Let me start with a big shout out to The Food Nanny for the idea behind this project. A few months ago I started watching The Food Nanny program on tv and was inspired to 1. cook for my family more often and 2. be more organized with my menu planning. I have always liked to cook but with having such little babies in my home the last two years, it has been much harder to cook at home. I always dreaded coming up with a grocery list and figuring out what to make for a whole week's worth of dinners at a time. Sound familiar?!
The Food Nanny solves these issues with having a plan. She recommends having a theme for each night of the week. The themes I have chosen for my family are:
Monday - Soups & salads
Tuesday - Italian
Wednesday - Asian & Mexican
Thursday - Quick & easy
Friday - Pizza
Saturday - On the grill
Sunday - Comfort foods / new recipes
In our house the busiest day is Thursday, the day my daughter has ballet during dinnertime. This means she comes home from school with only enough time to have a snack, get dressed for ballet, and out the door. So I picked "Quick & easy" for this day to have dinner ready for when we get home with minimal effort for me. Quick & easy could be breakfast, crockpot foods, or recipes that I can prepare ahead. My kids love knowing that Friday nights are pizza nights (and homemade air-popped popcorn for movie night too)! My husband LOVES salad for dinner (he would eat salad for dinner every night if only I agreed to it), so having a salad & soup night was a no brainer for me. We love Indian curry, Asian stir-frys and Mexican food, so I lumped that all onto one day to rotate through those "exotic" flavors. Sundays will be a day for comfort foods as well as a day for me to try new recipes as I have more time to devote to cooking that day. Saturdays is a great day for grilling and having fresh vegetables.
Once you figure out what themes you like and what nights they make sense for your family, the rest of the preparation for this project is fairly easy. Check out The Food Nanny's website here for more ideas on themes.
Now, grab all your recipes lying around, a 3 ring binder, a labelmaker, a 3 hole punch, and some special tabed dividers (see below).
My stack of recipes just lying around, waiting to be organized.
First I took my tabed dividers, labeled them for the days of the week and the corresponding theme, and put them in the binder. THIS IS IMPORTANT: make sure to get some tabs that have a little pocket in the front. You will thank me for this! Get a package of tabs that have at least 16 or so. I used 7 for the days of the week, then made labels for new recipes, breakfast, dessert, veggies, starches, appetizers, and food storage. I got these tabs awhile ago, but I'm pretty sure I found them at Wal-mart. They are a kind that you can write on them with pen and erase them later, but I like the look of labels better than handwriting.
Take your stack of recipes and seperate by category and take a three hole punch to them. For recipes I had on small recipe cards, I made a black and white copy on my printer machine first so that all pages were a uniform size. This will help the book stay neat.
I placed a sheet protector in the back to house the hand-written recipes given to me from family members that I don't want to lose.
Ready for the part that will make you think I'm a genius?! Now that your recipes are sorted by theme, when you are ready to plan your week's menu, simply take out a recipe from a theme and place in the pocket of that day's tab. Now you can quickly find the recipe when it comes time to make the meal. You can even borrow (as long as you PROMISE to put it back) from the veggie or starch tabs and keep in the same tab pocket for the meal to be ready to go. Love it!!! No more loose recipes on my kitchen counter being grabbed by little messy troublemakers in my house!
I searched high and low on the internet for a stylish printable for the front cover of my 3 ring binder but could not find one. So I decided to pick a picture of my own to use. I decided on this one from my sister-in-law's wedding last fall. They had a root beer keg at their reception for root beer float making. When I look at it, it reminds me of all the good memories from that day. So if you can, find a picture of your family or a favorite meal that reminds you of something pleasurable to you.
The finished product!
What I love about this project is that I not only organized the loose recipes I have lying around, but it will be so easy to add to it as I cook my way through my other cookbooks or print out recipes I find online. As I make my favorite recipes, I plan on making a black & white copy from the original cookbook on my printer, then adding to the appropriate nightly theme. Pretty soon I will have a great stack of recipes to rotate through as I plan my weekly meals.
Enjoy!
Kelly
I was ju st thinking I needed.to organze my.recipes. Thanks for.the tips!!
ReplyDeleteWeekly meal planning was my number one goal last year, and it changed my life! I also have a binder like that (though not so nicely organized), and theme nights, though I don't always keep the same theme on the same night. But I like the idea of organizing the recipes by theme instead of just by "veggie, side dish, main dish," etc. It would be so much easier for me to find what I was looking for if I had all my Asian recipes in one place, all my steak recipes in one place, etc. Great idea. Are you going to tell me how to organize my 30+ cookbooks next? :)
ReplyDeleteHolly, I think 30 cookbooks would drive me insane! There's no way I would cook out of that many books. I only have a few that I actually use quite often. I am really excited to go through my books, make copies of my favorite recipes to put in my binder and then declutter my cupboards of my books. But I'm glad you have that many cookbooks so you can share all your great recipes with me!
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