Recipe Roundup!

If you home is like most, kitchen space is limited. This is a place where unwanted clutter can become quite the problem. Here are some ways to prevent those cookbooks and loose recipes from turning into a recipe for disaster!

Keep it Simple! Go through all those cookbooks and weed out the ones that you don't use often. Do you really need five books on Italian cuisine? If a particular cookbook has a recipe you like, write it down instead of keeping the whole book. Recycle or donate those cookbooks you can do without.

Go Online! There are many websites that offer a variety of recipes. This helps resist the impulse to save every recipe you find on food labels and in magazines: limiting the potential for these to become clutter. Also, the internet puts unlimited variety at your fingertips. Here are a couple of my favorite recipe websites: http://www.recipesource.com/, http://www.cooks.com/, and http://www.allrecipes.com/ (this website lets you adjust the recipe yield easily by providing an online calculation of ingredient amounts).

Write your favorites down! What I like to do is to keep all my recipes in one card box. In this box I keep all my cherished family recipes as well as favorites that I have tried and want to make again. When I see a recipe in a magazine or on a label that I want to try, I put it in a folder. If it is a keeper, I then write it on a recipe card and place it in my box. That way, all the recipes I use regularly are in one place. Even if a recipe I like can be found in one of my cookbooks, I still write it on a card. That way, if the book gets misplaced, I still have the recipe! Here is a great website where you can print out your own recipe cards: http://www.kayskreations.net/special/recipe.html.