Organization Quest

When You Bake 1700 Cookies, You Gotta Have A Plan

Today I baked the last of the twelve types of cookies I'm making this year for the holidays.  With the cookies baked, I was in distribution mode, whereby I decide who-gets-what and how-many-of-each, a process not unlike those analytical evaluation questions on the GRE exam:

Joe and Josh must not get any chocolate cookies.
Lynda must not get any cookies with nuts.
Mary Jo must get four times more date cookies than the person with the least number of date cookies.
Kay must get at least 20 Mexican Wedding Cakes, Spritz, and Sugar Cookies combined.
How many peanut butter cookies does Dad get?

To keep track of it all, I made a little low-tech spread sheet, with the cookie type along the top and the cookie recipient to the left, and jotted down the number of cookies I packed into each person's tin as I made my way down my list. 

 
Eight down, 20 cookie recipients to go

This is the first year I've made such a list, and I'm hoping that by doing so, I'll be able to better plan my baking schedule. While my default is always to bake 12 dozen each of the 12 types of cookies, the system breaks down when I suspect the only person who really likes the Date cookies is my sister, while on the other hand I always seem to run short on the frosted sugar cookies, because who doesn't like frosted sugar cookies? 

When I'm done with the great Distribution Extravaganza, I'll just slip my list in the holiday cookie section of my new recipe notebook, and I'll have the data on hand when it's cookie-making season next year.

Project notes:  As soon as I'm done baking and the cookies are cool, I store each type of cookie separately in a resealable bag.

Once all the cookies are baked and I'm ready to distribute the cookies into tins, I sequester the kittens, clear the table, and lay down sheets of foil, on which I arrange the cookies by type, a couple dozen per type at a time.  This helps me see the variety and makes the allocation process easy and fun.

   

 

Quick Tip: Keeping Tidy While Cooking

The problem:  where to put drippy, food-goopy spoons and utensils while cooking?  There are those spoon-shaped ceramic plates, which are adorable, sure, but who cooks with onespoon, which is about all you can fit on one of those things?  And what are you supposed to do with the measuring cups, whisks, knives, strainers, peelers, graters, spatulas, and other such utensils you use while cooking?  The diminutive little spoon-shaped plate just isn't going to cut it.

While I've developed a system of constant rinsing-and-washing of utensils while cooking (the trick:  unloading the dishwasher and dish drain first, to give yourself a clean slate), I do find it useful to have a place to put utensils in when I'm in the middle of cooking.  I like to use a plain old plate, as large or small as needed for the particular dish or meal that's being made.  Easy, practical, and it works great in containing food-prep mess.

T-Day Preparation Countdown

Are you hosting Thanksgiving this year?

One of the things that I've always loved about T-day is all the preparations: deciding which dishes to cook and writing out the accompanying shopping list; planning what-to-do-when and allocating the all-important refrigerator real estate and Tupperware resources.

This year, we're actually thinking of going to a local restaurant instead; having started my annual Cookie Bake Off a week early has thrown off my T-Day planning. I don't have a single Tupperware container to spare, and my refrigerator and freezer are filled with pounds and pounds butter.  Still, if I was going to do The Whole T-Day Shebang, my planning would look something like this:

Menu:

• Turkey
• Gravy
• Three kinds of stuffing (my mom's, which is traditional bread stuffing; Alpay's mom's, which is basically garlic bread; and cornbread stuffing)
• Orange-cranberry sauce
• Mashed potatoes (possibly garlic mashed potatoes)
• Candied sweet potatoes
• Steamed Broccoli and Cauliflower
• Mornay (aka: cheese) sauce
• Parsnip casserole
• Crudities
• Ranch dressing
• Pumpkin pie

With the exception of the Ranch dressing, which I make from a mix, everything is homemade. I do use store-bought white bread for my mom's stuffing and Alpay's mom's stuffing.

After work Monday, November 24; (T-Day/Day -3)

• Complete any shopping for supplies.
• Make Ranch dressing; refrigerate.

After work Tuesday, November 25 (T-Day/Day -2)

• Make cornbread.
• Make pie crust; wrap and refrigerate.
• Make cranberry sauce; refrigerate.
• Put white bread on racks in oven to dry overnight.

After work Wednesday, November 26 (T-Day/Day -1)

• Make my mom's stuffing:  cut onions and celery, fry in butter. Break dried bread into pieces, toss with fried vegetables, seasoning, and chicken broth; refrigerate.
• Make cornbread stuffing (same as above, only omit celery); refrigerate.
• Peel and boil parsnips; mash.  Add fried onions and seasoning.  Put in casserole dish, cover and refrigerate.
• Bake pumpkins for pie.
• Combine ingredients for pumpkin pie filling.
• Make pumpkin pie.

Early morning Thursday, November 27 (T-Day)

• Prepare turkey for roasting. 
• Make Alpay's mom's stuffing.
• Stuff turkey with various stuffings.
• Roast turkey.

Mid-Day T-Day

• Cut vegetables for crudites; put out with Ranch dressing for snacking. 
• Peel sweet potatoes; boil.  Cut into slices and arrange in casserole.  Top with brown sugar, pecans, and butter.  Refrigerate until 30 or 40 minutes before turkey is done.
• Set the table.

One Hour Til Turkey's Out:

• Peel, boil and mash potatoes. 
• Make Mornay sauce.
• Put cauliflower on to steam.

Last 20 Minutes 

• Put sweet potatoes in the oven to bake.
• Put parsnip casserole in the oven to bake.
• Steam broccoli.
• Take out cranberry sauce; bring to the table.

Endgame 

• Take turkey out of oven; put stuffing into bowls.
• Make gravy.
• Put the cauliflower and broccoli on a platter and pour Mornay sauce over both.
• Take the sweet potatoes and the parsnip casserole out of the oven.
• Put mashed potatoes into serving bowl.
• Gravy goes into a gravy boat.
• Bring everything to the table and enjoy! 

Setting Up Your Recipe Notebook: Choosing Categories

Okay, I know that three posts about organizing recipes is probably two posts too many, but I can't resist this last one: the categories people choose for organizing their recipes.

While typical American categories include "Meat," "Fish," Poultry," and "Vegetables," foreign cookbooks never cease to surprise and delight me with their system of organizing and distinguishing food:  the Turkish categories of "dishes made with yogurt," "things that are stuffed," and the succinctly-worded "frieds" strike me as particularly whimsical, which astonishes Alpay, who considers the classic Turkish category of "Wet Food" to be both necessary and self-evident.

In this way, recipe categories may seem obvious but actually aren't at all; instead, the categories selected reflect the unique proclivities of the individual cook. For this reason, packaged, pre-printed cards, labels, or tabs are bound to bewilder and to disappoint.  As much as I like my new Circa Recipe notebook, I don't know if I have a single recipe out of the 200+ in my collection that would go under the pre-printed "Beverages" tab.  Do people really need recipes for drinks?  And as a former vegetarian who often creates entrees from a mix of side dishes, I don't really think of many things as "Appetizers" per se; nor do I see "Eggs & Cheese" belonging to the same category.

The categories I created in my old, beat-up binder reflected how I cook, which is often informed by my favorite ethnic cuisines: French, Italian, Mexican, Spanish, and Turkish.

As I add my recipes to my new Circa Recipe notebook I'm planning on including my favorite national categories.  I've also decided to keep the 18 pre-printed tab dividers that came with the notebook.  The pre-printed tab dividers are organized not in alphabetical order but appear to be (somewhat)  organized by their appearance in courses, followed by dividers for "Specialties" and "Holiday" and ending with sections for shopping and planning.  For the curious and for those of you planning to start or update your own recipe notebook, the categories in the Circa Recipe notebook are as follows:

• Beverages
• Appetizers
• Soups
• Salads
• Breads
• Vegetables
• Pasta
• Rice
• Potatoes
• Eggs & Cheese
• Poultry
• Meats
• Seafood
• Sweets & Desserts
• Specialties
• Holiday Meals
• Shopping List
• Party Planning

Who knows?  Maybe now that I have tab dividers for "Beverages" and "Appetizers" I may even be inspired to find some recipes to go with them.

Using a Binder or Circa Notebook to Organize Recipes

While I like the idea of using cute little 3 x 5 cards stored in a box to organize recipes, I've never been able to adhere to such a system.  Either my recipes are too elaborate or I'm too long-winded to fit the ingredients and cooking instructions into such a small area. I've also never understood how recipes from newspapers, magazines, or product packaging were supposed to fit on such a card.  Likewise, printing out recipes from cooking blogs or from sites like epicurious.com is a breeze, but usually require an 8.5" x 11" format.

For these reasons, in the past I chose to use a binder to organize my recipes.  The current binder that needs to be replaced, a battered old 1.5" job, ran out of room years ago.  You'd think I would have capitulated long ago and bought a three-inch binder, but instead I mastered the stuff-and-shut strategy, whereby recipes are crammed willy-nilly in-between existing pages, the better to ensure the I-know-it's-in-here-somewhere drama that happens with great frequency.

Now that I'm determined to organize my recipes once and for all, I considered two options: getting a bigger binder, or using Levenger's Circa Notebook to bring order to the chaos.

Using a Binder to Organize Recipes: Advantages, Tricks, and Disadvantages

The advantage to using  binders is that they're cheap, they come in a variety of sizes and colors, and with the addition of a few dividers, it's easy to organize recipes according to category. Some of my friends slide their recipes into page protectors, which protect the recipe against drips and spills and are easy to wipe off.

Since I'm not big on page protectors for recipes--I have so many recipes, I'd rather avoid the excess bulk--the biggest disadvantage to using a binder is that there isn't a satisfactory way to organize recipes that are on cards or are otherwise on small-sized paper.  True, you can staple such a piece onto typing paper, which would work well enough, but then there's still the issue of binders being  noisy and annoying to open and close, especially when you are populating the binder or moving things around.   

Using a Circa Notebook to Organize Recipes: Advantages, Details, and Disadvantages

In the midst of my Circa mania last month, I picked up Levenger's Recipe Notebook while getting the rest of my Circa supplies. While the Recipe Notebook itself is being discontinued (and is currently on sale at the Levenger site as a matter of fact) it's easy enough to make your own recipe notebook by using a Circa notebook shell and some dividers. This is a little pricier than a regular binder, but if you already use Circa and have the hole punch, it's an option worth considering. Unlike with three-ring binders, even small cards are securely fastened in Levenger's equi-distant ring system, without the bulk of having to use page protectors. 

The one downside to using Levenger's system is that their brand of page protectors is prohibitively (as in ridiculously) expensive.  While you could punch regular page protectors and use those with Levenger's system, I'm not sure how pretty it would be. If you're a page protector kind of cook, best stick with a traditional binder. 

Organizing Recipes in 7 Easy Steps

After the close call with my cherished Better Homes and Gardens sugar cookie recipe, I decided to get busy organizing the myriad print-outs, photocopies, 3 x 5 cards, magazine clips, and product packaging  that comprises my recipe collection. 

Organizing recipes is one of those rare projects that is actually kind of fun. It involves the following steps:

1. Choose what format to use (i.e. 3 x 5 cards, binder, Circa notebook, etc.)
2. Buy the supplies. For a binder or Circa notebook, you'll need the binder or notebook itself and some tab dividers.  Page protectors are optional.
3. Gather up your recipes.
4. Determine the categories.
5. Make the labels for tabs/categories.  The labels can be hand- or computer-printed. 
6. Review your recipes for any duplicates; edit out any that you no longer are interested in.
7. Insert the recipes under the suitable category.

Optional fussing includes:

1. Making copies of any recipes that are torn or faded;
2. Slipping the recipes into page protectors;
3. Alphabetizing the recipes under each category, and
4. Creating an index of the recipes.

Tomorrow we'll go over choosing the right format, as well as tricks and tips for getting your recipes range-ready.

Close Call On The Cookie Front

The not-so-new Bettter Homes and Gardens Cook Book

Yesterday I posted my ambitious list of weekend organizing plans centering on getting the kitchen ready for some serious cookie baking next week.  And I did choose the lucky 12 cookies that made this year's cut:

1. Sugar Cookies
2. Spritz
3. Gingerbread People
4. Domino Refrigerator Cookies
5. Monster Cookies
6. Peanut butter Cookies
7. Mexican Wedding Cakes
8. Thumbprints
9. Chocolate Crinkles
10. Chocolate Truffles .  Maybe!  Or:  Lemon-Pecan Slices
11. Miniature Date Pies
12. Jewel-colored Jam Tarts

Exhausted by the grueling cookie-selection process, I decided to pass on organizing the kitchen cupboards today, but didn't entirely slack off:  what has actually been bothering me lately is the mound of paperwork that has gathered under my desk since last winter.  Somehow the under-the-desk-mess escaped the shred-or-file fate of the Supreme Paper Mess I confronted this summer.  I also wanted to tidy up my room some, knowing that it was now-or-never, or at least now-or-after-the-new-year.  And so I settled down and used my first-pass strategy of focusing on the toss-or-keep decision. 

Imagine my surprise when, among the old catalogs and flyers, coupons and receipts, pictures and letters and bills and manuals, I came across the sugar cookie recipe, which I hadn't even realized I was missing in the first place.  It's one of the few cookie recipes on my list that actually come from a book, in this case an ancient, binder-bound copy from Better Homes and Gardens in which the woman all have elaborate manicures and wear aprons.  While I have perhaps two dozen copies of my mother's banana bread and Mexican Wedding Cakes recipes--because God forbid I lose them, they'd be forever gone--I'd never bothered to make copies of the retro Better Homes and Gardens sugar cookie recipe, because I figured it was in a book and thus safe.  But that recipe is actually unique itself, calling for grated orange peel among other surprising ingredients.  I've never found one anything like it,  which explains in part why store-bought sugar cookies are so inedible.

The close call scared me straight.  I solemnly swear to organize my recipes--and make copies of my favorites--once and for all.