Cooking tip

On a trip to visit my parents in January, I had an epiphany.  I used to worry about family recipes (or just other families' recipes that my family copied and adapted) getting passed along over the years.  My sister, cousins and I are all at varying degrees of culinary talent and knowledge, and there are some damn fine recipes that my mother has on index cards - some with random things crossed out and edited, some even written by family or friends and given to my mother.  I realized that a great temporary solution, rather than copying them all out into a cute recipe book (too painstaking to do at once) or entering them into a computer-based system (to soulless), I could just photograph and catalog the recipes I wanted for now.  So now I have a digital cookbook supplement.  As I prepare the recipes, if I love them enough, I then copy them into my beloved recipe book, which I snapped up in the last days of Borders' going-out-of-business sale (*sigh*).  Sadly, the only pictures I seem to be able to get tonight are pretty crummy, but to illustrate my system...

I start with something like this...

...and this is where I enter the recipes I really love.

I admit, I haven't yet tried the stuffed mushroom recipe posted above, so it's a potato gratin recipe pictured in my recipe book photo.  I always make sure to note where the recipe came from.  In the case of the potatoes au gratin, it's my old standby, Martha.  I always add bacon, incidentally.  This recipe is one of my all-time favorites, and we make it whenever we want to impress guests with our culinary prowess.  Although honestly, a trained monkey could make it.  It's time-consuming to slice those potatoes, but apart from that, it's a cakewalk.

Anyway, I love my recipe book, and I love that it keeps evolving.  I actually have to go add the quiche recipe I previously reviewed.  I've made it twice and loved it, so into the book it goes!

I should also note that for recipes that I pull out of magazines in card or folded-page format, I have a charming little recipe box - yes, designed by Martha, so sue me! - to file those away.  So many recipes, so little time!

Anybody else have a favorite system for holding on to the best recipes?