Could you please recommend your cooking binders, where you got them from and why they are brill please.

[Jennster]

I am sick of losing good recipes, because I haven't put them away safe. I think I want one that has movable plastic wallets, as I just won't have the time to copy them out. Thank you in advance.

I just buy those things from Smiths that are like a plastic wallet book, A4 size - ie: you open it up like a book and there are plastic pages to slot things in - a display book I think they might be called.

Same here - Tesco do an own brand cheap & cheerful version which means you can replace if neccessary.

I have one 'display book' for two-sided clippings, the single sided ones I staple into an A4 notebook in starter/main/sweet/other sections.

I just use a pretty lever arch file with a4 clear pockets inside. If the recipe is smaller than an a4 sheet then I glue it onto plain paper with others.

I number the pages with computer printed labels, in sections: A1 - A25 are starters, B section is mains, C is side dishes and D is sweet stuff. There is the odd overlap sometime unfortunately.

If you want to know my indexing system too let
Me know otherwise I'll shut up now as it already looks like I have too much time on my hands! It does work tho.

I just put them in back to back in the display book.

I have several for recipes, one for fasion ideas and several for house ideas - does that make me anal?!

Not anal Janeite, my sil would call you a J (Myers Briggs).

I think you might be right about the presentation folders or ring binders, can you get nice subject dividers that stick out when there are plastic wallets in it?

Bred if you have time to help me out with your system I'd be very grateful.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Don't know about dividers!

I have 2 x index; one for savoury, one for sweet.

I do an alphabetical list, of headings such as "Pastry - Puff, Pastry - Shortcrust, Pork" etc and leave huge gaps under, to write in the page no and recipe title. In the sweet bit, I put them under "Glass dish puddings, frozen puddings etc".

Mostly works! It gets round the odd savoury recipe which lurks on the back of a pudding page too.

Janeite - I was feeling that way, too!

It's also useful to be able to take the pages out to cook/shop from; only problem is, that they are then prone to being lost as I never remember to put them away immediately!

With the display books, you can't really divide them. You could always get some of those stick on divider tab things though, I guess. I just have a mish-mash with no organisation within the books.

Janeite that would upset me! call me anal

Jennster - let me guess - have you got your CD collection in alphabetical order like me, then?!

Only in my ipod. In my head I'm all nice and organised, in reality I am a complete nightmare. I think I've done the storing of recipes in a ring binder before, but they all got forgotten, as they weren't sorted.

I have 3 A4 notebooks

1 - mixture of savoury going from the front to the middle and desserts going from the back to the middle.

2 - savoury.

3 - desserts.

A folder book with pockets for when I have torn recipes out of magazines and I want to make the recipes on both sides.

I have one of these which has section dividers (meat, fish, dessert, baking, etc) and plastic wallets for cut-out recipes. I copy out my tried and tested recipes and then keep the clippings until they have passed the taste/competency test and then copy them in.

Procrastinating, I wondered what they were like. I think I need something with dividers. It's a present for me so a nice one like that would be lovely.

It was my birthday present this year! I like it because you can buy extra pages and wallets; I used to have a notebook that I stuck stuff into but I hated not being able to find recipes by type - I had to remember when I stuck them in. Go for it!