For the longest time I was attempting to maintain a crazy collection of recipes ripped out of magazines. My system included a handful of manila folders labeled by category that I threw folded or ripped pages from Cooking Light, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, and Real Simple. The intention was to rifle through the folders each week when I meal planned, carefully selecting recipes that had previously caught my eye.

It didn’t take long to realize it was a rather faulty system. I found myself meal planning in the car (Ryan driving of course!) away from my files, or simply forgetting to grab them, meaning I was only occasionally making recipes I genuinely wanted to try. Finally, one day on maternity leave, I decided it was time for a new system. I set up a bunch of new Pinterest boards, copying the handwritten labels on the manila folders, and spent the next few days of naptime searching for the online version of the magazine recipe and pinning it to the right board.

Given that I have the Pinterest app on my phone, and my phone is (for better and worse) always nearby, I can now meal plan at any time or in any place and all of the recipes I want to try are, quite literally, at my fingertips. In the past month or two since I’ve implemented this system, nearly every new recipe I’ve tried has been pulled from a magazine—some of them recipes I’ve been meaning to make for years!

This green bean side dish was one of those recipes that got transferred to my PinterestTo Make: Side Dishes board (it’s no longer on there…because once I make something I remove it since I know I’ll be able to now find it on the blog!). It’s a shame I went almost a year before I made this, but I’m glad to now have it in my repertoire of summer side dishes. It’s fast and fresh—taking advantage of bright flavors like lemon and mint to turn an ordinary vegetable into something company-worthy!