Thursday at Home and a Spot of Recipe Organisation

Thursday this week, I spent an enjoyable day at home.  After spending a couple of days going out and about with LB during half term, she was busy with school production rehearsals and going out with her friends on Thursday.

I, myself, was due to go out in the afternoon to a blood donation session, but the fact that I had a cold sore,  meant that I had to cancel and make a new appointment in a couple of months time, so I decided to make good use of the time it afforded me, to do a few bits around the house.

The first job I decided to do was to empty the ironing basket. I'm managing to keep on top of washing and ironing, especially now I've got my bullet journal going, as I keep factoring it into my daily tasks, which in turn makes me do it more regularly and not let it pile up.

Once I'd finished, I decided to complete a task I'd started the night before.  In the process of deep cleaning the kitchen cupboards, I'd come across my old recipe folder, full of lots of cuttings from magazines and recipe cards from supermarkets.  It was completely bulging and I hardly ever go in it, as the sight of it and the thought of wading through it just puts me off.

The night before I  had sifted through all of the magazine recipes and thrown out any I didn't think I'd ever make, or that other members of our household would never eat. This had left  me with a much smaller pile of really good recipes, that I needed to do something with.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not a person who gets particularly excited over cook books.  I own a few, but hardly ever use them, save for a very trusty old Delia Smith cook book.

On a week to week basis, I have some traditional signature dishes that I tend to roll out regularly, but don't often add new recipes to my repertoire, although I have added a few in recent years.  I do, however, collect interesting ones when I see them in magazines, ever hopeful that I might get a bit creative in kitchen.

Some of the recipes had been tried and tested and had the air of use about them, others I've never tried yet. Anyway, I decided I would glue all of the ones I wanted to keep into a kind of home made recipe book, to make them easier to flick through. I cut them all down, keeping a picture, where possible, found an old scrap notebook and a Pritt stick and I was away.  It was so therapeutic.

It is much easier to sift out the recipes I want to keep these days, as we have decided to cut down the amount of red meat we eat, which ruled out lots of recipes.  I did keep a few red meat ones, but more with a view to using white meat, such as turkey or chicken, in it's place.

I thoroughly enjoyed the hour or so it took, cutting and gluing.  It was like being back in the Brownies or at school.  Very old style scrap booking, but very refreshing.  I was pleased with the results too.  I now have a book of recipes I like the look of,  that I can flick through in minutes.

I stuck the savoury recipes in the front and dessert recipes in the back, leaving blank pages in the middle, so that I could add any more I find to either section.  There's no index or anything, but I don't mind just flicking though them all when I'm looking for inspiration.

Whilst I was in a recipe organising mood, I also sorted through all of the free supermarket recipe cards that I'd picked up over the years and removed any duplicates or any that weren't going to get used too.  I now just need a small A5 plastic wallet and a new A5 box file to keep them in and that's my whole recipe collection sorted.

Hopefully, I might now make better use of them and not be put off by the jumbled mess that they used to be and having them sorted should also eventually free up space in the cupboard too.  Here's the results, much tidier and better organised.

Another small, but very satisfying job completed.  I just hope it helps improve my cooking skills!