Recipe Card Renovation

Cooking at home saves money.  That’s not the only reason I do it though.  I love cooking.  It’s therapeutic.  For dinner, I start cooking almost the moment my husband comes in the door (after a warm greeting and a kiss, of course) and I essentially have alone time until the food is done…not that I ever prolong this on purpose.

Presentation is also a big deal to me.   I fix our plates on the counter and then move them to the set table.  It’s not fancy, but you eat with your eyes first right.

I’ll post some of my more successful personal recipes soon, but mostly I cook from others.  I have 3 years worth of Everyday Food Magazine (a discontinued magazine by Martha Stewart that was all recipes and tips and the size of a Reader’s Digest, can you tell I’m sad it’s discontinued) that I still thumb through and find new things.  I especially love America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks, though I’ve found I have to plan ahead and begin cooking earlier to have many of their meals done in good time.  They do things right, but not always fast.  We eat a lot of Thai food.  I highly recommend Quick and Easy Thai by Nancie McDermott.  (My go to gift for a foodie.)  My husband loves cookbooks and regularly brings a new one home from the library.  Right now we’re having great success with Homesick Texan’s Family Table.  (Pictured above: my presentation of Homesick Texan’s black bean sopes with chipotle crema)

We peruse Food Network for recipes from our favorites, mostly Alton Brown and Aarti Sequeira.  My favorite place to store any recipes I find online is on Pinterest.  I pin a lot, but I’m also proud that I try out a good percentage of what I pin.  That means that I’m often cooking from a laptop or even my little phone.  Thanks to my mother-in-law for Christmas I can now cook from an iPad mini.  But when I find a recipe I repeat, I prefer to make a recipe card.  No scrolling or page turning necessary.

I made my first of these recipe cards for gifts on Adobe InDesign.  I gave recipes and pantry ingredients in a basket for Christmas years ago.  I printed some extras for myself and affixed them to the fridge with a sticky backed magnet strip.

Then I went to use it and realized I was an innovative genius!  My stove hood is metal and now I have my recipe card in the perfect place… eye level (or a little above for me, I’m only 5’2”).

I’ve filled the side of my fridge now, so I’ll soon have to place them in an old-school recipe card box, but I love these.  If you have a laminator, that’d be even better.  My cards get steam cooked a little and need to be reprinted every so often.  (Scratch and sniff recipe cards! My next million dollar idea?)

How about you… Do you try out new recipes often?  Do you scroll on your phone or turn a page?