Confessions of a recipe hoarder

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

Oh Come On...Really?

So today I had some time to burn and decided to get back on track with the regular blogs I read and post some comments that I have neglected...well as it turns out Google won't allow me to do this now!  It's the strangest thing, I can see my blog and can write a response...but when I choose my Google ID, it kicks me out.  Google Help is of NO help at all...does anyone have any suggestions?
I have been very laxed on my good reader/commenter side of the blog world and read some very good posts that I wanted to leave feed back on, but again maybe my bad blogger is being punished by the cyber gods!
Know that I am reading and trying to comment but not being successful...Happy Tuesday XXXOOO

Grace

I have heard this used often of  late and I find myself thinking about this terms and it's beauty. 
When I hear the word I think of Grace Kelly, a classically beautiful women...elegant!
I also think of a beautiful blond hair, blue eyed little girl who is a perfect mix of her parents.
I see a dancer, not a performer of today, but a classic ballerina like I had in my musical jewelry box as a child.

A simple word that means so many things.  Webster's has 8 different definitions of the word...example:

 unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification

Of late this is how I see grace.  People use it to express how they see other deal with or react to a situation.  Today, for example, a fellow blogger used the word grace to describe how a friend dealt with a terminal illness.  Every time I see the term, I wonder how others feel about it.  How do you feel about grace?  Do you see a women or a young girl?  Do you feel it or see see it?  In yourself or other?  So many questions...share, I would love to know!

XXXOOO

Bad Blogger

I know that I have been very negligent about writting since the first of the year.  But let's face it, I've never been very consistant!  I always have good intentions, but they don't always work out the way I plan.

Last I posted we were going to pick up the new car and we did.  I am still suffering with some anxiety driving and am trying to get past the 1600 mile post at which I had my accident and looking forward to making my first payment on the car next week. 

Speaking of next week, Danny and I are heaing out on our annual road trip to Tennessee to see my parents.  We are leaving Saturday morning and will come back next weekend...plan on heading home Saturday but we will see how the week goes, maybe I won't come back at all!  Not that I have any desire to live in TN, but I would love to relocate to a warmer southern climate and be closer to my parents.

While we are gone my husband has a guy coming in to re sheetrock the house.  Over the years we have had "repairs" made that weren't the best jobs and some roof leaks that have now been fixed.  So we need to get new drywall up so I can have a summer filled with lots of painting!  These kinds of projects need to be done while I am not in residance for a few reasons:

1) I have some MAJOR anxiety when it comes to opening walls and exposing what has crawled up and died.  Or worse, old wood that now needs to be replaced and more $$$ to be spent.  I like to leave this kind of thing for my husband to have to deal with since I get everyday reality, he can have the construction reality!
2) I cannot stand the mess or the disorder that comes with major projects.  I don't like to have strangers in and out of the house with mud and dirt on thier shoes because I clean behind them...just like my grandmother!  I would clean up the night after they left and have to do it everyday because I couldn't sleep knowing there was dirt and dust and squalor sleeping with me.
3)  I tend to cook to ease my anxiety so there are WAY too many breaks to make any job productive.  When we had the roof done last fall it was a 6 hour project that turned into a 3 day project, everyone needs to eat!  They need a snack and coffee every 2 hours and 3 good meals to keep them strong.  My husband disagrees with me, but I can't have a house full of Testostrone and not feed it.

As you can see I have some definate issues, but I'm working on them by doing my part and leaving town for 7 full days so it can get done.

So as you can see I have no good reason for not blogging, I think I've just gotten lazy.  I will work on this while I am away and see if I can put aside an few minutes to let you know how it's all going.

Happy Wednesday
XXXOOO

New Car and a Vacation NEEDED

I know it has been a few weeks...okay a month...since I last posted, but I've been busy and distracted.  You see, my husband bought me a new car, she was beautiful and perfect and I loved her and named her Candy.  Well after only having the car for 4 weeks, she was totaled...and I hadn't even made the first payment!  Can you imagine?  Well long story short was that she used to look like this:


Wasn't she pretty?  Well Now she looks like this:


I know the picture doesn't do it justice, but let's say this...I'm happy to be hear complaining that my car is destroyed and having to go through all the hassles that go along with it.  The entire frame was shifted and moved about 2"...I guess that's what getting hit be a car doing 50mph will get you.  My husband and son were in the car with me when this happened and my son was sitting behind me.  If I had been in another car I do not believe I would have walked away with a few aches and my boys with nothing.

So over the weekend knowing the insurance issues would shortly be resolved, I picked out a car.  She is another beautiful girl, but I will not be naming her and I feel it is bad JuJu now.  Pictures will be posted after her delivery to me tomorrow night.

Happy Monday

XXXOOO

Valentine's Day

Well it's here again, St. Valentine's Day or as some say Valentimes Day...UGH!  I won't go off on a tangent this early in my writing for the day.  Let's just say HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY and leave it at that!

Okay so the point of this entry is to give you a feel of who I am and how I have evolved.  It's an insight into the women I am today...are you ready?

When I was younger I LOVED Valentines Day and all it stood for...I could swoon over the boy I liked because it was a day for love.  You gave and received cards from all your classmates and secret admirers.  Girls giggled, boys ran...girls cringed, boys kissed and ran, boy I miss those days.

When I was a teenager, Valentines Day was for holding hands and receiving single roses.  Stolen kisses by your locker in between classes and hot make out sessions in your boyfriends car after school.  It was sharing a pizza for your "date" and feeling like the luckiest girl on the planet.

When I was a young adult I HATED Valentines Day.  I felt it was a suckers excuse to make boat loads of money off of poor people who felt it was important to show that special someone they loved them.  It is, for all intents a purposes, a Hallmark holiday.  I always felt that paying $100 for a dozen roses, $50 for chocolate and having to sit down to a meal that was "set" was a lousy way to show someone you loved them.  What happened to a card?  Pizza?  Stolen kisses and hand holding?  Why had it become a money sucking holiday?

So now I am a wise middle age women who likes the day enough to make it special for others.   I don't ask for much, but I guess that has paid off.  For Valentine's Day I got a beautiful new Coach bag and matching wallet...guess I was a good girl this year!  We also went out for a nice quiet dinner, just the 3 of us, on Saturday night.  Tonight I will make a meatloaf for dinner and we will snack on the chocolates I spent WAY too much money on for my husband and son...isn't irony a bitch?

Happy Valentine's Day
XXXOOO

When I grow up...

When I was in the early days of my marriage I wanted to be Martha Stewart.  I decorated our first apartment together with all her "good things", cooked her recipes and planted all her herbs and flowers I could find.  I dreamed of my first home being an old farmhouse with a potting shed, greenhouse, herb garden and lots of gardens.  I even went so far as to buy the paint in corresponding colors, as suggested by Martha, for her decor...then she went to prison and I could no longer love her, I lost respect for her.
In the last few years I have come to love Paula Deen.  I love her southern belle ways, her recipes, her view on life.  I don't love her taste in decor or her "Mama Boy" sons and I find Michael to be a bit of a drip.  But I do love her good old fashioned southern values and food.
In the last few months I have become TOTALLY addicted to a new blog that is full of great recipes, witty stories and beautiful photography.  I now love "The Pioneer Women" http://thepioneerwoman.com/!  She is the salt of the earth as far as I'm concerned.  She is a city girl who now lives on a ranch in Oklahoma and is sweet and funny and...ya know what, read her blog...you will love her I promise!  I picked up her new book last weekend and cannot wait to dig into it, but am also behind a library book and an ebook...so I am building up the anticipation of reading it. 
So now I think I need a new name, MarDeRee or StewPaulDrum...you know like Bradagilina, what do you think?  Can I be a New England, Southern, Oakie?
Happy Friday!!!  XXXOOO