ORGANIZE YOUR RECIPE BOOK

Free 4 x 6 recipe template AND two fresh vegetable recipes below!

Cooking is not my favorite thing to do.  I don't mind it, but it certainly wouldn't be my first choice of things to do with my free time.  Actually it wouldn't even be my second, third, or fourth either!  However, it is a necessary 'evil' that must be accomplished for the sake of my family, and well, keeping my own body going. We have to eat to survive, right?  I do like to eat, but thats a different subject for another time.  Suffice it to say that for now I at least try to keep what I cook as simple and as healthy as possible. 

My recipe book, however, is anything but simple so I recently decided to redo it.  I have had it for about 20 years now and it's a complete disaster.  I just kept throwing new recipes into it haphazardly over time to the point where it's completely disorganized and I don't even know what's in there anymore.  Of course my favorite recipes don't require 'looking up' but I have been thinking for a while now about making sure they  are all written down and organized so that I can share them with my daughter.  So that's basically what my recipe page is really about: organizing my recipe book, creating one for my daughter, and of course sharing it all with you in the hopes that you will want to organize your recipe book too!

First Things First:  A New Recipe Book
See that dilapidated old recipe book above?  Well, I asked for a new one for my birthday.  I did a lot of research on the kind of recipe book I wanted.  It needed to be something that I could organize the way I wanted and not the way the company that made the book forced me to.  I needed to be able to take the pages out, but also be able to add new ones at will and move them all around as needed.  I also wanted to be able to make my own recipe cards on the computer (typed of course) and be able to print them and cut them out myself.  I really had a lot of requirements....picky?  Yeah, definitely.  But I only plan on doing this ONCE!  However, I also read online that making a recipe book for someone is a great gift as well so I wanted to be able to save and easily print out all my recipe cards for someone if I decide to make it as a gift. At the top of this post is a picture of the new recipe book I picked out.  It meets and exceeds all my expectations!

It is a CR Gibson and is available on Amazon.  Additional pages can also be purchased (I asked for and got those too!).
I specifically like it because of the following:

• Leather bound cover
• 'Picture pocket' with opening on the front that I can put any picture I choose in
• Black color resists stains and cleans up easily (I am a sloppy 'cook')
• 3 Ring Binder so more pages could be purchased and added and or moved around at will
• Holds 4 x 6 inch recipe cards (and came with 40 of them - but I probably won't use them)
• Came with 24 embossed letters that you can use in the picture slot (I won't use these either though)
• Came with 12 tabbed divider pages that I can choose to use or not, or re-lable as needed
• Great reviews by everyone who purchased it, including me!

Whether you buy a new recipe book or not, I hope you join me on this journey to getting it organized and/or starting over from scratch!

Recipe Card Template 
There was absolutely no way I was handwriting all of my recipes (Ugh... I couldn't even imagine doing that!).  Writing them by hand would also defeat the entire purpose of being able to easily duplicate the cards to make a 'gift' recipe book. So I went online but there were so many recipe card templates to choose from that I didn't even know where to start!  I finally just decided to make my own because I wanted the card to be simple, one sided, and not use a lot of ink when I printed it out. This makes it very easy for me to keep a file of all the recipes I type up so that if I want to make the gift recipe book I talked about earlier I can just open the file and print up the cards that are all ready to go!  Here is an example of the card:

4_x_6_recipe_card_template.docx
File Size:	1003 kb
File Type:	docx

Download File

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FREE RECIPE CARD TEMPLATE
The card is an MS Word document and has two 4 x 6 cards to a page that you can type your recipe right into and print out. Directions are below.
Find the downloadable template below, or here: FREE RECIPE TEMPLATE or click on the picture above.

Typing & Printing the Recipe Cards
To use the template, download the MS Word Document and open it.  On the card, right click on the black text next to 'Recipe For' and delete or highlight "Type Name Here." Then simply type in the title of your recipe.  Do the same for the ingredients and the directions.  If you are good with MS Word you can insert a picture as well!

After typing the recipes in, simply print the cards.  I use white card stock paper because it is heavier like an index card.  Then I simply cut out the card on the dotted line (which may be very faint) and slip it into a sleeve in the book!

Two of My Favorite Summer Recipes:
We make these two very quick and simple recipes a minimum of twice a week all summer long because they require a lot of the the fresh garden vegetables we grow!  Feel free to copy them, print them, and, hopefully, enjoy them😊.  Visit my RECIPES page to download a pdf of the recipes to the left (or click on them to go there), or download them using the button below (they are a single page pdf file).

I will be posting more of my favorite recipes as I type them up for my new recipe book. These will be published on my Recipes web-page. Sign up for our mailing list if you are interested in receiving new recipes as they are posted!  

download cucumber salad & grilled vegetable recipe pdf file here!