I have to see everything, and if I don’t I totally forget about it. Like my laundry. Hidden upstairs in our bathroom/laundry room/bedroom. It’s easy to forget about until the hubby needs socks for work at 5am. fail.
So I’ve embraced my need for visual cues and decided to arrange my favorite recipes accordingly. When I cook, I very rarely use a written recipe. I employ the pinch-of-this, dash-of-that method, which I believe is a genetic trait that I inherited from my resourceful mother (hi, mom! :)) and it comes in very handy when you are living on a budget and need to figure out how to tweak recipes and substitute items in a pinch.
Now, let me qualify; when I’m making dinner, I usually just make it up as a go along, but when it comes to baking, I need recipes (and remember I have A.D.D., so I like them to come from cookbooks full of lovely photographs and it must have nice font).
However, as I mentioned above, since I’m visual, if I don’t see it, I forget about it. That means that if it’s a recipe that I make all the time, then I want it in front of me constantly – first because I don’t want to dig for it, and second, because when I’m in a rut, I can just look up…to the inside of my kitchen cabinets. That’s right. I tape all of my favorite recipes inside my kitchen cabinets – they’re out of the way so I don’t spill anything on them, and I always know where they are! (I wanted to take a picture, but my kitchen uses a lot of natural light, and after dinner tonight, it was just too dim, so you’ll have to take my word for it ;))
On the inside of my cabinets, I currently have:
my favorite sandwich bread recipe
a recipe for breakfast cookies
my sourdough tutorial (from Wardeh over at GNOWFGLINS)
a cheat sheet on medicinal and herbal teas and various concoctions for what ails you (because my medicine cabinet is also one of my kitchen cabinets, because the ingredients overlap!)
a table with measurement equivalents for baking
a recipe for these lovely breakfast muffins
a recipe for apple cake bars (a wonderful breakfast/snack/dessert/multi-purpose food that you can’t go wrong with!)
and on the doors under my kitchen sink, I have taped my recipe for laundry soap.
Even for those of you that are not visual learners, this is still a great tip for keeping your most used and cherished recipes right in plain sight while you’re baking, and then your kitchen counters aren’t cluttered with papers and books and you have room to make a mess create your culinary masterpiece!
Hope that tip helps, and here are some dinner ideas for the week as well! enjoy!
Monday – Roasted Chicken with root veggies (then the remains get thrown in with some onions, carrots, garlic and celery to make chicken stock for the week)
Tuesday – Split Pea soup with Beef Bacon and Gretchen’s yummy No-Knead Bread
Wednesday – Sloppy Joe Bowls (a weird twist on a classic yet oh-so-yummy and made from Traditional Foods!)
Thursday – Chili and cornbread
Friday – homemade pizza (with my favorite pizza crust)
Saturday/Sunday –
leftovers with a side of leftovers
popcorn + smoothies
breakfast for dinner (using these great pancakes from this post)
omelets
fruit/veggie/cheese plates with hummus
grilled cheese (sharp cheddar on sour dough)
What’s cookin’ at your place tonight?
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This post is part of Traditional Tuesdays and Homemaker’s Challenge: Accomplished
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