The Recipe File Project: thinking INSIDE the box

I'm a fairly organized person. I make notes on the calendar, ride herd on the pile-up of newspapers, magazines and mail and strive mightily to keep our house in order. How my recipe file -- an old, wooden cigar box handed down by a former roommate -- was such a complete, overflowing, unorganized catch-all for so long I don't know.

But it was. Stuffed, literally, with hundreds of recipes, it had no dividers or categorization, making finding anything a chore, guessing game and time drain.

Earlier this year, I emptied out its contents and started going through the pile one recipe at a time. I tossed recipes I had never used or hadn't used in years. Weeding through the thicket, I taped newspaper and magazine clippings to plain 4-by-6-inch cards and started organizing: meat, meatless, soups and stews, pasta, poultry, cakes, cookies, breads, muffins, etc.

The only absolute keepers: anything in Mom's and Mother's (grandmother Heenan's) handwriting; anything from my sisters; anything in the perfect penmanship of former Post-Standard restaurant reviewer and food writer Yolanda Wright; and anything clipped from the original Dinosaur Bar-B-Que "Bullsheet,'' a newsletter originally sent out monthly, by snail mail.

In the process of cleaning out, I found so many wonderful recipes I had forgotten about. Mom's Lemon Bread. Mom's Apple Crisp. Aunt Dorothy's Popovers. Martha's Guinness Stew. Mary's Cheese Souffle. Anne's Pie Crust. Eileen's Layered Taco Dip.

Maureen Nolan's Pub Cheese and Sausalito Crab Dip. A quartet of Italian sauce recipes from Nancy Radke (Italy lover, president of Ciao, Ltd. and co-author of "Dinosaur Bar-B-Que: An American Roadhouse"). Yolanda's Hot Fudge Sauce (a holiday tradition) and dozens of  other recipes clipped from the "Yolanda's Kitchen'' feature (RIP) in The Post-Standard. Countless recipes from "Cook(s) of the Week," another bygone newspaper feature, some with my byline on top.  

I went to Smith Housewares & Restaurant Supply and after much internal debate purchased a RSVP Endurance Classic Style Recipe Box ($35), some divider cards and clear plastic protector sleeves for faded, oft-used and food-splattered recipes.

The new box, constructed from stainless steel, has a satin finish and a polished lid with a swirl pattern inside. In addition to being stylish, it is solid and durable. It closes tightly, like a vault. A Recipe Vault! I told Robert it can be used to hold my remains when it's done holding heirloom recipes.

The end result is a recipe file that's neat and tidy, easy to use and a pleasure to open each time. And with holiday baking and cooking in full swing, it has been open and closed a lot lately.

I'd love to tell you that the Recipe File Project has helped me change my ways with hunting and gathering recipes. It hasn't. That's a disease with no cure on the horizon.

Next up: Cleaning out, trimming down and organizing into an expandable, divided file the three-inch thick folder of print-out recipes from favorite websites (like SmittenKitchen.com and Epicurious.com) and pages torn from Cook's Illustrated, Gourmet, Martha Stewart and other magazines.

That should keep me busy until spring, when it's time to start trolling for new recipes for the grill.

 

Comments

[Cate]

I didn't have this suggestion in 2010, but in 2022 I can tell you how I do it. You need an iphone or ipad and a program called Paprika (worth every penny). Take a picture of your recipe. Use the iOS text recognition feature to convert the image to text, and cut and paste into paprika. That's it! I have thousands of recipes saved by now.

[Margaret @ Eat First]

Hi, Scott -- GOOD SUGGESTION! I have a scanner but had not thought of that. Hmmm. Definitely something to think about/investigate.

Thanks for visiting my blog.

Cheers,

--Margaret

[Scott Thomas Photography]

You could get a scanner and scan the recipes onto your computer. I bet you could find some software that would organize them for you. Yeah, I'm an IT guy by day.

[Margaret @ Eat First]

Hi, Nan --

Thanks for visiting. A lot of people would get this job done a lot faster, but I spent many months with it, chipping away a bit at a time, and was sad, in a way, to finally be done. I loved being in touch, physically, with the recipes, and mentally with the originators of them. The recipe for Mother's (my mother's mother!) crumb cake, in her handwriting, is so faded you can barely read it. It's attached to a new card in my scrawl, and in a plastic sleeve!

The cigar box is still sitting on a dresser, awaiting another use. Any suggestions?

Happy Christmas to you an Al! Is Otto fired up for a trip?

--Margaret

[Nancy Fasoldt]

Thank you, Margaret, for reminding me that for many of us, our recipes document the lives of our family, the holidays, the joys, the sadnesses. I tried years ago to transcribe my family favorites into one of those fancy recipe books. I failed miserably. Once I lost the handwriting, the faded newspaper clipping, the words typed in the familiar IBM Selectric Elite font, I lost the stories behind the food. And I found I savored those stories more than the food.

So I love the way you salvaged your past while moving forward. You gave me wonderful tips on how to do it right, to preserve the memories and the recipes.

Thank you.