Kitchen Notebook

This week I've spent alot of time working on this:

This is my new Kitchen Notebook.  

It's been on my "project" list for quite a while now, but no more!  I finally finished it this week.  

For years I've had a huge notebook in one of my kitchen drawers, full of recipes, household tips, gift ideas, etc.   First of all  - this thing was UGLY and, my new favorite word, UNRULY.    It was a huge, PINK, 3 ring notebook that, at one time, had been organized.   That was years ago!  In more recent years, it had become something I dreaded looking at, everytime I needed to dig for an old recipe.

I put it on my ongoing project list, with the hopes that I would feel motivated to clean it up, but it just never happened.   Until this week.

Funny thing is - I didn't intend on tackling it this week, but my never-ending quest for making menus led me straight to the dreaded pink monster and voila'!

Let me back up - what I WAS working on this week was, of course, menu making.  Like you didn't see that coming!  Anyway - I had downloaded a Menu Making E-book from Econobusters, complete with forms for making out a month's worth of menus.   This was actually one of the best books I've seen yet; very simple and helpful.    However, when I started working the method, I quickly realized that the problem lies with me.    I won't bore you with the details of my self-revelation, but just know that I will probably never succeed at a month's worth of meals on a piece of paper.  Therefore, when one method fails - try another - right?  

The one step of the method that I DID do was writing out a list of all the "favorites" my family likes to eat.   I began to come up with ideas at that point, on how to categorize and put this into my own method; something I knew I could actually live with.   

So, here is what I did:

I took my "favorites" list and broke it into categories such as:

Party food

Saturday Breakfast

Lunch

Chicken

Beef

Pork

Soups

Desserts

Sunday lunches

I then typed out a list for each category, listing all our favorites. 

Next, I began going through the UGLY PINK monster and pulling out all the recipes I had that were for the "favorites".    If they were on recipe cards or torn out of a magazine, I made a copy and then put the copied recipe in a page protector and put it in the proper section of the new notebook.   

(This may shock some of you, but I threw the old recipes away after making a copy.  Don't worry!  I didn't have any "hand me down" recipes from Grandma or anything. )   But now, every page was a consistent size and shape.

In the process of looking for all the favorites, I was cleaning out and throwing away all the recipes I had collected over the years that just "looked" good.   Many of them I had never tried, yet they were cluttering up my drawer all this time. 

By the time I was done purging, copying, organizing, and such, I had a nice, much thinner, very organized notebook of things that I know we eat.    This felt great!

The key to this method of mine will be to make out a menu each week based on our family favorites.  I will simply go to the notebook, pull out a recipe from each category, make my grocery list, and go!  

Well, there ya have it!  One project down - a whole list to go.  

(If this inspires you to make your own Kitchen Notebook, please let me know.)

Until next time......

Blessings

**Oh, and LOU - in this process, I found the perfect PIE recipe for the pie challenge.  YAY:)

See ya,

Debbie