What do people use index cards for these days?

Flashcards. For all that technology can offer, I still find index cards to be the best way of staying up to speed on my foreign language vocabularies.

They are still used in school for projects or notes for a speech.

I use this sort as a study aid, taking notes from textbooks that I can carry around with me, then eliminate the cards that I know well. I don’t know of a tech-y equivalent to this process. At least, I can’t think of one that would be as easy and as portable.

The process of handwriting flashcards and the convenience of them (can bring them anywhere), make them my go-to study method. I’m in the sciences, so a lot of information I need to learn involves cycles, compounds, various images that can’t be simply typed up (not that I would prefer to do so; old fashioned in that sense). Since they’re concise they make for a good refresher, too. I’m not exaggerating when I say I have thousands of notecards in my home. I’m sure there are more sustainable and practical methods, but I suppose I’m just set in my ways.

Over the last few years, I’ve used them to study legal definitions, Italian vocabulary, and the terms used by biologists. They are my go-to for any sort of learning by heart. When I study for an exam, I may have 15 index cards to begin with. I carry them around with me wherever I go, and they get eliminated once I have them memorized.

I used them frequently for flashcards also. Now they get used for shopping lists, quick notes etc… when the few packs I have left get used up that will likely be it.

I think the majority of use is as @dammitjanetfromvegas says: school related projects.

Teachers are generally underpaid and underfunded. Note cards are cheap, versatile and easily found. I’d guess that notecard use declines every year as old-guard teachers retire and electronics take the place of more and more paper.

Heck, I know a few people that even still write recipes on them. I was given the recipe for Raw Apple Cake last month, freshly written on a note card.

@ibstubro: Can you share that recipe? My grandmother used to make an apple cake and I have yet to find one that duplicates it. It was very moist, almost like a hard pudding.

2 c flour
2 t cinnamon
1 t soda
½ t salt
2 c sugar
2 eggs
1 c oil
4 c thin sliced apples
1 t vanilla
¾ c walnuts

Mix all.
Bake in sprayed 9×13, 350° 55 minutes.
Cool and frost.
It came with both Cream Cheese and Caramel Frosting recipes.

I double checked the list of ingredients. I have not made the recipe, but the end result was delicious.
My Carrot Cake recipe is similar, and it calls for mixing the fl, ci, so & salt (I use a cheap disposable bag) and the su, eg, oi and va separately, then combining before stirring in the fruit and nuts.

That’s all the information I have. Don’t know what kind of apples or nuts she used.

Thank you so much! I’ll try it asap. I was actually considering an apple recipe for Easter Sunday, as I’m tasked with bringing dessert.

Let me know how you like it?
She’s an excellent cook.
I triple checked the ingredients and proportions.

As I said, my Carrot Cake recipe is very similar, and it benefits from ‘resting’ 2–3 days before serving. All the moisture has time to bleed out of the fruit and into the cake.
If you have the time, energy and motivation you could make two, and sample one a day ahead of taking it. The rest might be a nice treat to take to work.

Holler if you need a icing.

My Carrot Cake recipe came with instructions to add 2 Tablespoons of salt. When I asked the girl that gave me the recipe about it, she kind of smirked and said, “That’s exactly the recipe my Granny used!”

A good friend had given me a German apple cake recipe, which was very dense but heavy. The one my grandmother had was lighter in texture. Both were good, just different.

I’m going to pick up some apples either tonight or tomorrow and try yours. Will let you know how I like it!

I hope you like it.
I loved the cake. I never ask for a recipe just to be polite, or flatter someone. If I eat something and I ask for the recipe, it’s because I intend to replicate it, eat my fill, and share to my own rave reviews!

I just called her and she “Uses whatever is on hand for apples. Usually Johnathan.”
Which is my personal fav, and usually cheap.

The cake isn’t dense like fruitcake or those old ‘baby food’ cakes. Really moist/wet dense.

Anyone following this thinking they might make this recipe is in luck. Mine is in the oven.

Yes you peel the apples. Quarter and core. I cut the quarters in ½, and then sliced them about 1/16+” thick.

I mixed my ingredients in 2 containers and then combined them as described in Carrot Cake above, and I’m not sure that was necessary or desirable. What I ended up with was about like cookie dough, and I had to work the apples in. But it worked fine.

When pan-ready, the “batter” is more like quick-bread than cake. I had to scrape it out of the bowl and moosh it flat in the bottom of the cake pan. I called, and yes, this is the desired consistency.

It’s in the oven now, so that’s probably all the help I’ll be. Not planning to eat the cake until Easter Sunday. I’m putting cream cheese frosting on mine:

On the back of the stove I have softening:
1 stick butter
1 8 oz cream cheese
When I take the cake out I’ll blend the butter and cheese in a bowl, add 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, and beat in a box of powdered sugar by hand.

This will make a batch “too big” (bullshit) for a 9×13, so use your own discretion.

Looks like cake, feels like cake. Smells great!

I bought the apples last night. I have 3 types, one of which is Honeycrisp. Am planning to make the cake Saturday.

This is what I like about Fluther, and especially about the Social section. Q starts out being about index cards, and ends up with recipe sharing, and then will end up with how much we like the recipe. In General, this would all be modded off and lost forever.

The difference, of course, being that if you had posted a question needing a recipe for raw apple cake for Easter under Social, and someone had started out with a rant about recipe cards, cake might never have been mentioned again.

Post a request under General and once you’d gotten a recipe, or at least some discussion about apple cake, the question could be moved to Social and recipe card origami jumping bunnies would be a natural and entertaining digression.

The difference is that if this question was posted in General, @Jeruba would have the choice of waiting for more answers about index cards, and letting the discussion wander off into foodieland.

Of course, now we couldn’t be modded – my “Jumping Bunnies” answer the question, but the post wouldn’t make sense out of context.
:-)

Are you waiting for me to feign surprise that a thread about index cards ended up being about food? I think I’m going to try making some Raw Apple Cake.

Still interested in comments about index cards, of course. I happen to love them exactly as they are and hope they never go away.

My sister and I used to use index cards for postcards. USPS seemed to have no problem accepting them as long as they had proper postage. We’d send quick notes with what was going on. This was before email. I might do it again now that you have reminded me of it. I know I have some index cards in a box in storage. Once my husband and I move into a new place and unpack I think I’ll send one for nostalgia’s sake. I keep some of the old ones in a box. She was much better than me at dropping a note. It was always nice receiving something handwritten in the mail.

As a side note, I still now and then send postcards when I travel, or when I visit a tourist spot. I also send them from new locations I’ve lived to.

^ That’s a great idea. I’m going to try it out.

Better first check post office regulations on minimum dimensions and possibly weight or thickness. Index cards seem thinner to me than they used to be. At one time you could stick a postage stamp on just about anything (my girlfriend tried it with a maple leaf) and they’d deliver it, but now there are specific criteria that a mailed item has to meet, and nonstandard dimensions require extra postage.

^ I’ll send one to myself as a trial. I love getting friendly mail.

Did you ever send flowers to yourself? I did once.

^ No. I do sometimes order books which take weeks to arrive, though. Those are always excellent surprises!

I’ll have a report on the raw apple cake after Easter, it anyone’s interested and not in a hurry to make it.

Yes, @Jeruba, I would be afraid of the new note cards not having enough weight for the PO. It disgusts me how thin they are.
The upside is that I can run the thin 6×8 cards through my printer and print Resale Tax ID Forms for the business.

I wasn’t aware the cards are thinner now. That indeed might be a problem for mailing.

Oh, yeah, @JLeslie.
The old cards are cardstock weight, the new ones are more like double-thickness paper.

I recently shopped for note cards and I was shocked at how thin they were. I was convinced it was because Walmart had inferior product quality so I went to a business supply store. They had the exact same cards in different packaging.
Get a brand new card and compare it to one your sister sent you, years ago.
I remember when you could buy the cards spiral bound and they were so heavy I could hardly tear the spiral out.

I use the small ones for my shopping lists (the thicker paper doesn’t get so easily lost inside my purse) and the bigger ones for meal planning. Something about the size and heaviness just works better for me—I tend not to toss the cards aside as I might a piece of paper.

@longgone, did you try the mailing experiment? If so, where did you send from, and what happened?

@Jeruba I did, but only a couple of days ago. Nothing yet, we’ll see!