I moved a couple of years ago & did a similar thing with my cookbooks - quite a few I had gotten for a couple of dollars & they were ‘interesting’, but not anything I cooked out of regularly (if at all) so off they went to a donation center.
Most of my “go to” recipes, I kept in a loose leaf notebook - xeroxed or copied over from family recipes. My aunts’ churches (and ours) have put out cookbooks so I got recipes that way - ones my aunts had contributed, plus favorites from folks they know or members of our church. Two of my very favorite recipes are from ladies in our church (now deceased, unfortunately). There was also, back in the ‘90’s, a series of recipes in the Parade Magazine by the Silver Palate chefs. I kept almost all of those recipes & made quite a few for dinners & parties (including a surprise anniversary party for my folks) - some of my favorites.
Over the years, I put many recipes on my laptop as scans or I typed them up & tried to organize them in my documents with folders, etc. Sometimes it was hard to find a recipe I KNEW I had .... frustrating. After looking at recipe programs for several years, this past December, I purchased a recipe program called “Home Cookin’”. It doesn’t have all the ‘bells & whistles’ of some of the popular big programs, but I like the fact that it’s mostly ‘unstructured’. The search function is terrific so it’s easy to find recipes & I figured out a way to ‘tag’ recipes, too. I have put on 168 recipes to date. As I’ve gone through my notebook & the recipes saved as documents, I’m also doing that same review .... will I ever make this? Do I really want to clutter up HC with it? So far, it’s been a fun process and I’ve been reminded of some really good recipes that I let slip through the cracks over the years.
On HC, you can save recipes or information. I have one info page set up for links like the ‘vintage recipes’ so if I want to go explore some of the other categories, I won’t forget about it. :-)
I had some old cookbooks but I had a huge 3X5 card collection of recipes. Started it when I first got married. Kept it in a super long file drawer that same size. Was probably 18” deep. I winnowed through them and most I didn’t not want anymore so next time I went to the dentist with the old old magazines I left them on the table. Heard later they were a big hit.
Can you use Home Cookin just to place links to recipes online?
I use Evernote to just pile good recipes in. Some are copied in, and some are just links. There is a search feature so it doesn’t matter in what order the recipes are in. It’s a sloppy system. But it works well enough.