Magazine Recipe Clippings

I know I'm not the only one guilty of saving recipe clippings from magazines and newspapers. Rochelle, for one, admits to having a box full.

My own collection of clippings falls into two categories. Those I have personally saved and those that once belonged to someone else. We'll discuss those that belonged to perfect strangers and why they're now taking up space in my home some other time.

Over the years, I've used several methods to "organize" my clippings. Unlike Rochelle, I never used the box method. Well, not with my own clippings, anyway. I never transferred very many of them to recipe cards like this girl did. I stuck to notebooks and binders.

Here's one binder that's been on my bookshelf for many years. Judging from the dates on some of the clippings, this one looks to be from the first half of the 1980s.

See how organized it is? The only things actually in the binder the way they're supposed to be are the section dividers. They came that way from the factory. I mostly just folded the magazine pages in half and stuck them inside.


Apparently, one of my favorite magazines back then was Good Housekeeping. They had several recipe series over the years, one that featured Susan, the Beginning Cook, Show & Tell, and another called GH Entertains. I saved a lot of those.

I acually tried the Chicken Bonne Femme recipe that's in the photo above. As I recall, it turned out very well. Probably because of all the butter it required (1-1/2 sticks).


There are quite a few brand name recipes in here. Ads from Holland House and Planter's are shown above. Many of them I clipped because I liked the way the advertisement looked. I might have also been clipping between meals and might have been hungry. Lots of things sound and look good when your reading magazines on an empty stomach. Just like at the grocery store.

I never did get around to making the Thanksgiving Bird shown in this ad for Early California Ripe Olives. I still like the way it looks. But I'm not really fond of ripe olives.


Nor have I ever made this cottage cheese and fruit banana split inspired by products from Kraft and Dole. I've got those cute little ice cream dishes stored away somewhere though, just in case I ever do.


I have made these Almond Pinecones a couple of times, though not always with the cream cheese filling in the recipe.


Here's a casserole recipe using Durkee French Fried Onions that's not the infamous Green Bean Casserole. Pork Chop 'N Potato Bake uses frozen hash brown potatoes and cream of celery soup. I'm older now and have learned a lot of cooking short-cuts. If I get a craving (which I sometimes do) for these fat-filled little onions, I just pour some out of the can onto a plate, pop them into the microwave for a few seconds, and eat them that way. Craving satisfied, and no need to go to extremes by preparing an entire casserole.


So although I've tried some of these recipes, and I might actually pull this book off the shelf more frequently than others that languish near it, I've not tried the majority of recipes contained inside. Chances are, I probably never will.

However, I fear that, like the Biscuit Box, it's destined to be on my shelves forever.

I don't save many recipes from magazines or newspapers anymore because I don't buy or subscribe to as many. Although I prefer to read a paper copy of anything rather than something on a computer screen, I have managed to reign in my recipe clipping tendencies by not letting the paper into the house in the first place.

For those of you who are surely thinking , but what about all those cookbooks?, I can only say, we're talking about newspaper and magazine clippings here, remember? That's different.

All of that said, I must mention what brought this entire post about in the first place. I was looking through the Jan/Feb 2009 issue of Everyday Food and came across this ad from Barilla pasta:

I noticed that they refrained from printing the entire recipe in the ad; only part of it's shown. Instead, they encourage one to go to their website to find the rest of the recipe.


This is one magazine clipping that's not going to be in anyone's recipe binder twenty years from now. It's not even going to make it to the clipping stage.

What will the recipe clipping collections be like in the future?

Perhaps the computer-savvy now prefer to cut-and-paste all their recipes from the web and save them into neat little folders on their computer. Maybe they'll be able to access those files in the future, maybe not. Maybe they'll go so far as to print them out, organizing them into a new style of clipping collections. Will these have as much personality as all of the colorful pages ripped from magazines? Will they bring back the same memories?

What's you clipping collection like. I know you have one.