(or two).
Building a Recipe Collection for one Person
Building a recipe collection for one person should be a gradual process, replete with rewards. It starts with jotting down ideas, then slowly, steadily incorporating fun new recipes into meal plans. Personal notes fine tune recipe cards over time, for a one of a kind collection that gets better as it ages, and tirelessly serves you for life.
Choosing recipes is the most challenging part of meal planning, so why not build a collection of proven winners?
Margot Macaron, dessert detectiveReliable recipe cards are very handy to fall back on, but is it really necessary to build a recipe collection for one person, amidst endless well rated recipes all over the internet? Yes!
Routine meal planning, shopping, cooking and storing good homemade food calls for personal recipe collecting, in my opinion. Sure, you could get by without it, but why not honor your efforts by documenting your victories for safe keeping?
Starting a recipe collection for one person is easy, but not doing it can make searching for new recipes each week more challenging.
Ever get excited about a fun recipe idea, find a recipe that looks good, but realize you don't want to buy a few of the ingredients, so you look at another recipe for the same dish, but aren't equipped/interested in employing the cooking method for that recipe, so you start searching for a different recipe instead?
Thankfully, recipe rabbit holes are separated by fields of just-right-for-you recipes, waving in the wind like bright, colorful wildflowers. What can I say? "Sometimes the magic works..."
Seriously, though, there's no magic to collecting and perfecting recipe cards. Just start doing it and it will work.
Recipe box categories make meal planning easier.
Creating and filling recipe box categories adds variety for rounding out good meal plans. That's why O.f.O. features recipe box category characters like Margot Macaron, dessert detective, and Lettucea ("Letty") Spinner, salad interventionist, among others, as playful reminders of variety for meal planning.
Dips out, Chips out.
Dip surfer Chip "Double Dip" Waverly is happy to remind you that dips can be a fun and practical recipe box category for busy singes. Many dip recipes are simple to scale down, quick and easy to make, flavored and dipped with fresh veggies, and tasty as toppings, snacks, or sides. Scaling down a dip recipe? Make notes on your recipe card!
Chip "Double Dip" WaverlySteady as she grows...
Creating cards for new recipes without trying them first is only natural, and carefree captures needn't weaken your collection. To keep your collection strong, make notes on recipe cards as recipes are prepared. Making notes on recipe cards is a super helpful habit, so please don't skip this step, even if your only note is a thumbs up!
Keep making notes as your collection grows, so you can cook with confidence.
Personal prep notes specifying details like cooking times, temps, cookware, and ingredient substitutions/amounts can help get recipes dialed in just right.
Much like beautiful homemade tortillas, just-right recipes are gems!
Tortillas are labor intensive, in my opinion, so I only treat myself to a batch occasionally, when the mood strikes. That's okay. Thanks to good recipe keeping, I feel confident that my efforts will pay off deliciously , even if I'm out of practice.
Personal notes perfect recipes.
My flour tortillas recipe card directs me to use my bread machine's knead setting to make the dough, and my double dutch's grill pan lid, preheated at a specific setting, to cook the tortillas. These notes have proven to be super helpful!
Set yourself up for success:
Get your digital recipe collection started/organized, then follow up with pretty paper cards for your kitchen.
Free apps like Google Keep, Docs, or Apple Notes are all ideal for recipe keeping, in my opinion.
Setting up a recipe collection for one person is simple with a notetaking app or word processor, even with multiple overlapping categories, because pins, labels, and folders enable through cross referencing, and keyword searchability works like a dream! Screen shots, handwritten cards, and pretty much everything in between can be quickly and easily captured, retrieved, and edited with these apps.
Already using Notes for lots of notes?
Consider using Keep just for recipes, like I do. Pinning each week's recipes for reference works neatly with Keep's sticky note style interface, and saving selected screen content straight to Keep with a click works wonderfully with the Chrome extension. Sans chrome extension, simply copy & paste selected content onto a note.
Select "PRINT" to copy & paste.
Many recipe sites feature "Print" buttons for displaying still, uncluttered printable versions of recipes, which also happen to be handy for copying to a digital recipe box.
Keep it personal.
The best way to improve your food-lifestyle as a home cook is to experiment with new recipes and cooking techniques while building your collection. Cultivate your collection with care, and treasure it for life. There is no substitute.