Tackling the Recipe Box

Good morning! This past weekend I finally got a chance to get to work on one of my birthday challenges - organizing all of my recipes!

I have a large number of recipes in a wide variety of places - index card boxes, file folders, e-mail archive folders, and a bunch of cookbooks.




I began by making a list in my notebook and organized it into 3 sections: Name, Yes/No/Unknown, and Make?. In the first column, I listed the name of the recipe, in the second I placed a check underneath Yes, No or Unknown - depending on whether I  already knew if I wanted to keep it, and in the third column, I listed whether or not I wanted to make it again before deciding to keep it. All of the unknowns fell into this category, as well as some of the yeses.


Originally, I was just going to take stock of the recipes I had on index cards (2 boxes of them!), magazine clippings and e-mails, but since starting to organize this weekend, I think I'm going to expand this to a review of a few of my favorite cookbooks as well. For the cookbooks, I will be focusing on simply listing the recipes that I want to try and recipes that I've already tried that I know that I want to include in my collection. I'm also hoping to reach out to family members to ensure that this is a well-rounded and family oriented project. I'm excited to start working on the list of unknowns and see if Josh and I can add some more favorites to our dinner rotation. As I get to work in the kitchen with these recipes, I will definitely keep you updated with pictures and recipes!

As this is one of my birthday goals, and I'm 3 months into my birthday challenge, I thought this would be a great place to do a quick update with how I'm doing with my goals:

1. Make a quilt. Still taking baby steps...

2. Attempt one "out of comfort zone" DIY project each month. 4 out of 12 complete! You can check them out here, here, here and here!

3. Go skydiving. My father recently told me not to tell him when I do this. I told him not to worry, he'd know because I will be posting pictures of it everywhere! Just a few months left til summertime!

4. Become more financially stable: build up my savings and pay off my credit card. Almost halfway to paying off my credit card and my savings is growing by the day!

5. Run 365 miles. I'm doing well with this and with training for more road races on the horizon, I think that this is going to continue to go well!

6. Live passionately and spend more time celebrating life and how lucky I am to be where I am and how blessed I am to have Josh, as well as the most wonderful family and friends, in my life! I think this goal is my favorite and the one that I cherish the most. I am an incredibly lucky woman. 

7. Practice yoga more efficiently. I think that the best way for me to implement this goal is going to be to start heading out on weekend mornings after the pup falls back asleep after eating his breakfast. 

8. Learn Spanish. I have to say that I am making some, albeit very limited, progress towards this. My mother gave me an awesome on the go Spanish learning CD set for the holidays and I'm looking forward to learning more!

9. Make a conscientious effort to not only make a weekly menu, but to actually stick to it. While December didn't prove to be the best month for meal planning, as I start to go through my recipe collection, Josh and I will be getting back on track with this.

10. Create a cookbook with all of my favorite recipes (and ones passed down from my family) broken down into categories and indexed. See above. Definitely making excellent progress. 

11. Learn how to cook 26 different soups. 3 down, 23 to go! I'll be posting the recipe for my 3rd one - a delicious Black Bean Soup - tomorrow! You can check out the other two here and here.

12. Keep a meal diary. I am almost done creating a rotational calendar to use for this. I will be posting more about it soon! 

13. Grow this blog. Thank you to all of my wonderful readers - you are awesome and I love blogging each and every day! :)

Have a great Tuesday everyone and I will see you all back here tomorrow morning for a step by step explanation of how I finally hung up our curtains, and a great tip for keeping the mess created by your power drill from getting everywhere!