My mom gave me a recipe book for Christmas that was perfect for me. It is basically a big blank album with dividers for categories. It has those 'static' plastic pages like old school photo albums. I just put all the cut outs, cards, collected recipes in the pages, divided up by category so I can easily find them. I pull them out to use them, then put them back. Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but it was a neat idea for me since I have so many random hand written recipes on scrap paper, or email print outs from someone's recipe they brought somewhere that I liked, etc.

For a long time I used a binder that held 5x7" pages. It was full of clear pocket pages -- page covers? protectors? not sure what these are called. I stuck many of the recipes to 5x7 cards which I put into the sleeves; I also just stuck regular recipe cards into the sleeves.

At any rate, I recently switched entirely over to software. I use MacGourmet (it's Mac-only, duh) and I LOVE it. It makes it very easy to snag recipes off web sites, which is where I get 99% of my recipes now anyway.

I hand-entered all the family recipes that I wanted to be able to search and use. Didn't take too long. All the ones I clipped from magazines? I found every single one online so I could just import them instead of re-typing. Cooking Light/Southern Living/Sunset have all their recipes on myrecipes.com now. All the Gourmet/Bon Appetit recipes are on Epicurious. I pay $25/year for Cook's Illustrated. Most major newspapers have free online archives now. And the rest I was able to find on allrecipes.com.

I saved the special handwritten cards in a box, but when I want to use them, I get them straight off the computer (MacGourmet has a "Chef Mode" that enlarges the recipe into huge type so you can read it off the screen from across the kitchen).

So, yeah, a little on the OCD side. :)

For what it's worth, I'm a professional pastry chef so I have a TON of recipies littering the house. I have several enormous 3 ring binder that are divided up into several catagories. When I have a new recipe that I want to try I cut it out (typically just tear our the entire page b/c I'm lazy) and put it in the front of the binder - I do not put it into it's catagory yet. After the recipe has been tested, approved by the household, and I've marked any changes to it, I'll then put it into a plastic paper protector and file it under the right catagory. That way if I need a recipe that I know will be a slam-dunk for a dinner party I just turn to the plastic covered section whereas if I feel the need to be experimental I try one of the nonfiled recipes.

I also use this system in the commercial kitchen though obviously a lot more testing/adjusting goes into any recipe before it makes it into the filed section.

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Thanks! I don't know why I didn't think of it before, a photo album type style where pages can be added.

So here I sit on a cold Sunday afternoon, filing them away. I had them in boxes but then would drag the box out and grab my "category" and litter them all over the kitchen to look for what I wanted.

OMG, I thought I was OCD ;0! MacGourmet....maybe in my next life when I have a screen in the kitchen....

I'm a professional pastry chef

Can I come over to your house :) ?

The static photo pages sound like the best solution for your self-made cards. Another idea, perhaps you could hole-punch them and put them in a small binder, or just put a metal ring through a corner hole (for smaller sets)? Also, I agree that having them on the computer isn't the most practical method of storage since you can't take that with you to the kitchen (although I love the idea of a high-tech kitchen where that was possible!). However, having the recipes on the computer would be nice for searching/planning and especially for sharing online!

I recently organized all my recipes- it took some time but it was worth it. I gathered all my "tried and true" recipes and wrote them out on to cute recipe cards and put them in a nice book I received as a gift. I believe it was from Sur la Table . I keep this book on my counter and use it all the time. I gathered all the "to-try" (or "tried once, but not 100% sold") ones in a folder and set it aside. A few of those recipes have since made the cut- I wrote them out and added them to the book.


I love this system because I no longer have to search through a huge stack of randomness to find my favorite recipes!

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Training for: Barb's Race HIM 8.2.08

I have a laptop which I do take into the kitchen (and keep well out of harm's way)... but this is my ultimate dream for when I have a kitchen of my own:

http://www.kitchenmac.com/

drool!

For recipies people have given me on recipe cards, I use a notebook with the clear plastic sleeves. I also have a regular notebook that holds 3-hole-punched 8.5x11 sheets of paper containing recipes I've printed from the Internet.

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"Real winners aren't content with yesterday's victories"