For many of us, the past year has been an opportunity to get back to simple things, and in particular the pleasure of cooking good meals ourselves.Here, we have not escaped the trend: brioche, homemade broth, breaded artichokes, ravioli, pizza... I had long had in mind to use Foglietto, and in particular the A Posto kit and the dividers, to make a beautiful recipe box, which would take up our great classics but also our beautiful culinary discoveries.The idea was to help us find inspiration in order to avoid, as was often the case, always cooking the same thing, when we had actually amassed a whole bunch of successful recipes over the years.Recipes that we were usually too dizzy or too tired to remember when it came to making the week's menu.Today, I'll explain how Foglietto is more practical than a notebook for keeping your recipes, how to put together a recipe box adapted to your lifestyle and give you some ideas for how to best use it on a daily basis.

To make your recipe box, you will need:

• A storage box Tesoro or Archivio,
• A few Foglietto cards (the quantity will depend on the number of recipes to be recorded),
• index cards,
• Paperclips, small, large or colored (optional),
• masking tape (optional),
• magnets (optional).

Recipe box or recipe book: which one to choose?

Practical for keeping the memory of certain recipes, notebooks or recipe notebooks are much less so when it comes to classifying them.The main advantage of Foglietto is that it will allow you to find a particular recipe much more easily, according to the classification categories you have chosen.

Unlike the thin pages of a notebook or the delicate touch screen of a smartphone, the thick Foglietto index cards are very resistant to smudges, smudges and fingerprints from the most greedy (or clumsy!) users.You can easily wipe them off with a slightly damp sponge or cloth.It is therefore the ideal solution to follow your recipe while expressing your culinary creativity!

Finally, some recipe books will offer you an already integrated filing system.Perfect ? Not so sure ! Where these give you a predefined ranking option, Foglietto lets you choose more than one, depending on what suits you best.

Choose your filing system: use dividers and a color code

The ideal way to make your recipe box treasure chest is to use the Tesoro storage box, specially designed for your Foglietto sheets, as well as than our dividers (these first two are available in the kit A Posto).

Start by defining the main categories that usually help you choose your recipes: type of dish, food allergies or restrictions, seasons, countries... Identify among these the most important category, in other words the one that will guide mostly your choices.In my case, it is the classic starter, main course and dessert.Record each of these sub-categories on a divider sheet.If you have a lot of recipes and want more “filters”, you can make different levels of dividers, for example:

• Dividers with the tab on the left (level 1): starter, main course, dessert,
• Dividers with the central tab (level 2): ​​omnivorous, vegetarian, vegan,
• Dividers with the tab on the right (level 3): Italian cuisine, Asian cuisine, French cuisine, etc.

You will then have to repeat the level 2 dividers for each level 1 divider, and the level 3 dividers for each level 2 divider.This option is only interesting if you have a large number of recipes to classify.

You can also use a color code that will allow you to identify at a glance the cards containing recipes that may interest you.In my case, I chose to assign the yellow cards to recipes containing meat or fish, the blue ones to vegetarian recipes and the pink ones to vegan dishes.So, if I'm looking for a vegan main dish, I'll know that I should go to the pink cards stored behind the "Mains" divider card.

No matter how many recipes you start with, I suggest you build an index from the start.To do this, I use the to-do list card and the recipe card number box.If you wish, this is also an opportunity to add a new ranking category to your recipes.Here, I went for the very basic sweet/salty.So I have two index cards: one for savory recipes and one for sweet recipes.

This index will allow you to quickly find a recipe, but also to see at a glance which recipes are already in your box... and therefore to easily find inspiration! Do not hesitate to keep all your recipes there, even those you know by heart.

Some ideas to spruce up your recipe box

Here is a non-exhaustive list of ideas to take full advantage of the benefits of your recipe box:

• Choose from your recipe cards those that will make up your week, then post them directly on your fridge or on a wall in your kitchen using masking tape, a few magnets or pushpins.So you'll have them right in front of you when it's time to cook them!
• The recipe cards also allow you to involve the children in this recurring exercise in family life: to help the little ones to participate, you can add an illustration of it to your recipe , taken by yourselves or by your children, or a photograph that you can maintain using masking tape or a small paperclip.Your menu can then be displayed for all family members to see.
• Use your recipe cards and a to-do list card to quickly draw up your shopping list for the week, or take your recipe cards directly with you to the supermarket.
• Thanks to its minimalist design, the Tesoro box will easily blend into the decor of your kitchen.Always keep it close at hand, ideally on your work surface or on a shelf, to pick up some ideas.
• Finally, the next time someone asks you for your great recipe for carciofi impanati (Italian Breaded Artichokes), you won't all you have to do is lend him your recipe card! Much more user-friendly than a link on the web.😉

To sum up, the steps needed to create your recipe box:

• Define the main categories that usually guide you in choosing your recipes,
• Choose a main category (starter, main course, dessert…),
• Choose one or more secondary categories (vegan/gluten-free, simple/difficult, spring/winter, etc…),
• Assign a color code or level of dividers to each of these main and secondary categories,
• Create an index using our “to-to” cards,
• Write your recipe cards and classify them according to the code you have chosen,
• Finally, use your recipe cards in different ways: lend them, display them on your fridge as a weekly menu, etc.

Share your recipe boxes with us on Instagram!