Organizing Your Recipes

Organizing your recipes can be empowering, and save you money in the long run. If you have a system that allows you to find recipes with specific ingredients, it is a snap to put together tasty meals for your family.

Let me start by saying that with me organization is a work in progress, this is one of the  reasons I initially started blogging, to have a place to save all the recipes I have accumulated over the years from friends and family. However I never anticipated the deluge of new recipes that I would need to find a way to organize all of them. I’ve tried many ways to store all my recipes and come to the conclusion that there are many ways to accomplish this task, here are a few of my favorite ways to do this…

ZipList is the online recipe storage system we use in all our recipe posts. You can create and manage your grocery shopping list, find and save your favorite recipes from across the web, get great savings and share with your entire family – for free!

First, you’ll see a blue “Save Recipe” button next to the title of each recipe, just above the Ingredients. When you click this blue button you’ll be able to save this recipe to a recipe box that you can access from the Recipe Box section on the navigation bar at the top of the page, right under the Recipe Index.

You also have the option to save the recipe ingredients to your grocery list, making it easy to plan your weekly shopping. You can then access your grocery list, which has automatically categorized the recipe ingredients by aisle, from the new shopping list section that can also be found on the same navigation bar. You can then add anything else you need to buy for the week, like milk, eggs and juice, to the same list.

This online recipe indexing system is the cat’s meow, a simple click allows you to save recipes to your personal recipe box. You can find ZipList on many blogs and websites now, including MarthaStewart.com and AOL’s KitchenDaily.com.

Are you a Pinterest lover? We are! It’s an awesome way to organize many of the recipes I want to get inspiration from. But be warned this can be addictive.

I have been using Pinterest for Hoosier Homemade for a few months, and have found lots of great recipes and ideas. We started a new Pocket Change Gourmet on Pinterest and will be sharing Budget Friendly Recipes for you there too! Be sure to follow along!

One other way I organize my recipes is in my email account. I subscribe to many great food blogs and then simply created a filter in my Gmail to keep them organized. Blogging with Amy has great information and a video tutorial showing you how to create filters.

For even more ideas for help to organize your recipes, visit Annie’s Eats. She covers lots of different ways.

Last week we shared tips for organizing your kitchen, follow along all month while we help you {and ourselves} get organized in the kitchen!

Are you a cookbook lover? We love Gooseberry Patch books, and found this Dinners on a Dime Cookbook on Kindle for ONLY $.99. Don’t have a Kindle? No worries…you can still read it on your computer.

What is your favorite way to organize your recipes?

Linking to: Works for Me Wednesday