You may not have noticed, but Amber and I switched things up a bit the last two weeks. We usually post our blogs in a certain order so that the podcast hostess has a blog post on the Monday before the podcast airs. Sometimes things just don’t work out that way, and this week has been one of them. I got upside down and backwards on a couple of big projects and totally failed at getting my blog for this week written in time. Luckily, Amber had hers ready to go, so she was able to swap with me. So in the end, everything worked out okay, but this is exactly the reason I wanted to do a podcast and blog about quick and easy dinners – because sometimes I’m just too darned busy to cook.
On the podcast, each of us named off quite a few recipes that we consider to be quick and easy. They’re the kinds of things that we can rummage through the pantry and find enough ingredients to make in a pinch, or maybe even plan to make when we know we are going to be busy. For instance, every Thursday, I host an all-day-long Zoom meeting with my crafty friends. We work on our crafts and visit just like we did in person before the pandemic. I never want to stop crafting and visiting with my friends to cook dinner, but I do have a husband and niece to feed, and sometimes it’s my turn to cook, so I usually go for something quick and easy so I can get back to the good stuff – crafting. Last week it was tuna salad, but this week I’ll be whipping up those tacos we talked about on the podcast. I like having a large repertoire of things to cook because I get bored eating the same stuff all the time.
One of the things that helps me come up with lots of different options is having a good recipe database. I’ve been collecting recipes for years from books, magazines, and the internet. I literally have boxes and boxes of recipes I’ve saved. Some I’ve cooked, and some I’m not even sure why I saved them. In any case, finding the ones I really like can be a challenge, and I particularly don’t want to spend more time looking for the recipe than I do actually cooking it. That’s why I decided to make a database to collect my recipes.
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| The form I created for entering my recipes in the database. |
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| A "recipe report" generated by my database with a field for a photo and "ratings" by my family. |
You can opt for one of the many recipe software options out there…just do a Google search for “recipe software” and you’ll be sure to find an option to suit your needs. I started my database years ago, before there were any good software options, and I wanted to be able to customize it to my needs, so I made a simple database in FileMaker Pro. Over the years I’ve created custom layouts and printouts for my recipes, added input fields for my family to “rate” the recipe, and even put a place-holder for a picture in case I ever wanted to “publish” my collection as a printed book. The whole database is searchable by any field, including category, ingredients, source, or even just a specific word. The other day I did a search for “Cheesy” in the title because I couldn’t remember what the recipe was called.
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| A "List View" of my database, sorted by category. |
What’s really nice about having the database is that I can see a running list of all my favorites (only my favorites go in the database), I can sort them by category, and then look quickly down the list of options for something that I can use. It also makes it very easy to print and share a recipe. I shared my tuna casserole with potato chips recipe on our website. You can download a copy here.
Besides looking through a ready-made list of go-to recipes, the other way I prep a quick and easy dinner is by looking through the pantry. Unfortunately, my pantry is tiny, and with 3 adults in the house who have different breakfasts, lunches, and snacks, the pantry gets really full. Sometimes, it gets so full that I can’t even tell what’s in it. Bottles of sauces get shuffled to the back of the shelf, and before you know it, they’ve expired because I didn’t see it there. One of the ways I combat that is to use the free Pantry Check app. As I bring groceries into the house, I simply scan the barcodes, and it adds the item to my inventory list along with the product’s expiration date. Depending on my settings, I can get notifications about items getting ready to expire as well as reminders to update my inventory. And, if I’ve been lax about adding/removing items as I use them (or if I just want a fresh start), I can tell it to clear the inventory. Simple as that.
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| List of categories |
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| Items within a category |
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| Oops! These are expired! Time to toss them out! |
For me, staying organized with my recipes and the contents of my pantry is an important part of making sure the meals I cook are quick and easy when I need them to be. How do you store your recipes? Have you used a recipe database? Do you have a go-to system for staying organized in the kitchen? I’d love to hear about it! Comment below, or join us in our MMC Chat on Facebook!
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