Recipe Books

I'm going to be totally honest here - I haven't cooked anything since Sunday.  That's a long time for Matt and I to go without fixing at least dinner together!
Here's the thing - we had so many leftovers from the Superbowl feast that we've been finishing those off and fixing salads instead of making a bunch more food.  With only the 2 of us, there's really no sense in making a whole new meal when there's plenty of leftovers.  Some people don't like leftovers, but we love to have them for lunch at work!  (We don't like school lunch.)

So...since I haven't cooked or baked in awhile, I thought I had to come up with a new blog post.  Don't want my few readers to get even fewer ;)

Recipe Books - we all have them - many of us have SEVERAL of them.  I'm not talking about the standard cookbook, because we can have lots of those too.  I'm talking about the places we keep our recipe cards - from family, friends, co-workers, and magazines.  I thought I'd share with you what I use and maybe it can give you some ideas.

I have three recipe books right now.

First, and most importantly is the large, non-attractive blue binder.  My mom gave me this binder, stuffed full of those clear, protective sheets, when I moved here after college.  She even started the book by adding all kinds of random recipes from her, her mother, her cookbooks, and her magazines.  Some are on recipe cards, but most are just cut-out pages.  I've since added to it with all of my favorite recipes from the two magazines I subscribe to: Taste of Home and Simple & Delicious.  It got to a point that I had SO many magazines, I had nowhere to put them and couldn't find the recipes I wanted when I needed them.  This huge, ugly binder is my kitchen saver! :)

The other two, smaller books are both photo albums, which I think a lot of people are doing now.  Buying a cute photo book and putting their recipe cards in it - seems easy enough.  The colorful one is from my mother-in-law who got it at a craft show.  This one uses scrapbook paper to make it fun and interesting.  The other book is from a teacher at my bridal shower - where I got all those great recipes, which went right into the photo album/recipe book.

If you use something different - please share!  I'm always looking for more ideas!

For instance, I plan on making my own recipe book on the website, http://www.blurb.com/  This place is great!  You can custom make ANY kind of book - recipe books, portfolios, photo albums, wedding books, etc.  I discovered this place from our wedding photographer when I was looking at getting our wedding book.  It is AMAZING!  Fairly simple, TONS of layouts to choose from, or make your own, and CHEAP!  But not the quality, the quality is wonderful!  You can make a hardcover, a soft cover, thicker pages, etc

Anyway, someday, when there's time, I'm going to pick my favorite recipes and put them into a book and make copies for my favorite people :)

Here's some quick photos of our blurb.com wedding book.  Fun!