Let's Eat Workshop- Week 4 of 5

Week Four: Organizing, Saving Your Recipes & Putting it all Together

When it comes to menu planning, the hardest part for me is come up with a variety of meals for the week. Because of this, I organize my nights into themes, as we discussed last week, but the actual organization and storage of my recipes goes even a step further to help ease this often painful process. 

Here is what I do:

First, I have 2 3-ring notebooks- one is labeled "Recipes to Try" and the other notebook is labeled "Favorite Recipes." Each notebook has tabbed dividers in each of them that are labeled with the names of the themes I use for each night of the week. I have a "Mexican" tab for "Mexican Monday" a "Take Out" tab for takeout Tuesday and so forth. I also have a tab for "Drinks" Party Foods" and "Misc."

As I read my magazines and find new recipes or print recipes from other blogs I see, I file the new recipes in the "Recipes to Try" notebook under the best tabbed section. A new pizza recipe would go under the "Take Out" divider, a new enchilada recipe would go under the "Mexican" divider.

 All these recipes stay here in this notebook until I get around to trying them for myself. This eliminates piles of magazine clippings of random recipes that get lost or damaged before you can try them! And there is no sense of making any of these magazine pages look pretty yet- you don't know if the recipe is a keeper or not, so just leave it in the folder. We will discuss making your recipes prettier in one minute.

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When I get around to trying a new recipe, I pull one out of the "Recipes to Try" notebook. If my family loved it, I will then transfer the recipe to the "Favorite Recipes" notebook. This means that I am only keeping the recipes I know my family will eat. That doesn't mean they all have to rate it a perfect 10, it just has to be good enough for me to save and want to make again. If it doesn't turn out, I toss the recipe into the trash! No sense in saving a recipe it you didn't like it, right?

So my "Favorite Recipes" notebook will sit how it is until I get ambitious or find some extra time on my hand. If that ever happens (ahem.) I like to "Make my recipe cards pretty" and file it into my recipe box.

 Making it pretty is a completely individual preference- some people just hand write it on note card, others will type it. I do this:

I like to have a picture with my recipes, so I type the recipe directly on top of the picture. Then, I print the pictures at my local printer (WalMart, Walgreens, Costco etc.) and they go into my recipe box.
(Actually, I now go one step further and mount them to card stock then laminate them because I discovered the hard way how messy I am in the kitchen and all my pretty cards were getting ruined!) Here is what they look like all pretty and protected just waiting to be filed in my box:

My recipe box also has tabbed dividers of the themed days of the week- which makes it easy to flip through while planning my menu.

So planning my menu for the week goes something like this:

1. Grab paper and pencil, 2 black notebooks and recipe box.
2. Find a recipe for Mexican Monday by looking in the file box or the "Favorite Recipes" notebook under the tab "Mexican". Continue in this fashion finding a meal for every day of the week. Use the "Recipes to Try" notebook to find a meal for "What's New Wednesday".
3. Make a grocery list.
4. Go shopping.
5. Eat dinner.
6. Live happily ever after.

Again, because my days have a theme, the guesswork is almost done for me. And because my recipes are organized by theme, I can easily flip to the meal ideas for that theme and choose among tons of options!

Ta-Da! Easy, yummy meals in a wide variety! Meal planning is only going to get easier for you, I promise!

YOUR ASSIGNMENT FOR THE WEEK: 

Come up with your own way to organize recipes and commit to doing so! Get started on the process so you won't give up on it.

NEXT WEEK'S DISCUSSION: 

A Giveaway! (You won't want to miss it!!!)