Too many recipes laying around? Here's how to tame the clutter

McClatchy Newspapers (MCT) - Jodi Greenwald started out right. Five years ago, when she was getting ready to marry Josh Greenwald, her mother had the wedding shower guests bring recipes for Jodi that she copied and put together in a neat package.

The marriage worked out _ baby Max joined the family three months ago, and Jodi recently went back to work part time at the Jewish Federation at Shalom Park in Charlotte, N.C.

The recipe collection? That didn't work out so well.

It's now in a two-door cabinet in the Greenwalds' kitchen. There's a small shelf of cookbooks and a second shelf of ... piles. Newspaper clippings, ripped-out magazine pages. A couple of empty recipe organizers. The original wedding shower recipes are there, too.

"We know what's in each pile," says Jodi.

"Actually, we don't," says Josh. He's standing up for a fast dinner of frozen fish sticks and a microwaved egg roll. "That sums it up," he says, waving a fork at his plate.

Pam Sultzman is standing quietly in the kitchen, listening. OK, she's not completely quiet. She's chuckling.

Sultzman is a recipe organizer with her own business. After working in the oil industry in Oklahoma and in banking in Charlotte, she started Pam's Pantry. "I got tired of getting laid off," she says.

Sultzman found her business when she took control of her own recipe collection. It took weeks. She sorted the recipes by categories, typed them all into her computer, printed them out and laminated them to keep them clean. Then she sorted them into a recipe box.

She liked doing it so much, she started doing it for other people, charging $1 a recipe. Then she branched out, organizing people's collections into cookbooks. People hand her their collections and she takes it from there.

RESCUING THE NEW MOM

Sultzman isn't at the Greenwalds' to sell them her service. When the Charlotte Observer asked readers to tell us about their recipe messes, she agreed to pick one person and talk to them about organizing. We got plenty of plaintive pleas _ tales of gallon-size Ziploc bags of recipes and teetering shelves of books. But it wasn't hard to pick Jodi:

"Yes, it's true," she wrote. "I'm a recipe mess. Which translates to a cooking mess. I make the same three recipes by heart and that's about it."

And here's the part that grabbed us: "I'm a new mom, with an 8-week-old, and I'd love to start cooking more ... on the quick, of course."

We need to help her, Sultzman decided. New mothers need all the help they can get.

So we went to the Greenwalds one evening, while baby Max slept upstairs.

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How should Jodi get started?

"Burn it," says Josh. That's not supportive, Josh.

"No, he's supportive," Jodi says, laughing. "He's supportive of anything that means I'll cook more."

The first step, Sultzman says, is to get the piles out of the cabinet. Then, start sorting.

Start with categories _ and more is better. "The more detailed you are, the better off you'll be."

Pick the categories based on your life and how you cook. Jodi tries to keep kosher at home and she loves to cook for the holidays. So she might have a category for Passover and seder dinners. She needs to cook quick dinners, so she could have a category for short, simple dishes.

As you sort, discard the duplicates and the recipes that no longer sound appealing. Aim for a collection of things you really will make.

SYSTEM AND MAINTENANCE

Then, pick a recipe system.

Sultzman brought along a few, including a couple of styles of binders and her big box of printed cards.

"Laminated," says Josh, sounding impressed. "That's the way to do it."

He notices the cards at the front of the box: There's one for each of Sultzman's holiday meals, with a list of the recipes. Someday, her grown daughter will be able to re-create Mom's New Year's dinner.

The kind of recipe system you use isn't the important thing, Sultzman says. You can use a big binder with plastic sleeves and pocket dividers, or individual binders for each category. You can put them on cards and file them.

The important thing is to find the one you will maintain.

"Your recipes have to be accessible. If they aren't, you won't cook from them."

That's why Sultzman isn't a fan of computer programs or Web sites that let you compile your own collection. If it's in the computer, it's not in the kitchen.

Jodi seems leery of retyping everything. A binder might be the way to go.

Now, on to cookbooks. Jodi only has a small shelf, less than a dozen books. But those collections grow. She's already started marking the recipes she likes with sticky notes _ a big no-no, according to Sultzman.

"Get away from stickies. They're nothing but trouble." They lose their stickiness and fall off, and you can't tell what they mark, so you still end up thumbing through every book.

Instead, use a notebook to jot down the names of the recipes you like and the book they're in. Or write a notecard for each book.

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"We're all in this to make it easier," Sultzman says. "The easier it is, the more you'll cook _ and the happier he'll be," she says, nodding at Josh.

Once you sort the piles and pick a system, the most important job is maintaining it, says Sultzman. That's the problem with systems. People pick systems that are too complicated. Or they make something and they don't put the recipe back when they're finished. That leads back to piles.

Every three to six months, go through your recipes, she says. It's like going through your clothes at the end of a season: If you haven't made it, discard it.

Sultzman goes over the rules one more time: Keep your collection in the kitchen. Go through it regularly. Keep up with it.

"Don't have any more piles. Don't start any."

"Stay the course," says Josh.

"Stay the course," says Sultzman.

GET ORGANIZED

Pick a system you will maintain.

The binder: Get three-ring binders with clear plastic on the front and down the spine for easy labeling. Get sheet protector pages and dividers. (Pocket dividers give you a place to store new recipes until you add them to the sheet protectors.)

Magnetic sheet photo albums: Good for preserving heirloom recipes in the original handwriting.

Index card boxes: Rewrite recipes, or type them on your computer. (You can find popular recipe programs at cookspalate.com, LivingCookbook.com, Cook'N at dvo.com or AccuChef.com). Print them out in a 4-by-6-inch format and attach to index cards, or get them laminated. You also can use long file boxes, or even a plastic bread box.

Set categories according to your life and the kind of cooking you do.

Set a regular time to maintain your recipes, including putting them back and adding new ones.

Go through your collection at least one or twice a year, but preferably four times a year. Ask yourself: Have I made it? Am I ever going to make it? When I made it, did my family like it?

Go through the books you use frequently and jot down the recipes you like and the page number. Make an index card for each book; file them in a box or inside the book.

Keep a skirt hanger with clips in the kitchen. When you cook from single pages or cards, clip the recipe and hang it from a cupboard door at eye level.

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If you buy something just to make a new recipe, tape or clip the recipe to the package so it doesn't get thrown out before you can make it.

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From Kathleen Purvis and Pam Sultzman of Pam's Pantry, www.pams-pantry.com:

YOU THINK YOU HAVE RECIPES?

When you're a food writer, recipes can swamp your life. Here's how I keep up with mine:

I use a large, three-ring binder with pocket dividers. The dividers are labeled by my cooking occasions _ slow cooker recipes, family recipes, entertaining, appetizers, potlucks (I get asked to a lot of them), soups, side dishes, desserts, Christmas cookies and special breakfasts.

As I tear out recipes, I tuck them into the pockets for each category where they're easy to go through. I use the pocket at the front of each section for the current season and the one at the back for later in the year.

When I make a recipe that works, I put it in a plastic sleeve protector and add it to the binder. To make the sleeves do double duty, I put a sheet of white paper in each one, so I can display recipes on both sides. I also group smaller recipes on the pages, like several kinds of salad dressing or more than one recipe for green beans.

About twice a year, I go through it all and discard recipes I didn't make, and move the seasonal recipes to the front of each section.

It works for me, and that's all that counts.

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© 2008, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).