A Recipe Binder with a Side of Taco Salad

Update: 3/28/09: Katie at a Listmaker's Life just started a weekly meme featuring salads and since I love salads and for long stretches will eat one everyday I had to contribute one. If you're visiting from there please scroll down to the bottom to see it. Thanks for coming by and please say hi the comments so I can return the favor and go visit you too!

This is what I was working on while watching the Oscars, compiling and cute-tifying my recipe collection. Now that we're amassing a collection of tried and true recipes I had to have some place to keep them, because we've already lost one stack of recipes I printed out.

Plus it gave me an excuse to use some of my very favorite paper by K&Company from their Berry Sweet line. I bought a big pad of this stuff and it just makes me happy, I'm so in love with it that I didn't want to use, and use it all up. Silly I know, but since it coordinated with my kitchen colors and theme I can put it out on the counter and see it every day.To create the inside pages I wanted to use up more of my large scrap pile from other projects. For some reason I always seem to have long strips of patterned paper left over. So I made a template that incorporated them, for the recipes in MS Word with a text box, I can change the color easily to match my paper scraps - cute huh, with space for a picture. I also added a bit of the this recipe's history at the bottom.

This is the "star" treatment any recipe that we make and find ourselves going back to again and again will get, once they've obtained "Tried & True" status. I have extra pages in the back with the loose recipes to hang out in during their try out phase. I think this keep us much more organized and tame all the pieces of paper with random meal ideas written on them. I realize a recipe binder is not exactly and original idea, but hey it's a big step forward for us!

Here are some other meal and organizer tools:

Kim at Forever Wherever has a menu calendar and shopping list on PDF you can download. I already told you about the great recipes cards at Lolly Chops but she recently did a guest post at La Fuji Mama and gave us some new flowered one to print out. Then there are the many printables at Tricia-Rennea Art, her March planner pages are posted already if you want to start planning ahead. She also has generic but still cutely illustrated ones, but you have to scroll back through her posts or try looking by label to find them. I just found the Recipe Matcher through Homemaker Barbi, it's this great tool that you can use to find free recipes to match your leftovers. You just type in what ingredients you have and it gives you ideas, isn't that neat-o!

If you know of any other fun ways to organize or free printable to share, leave me a comment so I can check them out!

I also decided to organize my growing collection of templates from various projects like the letter pillow and felt peony. Once I've used them, if I think I might need them again, I'm going to store each one in a sleeve like this. I've got yet another paper scrap, the title and a picture of the project, where I got it from, what I did with it, and room for notes. The templates are behind it. This is especially helpful if you've taken the trouble to enlarge a template, which can be frustrating and require several attempts - at least it is for me. Well who wants to repeat that experience, now I can just save them for next time.

Here's the recipe from above, in case you can't read it due to the size of the photo and glare from the flash bouncing off the page protector.

My Favorite Taco Salad

This one is not creative or hard to make because I don't mix up a little of this and pinch of that to make the taco meat like some do. That might save money in the long run, but I just use a packet and call it a day. What it is, is yummy and it's been made in my family for years. I remember going to family reunions and large bowls of this being put out. I make a healthier version than back in the day by using the leanest cut of beef, reduced sodium taco seasoning, light dressing, and less cheese but even with all those changes I still love it.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. ground beef
• 1 packet taco seasoning - we use the Ortega low sodium packet
• lettuce - we used red leaf lettuce, my favorite variety
• sharp cheddar cheese
• tomatoes
• green pepper
• red onion
• tortilla chips - use the crumbs from the bottom of the bag
• Catalina dressing - Mine MUST be Kraft's light
• and absolutely NO OLIVES, but if you like them I guess you can add 'em

Directions:

• Cook and drain beef
• Follow directions on seasoning packet to make taco meat, this usually involves dumping seasoning packet onto beef, adding water, and stirring
• While beef was cooking, wash and dry lettuce
• Cut up remaining vegetables and shred cheese using grater as this tastes much better than the stuff you buy predone in a packet. I'm lazy but even I make time for this!
• Layer lettuce followed by beef and vegetables (I like mine with A LOT of green pepper and onion), pour on dressing, and crumple chips on top.
• Mix all up and enjoy, for some reason I like this even better after it's been mixed up for awhile and the dressing has wilted the lettuce a bit.

Find more great ideas on how to make your home a better place and contribute your own at 11th Heaven's Homemaker Monday and at Making a Happy Home Monday.

For recipes and to share one of your own please visit the Tasty Tuesday Blog Party at Forever Wherever and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday at Blessed with Grace. Get great kitchen tips at Tammy's Recipe's weekly Kitchen Tip Tuesday.

And if you've tackled a big task in your life lately, like I did with my stack of recipes go to Tackle it Tuesday at Five Minutes for Mom. This week's guest tackler is my friend Courtney, go see her adorable animal lovey patterns!