brown envelope, flowers, scissors and string with card featuring symbol of plate and cutlery and title: 4 Unusual Ways You Can Use Custom Recipe Cards

4 Unusual Ways You Can Use Custom Recipe Cards

Unlike the plain old white index cards like we used in the old days, custom recipe cards feature special designs or colors and make great gifts for all sorts of occasions – from hostess to business settings.

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Bamboo rainforest overlaid with text, "Why Not Gift a Bamboo Recipe Box from Sustainable Resources?"

Why Not Gift a Bamboo Recipe Box from Sustainable Resources?

Do you have people on your gift list that love items made from sustainable resources?

We at Cookbook People like to help Mother Earth whenever possible. That’s why we carry a range of environment-conscious “green” gifts made from sustainably-sourced bamboo. Continue reading

Woman's hand putting paper in recyling container with text: Spring Cleaning Your Family Recipe Card Box

Spring Cleaning Your Family Recipe Card Box

Springtime is an inspirational time to clean, dust, and renew all the nooks and crannies and other crevices that have been neglected during the winter months. It’s also a good time to weed out those extraneous recipes and notes in your family recipe card box or recipe file box.

Spring cleaning your family recipe card box or recipe file box doesn’t have to be a big chore. It can be done while watching your favorite TV reality show (all you multi-taskers take note), waiting for your hair-color to reach maximum tint, or riding in a car during a lengthy trip. All you really need is a bag for discards, and a small surface for sorting.Continue reading

4×6 Recipe Card is 60% larger than a 3×5 Recipe Card

We’ve put together the most complete information possible about recipe cards (including 400 free printable recipe cards) on a special section of our recipe card site. We added an info graphic about recipe card sizes too. I’m posting it here in case you haven’t seen it yet.

Here’s a snippet from the page, but you can read the full text here:

Recipe Card Sizes: There are generally 3 sizes of recipe cards to consider. The 3×5” card is the standard card for most of the last 100 years. (Our own 3×5 recipe cards can be found here.) The old recipe card boxes they fit into were designed for America’s small kitchens. As kitchens expanded, so did the capacity of recipe boxes and binders to allow for the now standard 4×6” recipe card. (Our 4×6 recipe cards are here.) The vast majority of all current recipe cards are this size. In the past decade a few brands have expanded to 5×7” recipe cards. (Ours are here.) You may want to avoid these, however, because while they may fit your own binder they may not fit a friend’s binder you wish to share with.

The reason 4×6 cards are about 77% of the cards we offer is because they are so much larger than 3×5 cards (a full 60% bigger) while being much more reasonable to handle than the enormous 5×7 recipe cards.

Ted and I have put in a lot of work on this new section of our site. I hope you enjoy it!

Erin

Save those stained recipe cards

Just because you’ve efficiently typed all your recipes into your computer doesn’t mean you have to toss out the grease- or vanilla-stained recipe cards they are written on. If they are scribbled in your own writing, well, go ahead and re-write them neatly if you like. However, if they are written in your Mother’s hand, or that of your Grandmother’s, keep them.

Get some of our recipe card protectors and put them in the back cover of your cookbook and place these precious bits of personal history in them to preserve from further deterioration. Nothing brings back the memory of a treasured recipe, or the person who used to make it, than seeing it scribbled down on a piece of brown bag or paper towel in the original author’s handwriting. Trust me, one day you’ll be glad you saved those recipe cards, no matter what shape they may be in. Any comments?

Erin

400 Free Recipe Cards: How to Type and Print Free Recipe Cards

Here’s a short video overview of how our 400 free recipe cards page works:

However, if you want to just go straight to the page and start downloading and printing any of our 400 free recipe cards, please be our guest!

New free recipe card selection

We think this will be a pretty big deal. We took 100 of our top-selling recipe card exclusive designs and are just giving them away for free! We also curated 300 of our favorite designs from around the internet and put them all in one place for you to look at too.

We still sell these designs–a lot of people will prefer just to buy them rather than print them themselves. But if you’d rather do it on your own, enjoy!

Click here to get all the free recipe cards you could possibly want. 

Add your name to custom recipe cards for just $3 more

We now offer custom-printed recipe cards! For just 3 dollars extra you can have all 40 cards arrive with your name pre-printed on them. Click here to see the full personalized recipe card selection!

100 New Recipe Card Designs Just Released

We’ve just finished making 100 new recipe card designs, available exclusively through CookbookPeople.com. Every new design includes a nice free conversion chart as well!

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💕 You NEEEED these pretty recipe card dividers. N.E.E.D. 💕

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Pretty "Lemon Linen" design recipe card dividers


We made brand new recipe cards this week!

Why not add a little color to your kitchen for under $6.00? They look GORGEOUS! See them here!

21 Rotten Foods Found in Your Family Cookbook

How many recipes for rotten food are in your family cookbook?  Or, how many recipes in your family cookbook include ingredients classified as rotten food? I bet you have quite a few!

Consider that some of the most beloved rotten food tastes from the Americas and Europe (especially France) are based on some form of decomposition, decay, or the result of deliberately drying, fermenting, spicing, or injecting foods with “good” bacteria.

It is always amusing to try and fathom why someone would taste, let alone eat, some of the most disgusting rotten food products out there (and pay extra for them). Culture certainly has a lot to do with rotten food being coveted.  Smelly, salty things don’t seem like such attractions, however, go most anywhere in the world and you’re bound to find at least one food that is prized for its putrid qualities.

Still think you don’t have any rotten food recipes in your family cookbook? Try these on for size:

21 Rotten Foods Found in Your Family Cookbook

Aged meat
Beer
Cheese
Creme fraiche
Cassoulet
Confit
Cured meat & hams (Parma, Rosette, Smithfield)
Fish paste
Fish sauce
Kim-Chi
Pate
Rillette
Salt cod
Sour bean curd
Sour cream
Soy sauce
Sun-dried tomatoes
Surstromming herring
Wild game birds
Wine
Yogurt

Most of the rotten foods in the list above are an acquired taste. And, coincidentally, most rotten foods are the result of someone trying to extend the usefulness of a food by extending its due date (aka preservation to prevent spoilage), thus staving off hunger.

Can’t really blame/credit any one person for the “discovery” of cheese, or the process of fermenting soy sauce or beer. It is just interesting to imagine why anyone would try rotten food in the first place.

Well, I wouldn”t recommend adding a section in your family cookbook called “Rotten Foods,” but it is fun to think about and perhaps use for idle conversation during lulls in the Super Bowl competition (when you are working on your family cookbook, recipe cards, family reunion, or fundraiser).

Happy Cookbooking,

Erin

Grandma’s Recipe Box, Grandma’s Recipe Book or Grandma’s Recipe Cards: Which Would You Choose?

Grandma’s magic kitchen had the power to transport us. With Grandma’s cookies as sustenance, we could be transported from our backyard tent (made with blankets draped over the clothesline) to wonderfully exotic places we only read about in storybooks. If you had the chance to select one keepsake from your Grandma’s kitchen, either Grandma’s Recipe Box, Grandma’s Recipe Book, or Grandma’s Recipe Cards, which one would you choose?Continue reading

Old Fashioned Recipe Cards are Great

Some people like to keep their recipes on recipe cards instead of creating a family cookbook. Old fashioned recipe cards are still a great way to collect and keep family recipes.

For those of you who prefer this method of preserving family recipes, we have several templates in our cookbook software that allows you to create old fashioned recipe cards in two different sizes (3 x 5 and 4 x 6).

The recipe card design choices below are found in the “Printing” tab by clicking “Recipes.” (Previews are available by clicking the magnifying glass to see your design before you print.) We are considering adding other design choices when we update our software next time, so your suggestions are welcome. For now, here are the choices:Continue reading

Nectarines Cooked in a Crock Pot: A New Favorite

I did something this week that I never thought of before. Twice, as a matter of fact. I liked the first result so much that I had to try it again, and I am considering adding the easy recipe to my family cookbook.

You see, my local market discounts less-than-perfect produce in addition to day-old bakery items. I’m not proud when it comes to saving money. Especially these days! So, when I saw a several-pound bag of very ripe nectarines (marked down to the price of two nectarines I might add), I immediately snatched them up. Roasted nectarines with crumbled graham crackers, walnuts, and vanilla yogurt seemed like a wonderful dessert idea.Continue reading

Blank Recipe Cards vs The Cranky Granny

Blank Recipe Card Madness

Ruth and I collided as I pulled ginger snaps out of the oven. “Oh my goodness, Erin, I’m sorry,” she said. We both creak over to pick up the mess of recipe cards scattered across her kitchen floor.

“Ruth,” I say patiently, because Ruth sometimes needs a little patience. “Recipe cards? Why not punch cards? Or better yet scrawl some symbols on slabs of stone or papyrus?”

“I like to be able to pick up any card for any time to get cooking at a moment’s notice.” She looks at me a little shy. Like she isn’t 64, hasn’t cooked for 7 grandchildren, and hasn’t ever seen anything as confrontational as a cranky granny who owns a cookbook software company.

“Ruth,” I say, maybe a little less patiently. “I can’t even make out some of these, scrawled out in pencil and nearly rubbed out with butter and grease. And how long does it take you to find a card? It takes a moment’s notice to stuff a card in that old box, but how long does it take to find it again?”

“But I just like blank recipe cards. You take a blank recipe card and you can write anything you want on it. A blank recipe card is like a new day. Anything can happen.”

Ruth is a romantic. Romantic grandmas can be very stubborn people. But she’s only 64, still young and impressionable. So I put up my best argument.

“If you use my software to print your own recipe book, all your recipes will always be in alphabetical order every time by recipe type. All your cookies will always be with all your other cookies. All your soups will be with all your other soups. And when it gets so warn out that you are embarrassed to show it to your best friend–ahem–you can just print another copy. And print out a copy for her too.”

She flinches a little. “But the blank recipe cards, Erin! I love the blank recipe cards!”

I knew I had her. “So you can still use the blank recipe cards. Write on them all you want. But then staple them to the blank pages inside your recipe book. That way they stay organized. A cookie recipe card gets stapled to a cookie page in your cookbook. Once a year, type all the cards into my software, hit print, and just like that you’ve got an updated cookbook.”

She stayed silent, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I had another customer. She may have only been 64, and a romantic 64 at that. But she was old enough to see a little reason.

Buy blank recipe cards from us (Cookbook People) by clicking here.