Sharing your favorite recipes: three ways to go

Sunset, Dec, 1987

Instead of bringing a poinsettia, baking a fruitcake, or buying a present, why not share some of your favorite recipes as gifts for relatives or friends?

Here we show three simple, easily managed ways to pass along treasured culinary secrets. With a photocopy machine, you can easily make several editions. A quick trip to a drugstore, photo shop, or stationery store will suggest many possible binding methods.

Binder full of personalized pages. You can fill a binder with recipes enclosed in transparent acetate sheets, as pictured at left. For less than $10, you can buy a handsome leather-look one; allow $2 more for a dozen acetate sleeves.

If you decide to pass along a large collection, you may want to add index tabs for food categories. And providing a few empty sleeves might encourage the recipient to add to this very personal cook book.

Accordion laden with recipes. A second way to go is to tuck index cards into a folded "frame' of cover stock or similar art paper, as shown above.

Our accordion-style holder, with handwritten greeting, measures 6 by 16 inches when unfolded, with a 1/2-inch border around the 3-by-5 index cards on which recipes are copied. We used a craft knife to cut two small slots in which to tuck opposite corners of each card.

Min-album with card inserts. You can slip standard recipe cards into a small photograph album--or something similar. For example, a small album like the one below costs less than $6. Card-like albums that hold about a half-dozen sleeves sell for $2 to $3.

Photo: See-through acetate sleeves hold copies of favorite recipes. Clip sleeves into loose-leaf binder

Photo: Accordion-folded strip of paper opens to reveal a trio of recipes on 3-by-5 index cards tucked into cut slots

Photo: Small photo album makes inexpensive binder for collection of slip-in recipes