I have a confession to make, which I think I may have made in the past...I am a recipe hoarder.
I LOVE to collect recipes. It started a few years ago with the Food Network Holiday Cookie edition and has become a labor of love and a collection of papers. Now mind you, I try all these recipes at LEAST once, if it's good we will try it again and it goes in the "keep pile" if it sucks, it get thrown out. So no, I don't just clip them...I try them and try to sort them.
Over the last year the cabinet I keep all these papers in has become a bone of contention. When my husband opens it and a flurry of papers comes out, I am reminded that I need to cook more and collect less...to be honest it looks a lot like my container cabinet and has the same effect on my husbands sanity. These papers are in binders held together with the biggest rubber band I could find and when you open it, it's like a Jack-In-The-Box. Other are stuffed in like category cookbooks, other are stuffed in between other binders, it's a total mess but I LOVE RECIPES....I will say it over and over again! I love to cook them by the book, play with them to my own tastes, and sometime make them TOTALLY different. Food can do so many things and sometimes a basic recipe can become your signature dish with just a few additions and tweeks. I haven't found my "signature dish" YET, but I'm working on it...but I digress.
The recipes I have contain appetizers, main courses, sides, salads, beverages, late night munchies, game day fare, desserts, kids party ideas, you name it I probably have a recipe or "how to" on it...food and parties make me VERY happy, but then again doesn't that make everyone happy??? My friends laugh at me because they can issue an invite to me at noon and at 2pm I can show up with warm cookies, cake or brownies (NO NOT FROM A BOX!)...I always have ingredients for a yummy on hand. Yes, I have a few key recipes I use over and over again, but those mostly come out of the Joy of Cooking with hand written notes in the margin of tweeks I've made or a note my mother made me of variations. And don't forget, when in doubt, call mom and write the same recipe 10 times and stick it in the same JOC and shrug when you see the other 9 copies and put it in anyway!
So the moral of this story is this: I AM GOING TO ORGANIZE MY RECIPES!!! I have been to Borders and picked up a "RECIPE" book where I am going to start with my "BEST OF" and most used recipes. Then I am going to sort the rest by their intended use...BBQ's, Kids Parties, School Parties, PTA events, etc...you get the idea. I am going to try and do this before the end of the year so I do not have to go into the New Year Resolution about getting it done...I will just have to resolve to maintain it. If you don't hear from me in 4 months, come by a poke me with a stick as I may have been buried alive by my own collections of recipes.
Happy Thursday XXXOOO
