Tough Love on My Recipes

Be Tough! No Clip Crazy

If you've followed this blog (all 10 of you) since day 1, you know I started the blog to "tough love" my cookbook collection.  While I would love to say that's a success, honestly, it's an epic fail.  However, the reason why is that I've shifted to cooking most (but not all) of my recipes from cooking magazines. 

As I don't ever want to be featured on the tv show "Hoarders"

for holding onto cooking magazines for years, or let's face it, decades, I clip recipes from the magazine pretty soon after receipt.  That said, I do tend to let those same recipes continually accumulate and I end up throwing out probably 50% of them a couple years later after I realize I won't try them.  Oops!

For those of you that love "Extreme Couponing," a key them is organization!  Organization will keep things from spiraling out of control and consuming your life.  Ok, maybe it still becomes all consuming, but it's a more organized approach.

So, with that, here is the first in a series of cooking magazine recipe clipping rules and its implementation:

"Re-ClipR" (Recipe Clipping Rules) (c)

Re-ClipR #1:
You may only clip as many recipes as you will realistically cook meals in one month.

Fiskars Scissors - Great Clipping Option

Translating this - if you only cook breakfast on weekend mornings (Saturday or Sunday(, don't clip more recipes than weekend mornings in a month.  If  there are 4 weekends in a month, then you clip up to 8 recipes approximately.  Cook only on Sunday?  Limit down even further.  Why limit yourself?  Realistically, life gets in the way of the best-laid plans.  You may intend to get up every Sunday morning and cook breakfast.  Then, the kids are sick, or you wake up late and want lunch, or you make brunch plans, etc.  So, rather than clip 10 recipes you may never make, clip 5 you love.  You're more likely to make them, and more likely to want to make them again and again!

Lippert International Recipe Box - Eco-friendly organizer

Same for dinners or lunches.  Never cook lunch?  Then don't count that as a meal you'd clip a recipe for.  If you cook 3 meals per day x 30 days, that's up to 90 recipes a month.  Would I ever clip that many recipes?  Most likely not, but I also don't cook 3 meals per day every day.  Realistically, I cook 4 dinners per week and homemake about 2 - 3 lunches and maybe 1 - 2 breakfast recipes a week. 

Multiply that x 4 weeks per month, and I can clip 16 dinners, 12 lunches, and 8 breakfast recipes.
Still quite a few recipes, but not the overwhelming amount that I will never conceivably make.  Now, I stretch the rule a bit since I make multiple recipes in one meal (i.e. meat, starch, and vegetable at dinner, so I give myself leeway to clip 3 - 4 for one single meal (if I plan it out).  Again, adjust the totals based on YOUR cooking habits.  This is a guide, not a must, but it's a guide intended to help me "tough love" my recipes.

Starting in October, I will be keeping count of what I clip and categorize!

Future rules: special occasion meals, recipe rating systems, and storage/organization!  Stay tuned....