Organize those recipes.

Hey Loves!
Rissa here with another tip! This one is all about food! Yaaay!
I don't know about you guys but for me cooking for my family can sometimes be the most dreadful part of my day, simply due to the fact I don't know what in the world to cook! So I end up stuck in the kitchen fumbling around until I come up with something that either the Hubs and the babies don't like or I just end up microwaving something. It is very important to me that I make healthy and tasty meals for my family so in order to do so without all the stress I decided that maybe a recipe binder would be a helpful tool!
This binder not only houses all of our favorite recipes but it also keeps recipes we would like to try, grocery list printouts, food inventory, meal planning printouts (post on this later), freezer cooking printouts (post on this later), and much more. This binder has been such a big help here in the Cunningham house and dinner time is a breeze now! So if you are interested in putting together your own binder keep on reading and lets get right into it.

Items Needed:

• 3 ring binder
• Card-stock
• Glue
• Tab dividers (12)
• 3-hole punch
• Your recipes
• Page protectors

Now as far as how you put your binder together this is totally up to you. I have seen so many different versions of how people organize their recipes and I took things that I liked and applied them to my own.

Step 1.) Determine how you want to categorize your recipes. I categorized mine in this order:

•  Meal Planning  (this is where I put all of those printouts and food inventory)
• Beef
• Breakfast
• Chicken
• Crockpot
• Drinks
• Pork
• Seafood
• Sides, Breads, Butters
• Snacks
• Soups
• Sweets

Step 2.) Type those hand-written recipes and print them out. Glue them to card-stock to make them sturdy. Put them into the page protectors.

Step 3.) Label your tab-dividers.

Step 4.) Arrange your recipes in the binder accordingly.

Step 5.) Cook one of those favorite recipes and pat yourself on the back because you are awesome! ;-)

My supplies and yes that would be a glass of Shiraz, I try not to do many projects in the Cunningham home with out it! ;-)

Recipe from a magazine

Tab divider labeled

Typed recipe

Binder is complete!

Now that your recipes are all together in one fabulous place, you are ready to start meal planning! This too has been extremely helpful for meal time here. My next post will be about how I plan my meals by freezer cooking and using a weekly menu so stay tuned!
Do you have a recipe binder?