I Started A Digital Recipe Box

from sourdough to the art of homemaking...I'm building my own (digital) recipe box

Along with grocery lists and workout plans, my notes app is filled with recipes and homemaking projects— and while I genuinely appreciate the simplicity of the notes app, I’m a visual person, so I started turning my notes app into a digital recipe box.

I have always wanted to turn my family recipes into an old-school recipe box. A place where I can compile old handed down recipes and the new ones I have picked up while traveling. This series is my way of bringing all these notes together in one place, so I can keep adding new recipes and tips as I continue to learn.

The goal is to blend the modern digital format with old-school recipe box vibes, the kind your grandparents kept tucked away on the kitchen counter. It’s nostalgic. The recipes kept in family recipe card boxes weren’t just instructions, they were memories literally handed down through the generations.

I love the idea of a real-life recipe box, but for now, I’m making the most of my Canva subscription and compiling recipes/canning instructions from my notes app right here on Substack.

As an example, my pasta dough recipe is from Pasta Grannies, but I don’t want to go to the specific YouTube video that contains the recipe every time I need to make pasta. I used to keep it in my notes app like a coveted treasure until I ran out of iCloud space and could no longer access it on my phone. That’s when it hit me—having my favorite recipes downloaded would be super convenient, so I started to create my own digital recipe cards.

I just started a sourdough starter (named Sophia Loren) and instead of tracking the growth and best practices in the notes app on my phone, I decided to make a series out of it— Sourdough Diaries: my first starter ever. I genuinely hope the Substack sourdough community will help me with the process of learning because I can already tell I will need assistance.

I’m not an expert, I’m just a girl hoping to learn new skills. Starting new projects like canning peach jam or making sourdough from scratch are practices I’ve been wanting to learn for years, but full-time travel hasn’t exactly allowed me the space to nurture a sourdough starter. So now that I have slowed down and am living in Sardinia, I finally have the opportunity to learn the art of homemaking.

Instead of sharing these recipes and practices from a place of authority, I’m hoping to come from a place of learning— and track these newly acquired skills along the way.

I’m sure the Substack community has a ton of tips and tricks to share. Whether it's a hack for shaping sourdough or how to fold pasta dough into that perfect wreath shape, I’d genuinely love to hear it.

Stay tuned for all the recipes from my notes app as I figure out homemaking—after years of living out of a suitcase.

More soon,

Kenza ✨