serious Eats. I get email newsletters every day from Allrecipes and MyRecipes. I get newsletters every week from Chow and Epicurious. I have about a dozen cookbooks. I save recipes online, print them out, write them down, tear them out of magazines. I used to print them out and tape them on index cards.

In short, I have recipes everywhere. This makes it hard to keep track of recipes we've tried, recipes we like, recipes we want to cook again. We're constantly saying things like, "where's that salmon recipe we made that time?" "do you know what was in that steak sauce?" It's annoying that we don't have a centralized system.

Until now! Behold, our recipe book!

I tore out all of the recipes that we have tried and want to try, and I taped them to white paper and inserted them in plastic sheets. They are organized thusly: meat, seafood, sides, sauces, sandwiches/pizzas, desserts.

It's not a foolproof system, but until I actually break down and buy this, it'll have to do.