Best of the Best

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Do you ever get tired of hunting through stacks of recipes, looking for your favorites?  It seems that I return to the same tried and true dishes again and again.  Time is at a premium for me, and I don’t like wasting it while searching through my large stack of cookbooks and recipe cards looking for particular recipes.

Several years ago I took a few minutes to set up my own “Best of the Best” cookbook, and it has saved me countless hours every week.  I have found, over the years, it is well worth the time I spent organizing my favorite recipes.  Now I primarily rely on one single cookbook each day:  The Best of the Best.

To make your own cookbook, just take a plain 3-ring binder and fill it with a stack of page protectors.  Place your favorite recipes in the pages and voila, you have created your own perfect cookbook.

Here are some tips to remember when setting up your Best of the Best cookbook:

  • Only choose your favorite tried and true recipes.  If you use this cookbook to store recipes you are hoping to test out, it will quickly become clogged with useless papers and the purpose will be defeated.  This cookbook allows you to immediately find your favorite recipes, so be sure to reserve it for that purpose.  If you need a place to store recipes you want to try out, set up a separate binder for those.
  • Recipe cards and magazine clippings can easily be stored in the pages.  For all other recipes (such as those found in favorite cookbooks), photocopy the recipe from your book or type it into a Word document, print and place in your Best of the Best cookbook.  This will save you from thumbing through a thick cookbook looking for a particular recipe.
  • When asking a friend for a recipe you’ve enjoyed, see if she can email it to you.  It will be simple to print off the email and slip the page into your Best of the Best cookbook.
  • Once a year, go through your cookbook and cull recipes you haven’t used much.  Take a few minutes to update Best of the Best with any new favorites you’ve discovered.
  • When a son or daughter gets married or heads off to college, give them their own starter version of Best of the Best, including copies of recipes for their favorite foods as well as family heirloom recipes.

About Molly Evert

Writer Molly Evert is a wife and homeschooling mom to 6 kids, who range in age from 2 to 18. She runs an educational website, My Audio School (http://www.myaudioschool.com), providing access to the best in children's audio literature. She also blogs at CounterCultural Mom (http://www.counterculturalmom.com) and CounterCultural School (http://www.counterculturalschool.com).

Encouraged? Share this post...

Molly Evert

Writer
Molly Evert is a wife and homeschooling mom to 6 kids, who range in age from 2 to 18. She runs an educational website, My Audio School (http://www.myaudioschool.com), providing access to the best in children's audio literature. She also blogs at CounterCultural Mom (http://www.counterculturalmom.com) and CounterCultural School (http://www.counterculturalschool.com).

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