Tired of Boxes for Recipes? Try a Photo Album

I love to cut recipes out of magazines.
After college I started cooking more and I wanted to start collecting recipes that I liked. At first I stuck to the neat-freak rule of only allowing myself to keep recipes that I had already tried and liked.
But in the absence of textbooks, magazines soon took over my free time (and brain) and I soon had a lot of recipes that I wanted to try. I started filing them in a hanging file, but quickly remembered a time that I had helped my mom sort through her file cabinet… She had inches of recipes, which, probably, she had mostly forgotten about.
I was looking for a better solution, and came upon a photo album.
As it turns out, a photo album, with its see-through pockets, is the perfect place to keep cut-out recipes. I always put the picture of the recipe facing out because I’m a sucker for a recipe with a picture. Most photo albums now have a space next to the pocket where you can write the name of the dish and comment on how you like it.
You can make things even easier by dividing into salads, main courses, appetizers, etc… Label each category with a stick-out tab using small pieces of paper and attaching to the album with scotch tape – that way you can easily thumb through to the right section. I like to keep a section called “how to” where I have articles such as “butter to oil conversions”, “about salad greens” and “how to set a table”.
To keep the collection to a healthy minimum, I only allow myself this one book. When I fill a section, I can only add a new recipe to it if I throw one out! You could probably have a section for takeout menus too, if you don’t already have another place for them. Happy Eating!