I like food. Heck, I love food. As a child, when my mother put supper on the table, I clapped my hands with joy. In college, when I was flat broke, I baked extravagant breads to give my girlfriends at Christmas. I still remember the confused look on one girl's face who just didn't get it. She's not my friend any more.
My first cookbook was given to me in 1977. It's the red, Betty Crocker's Cookbook. I still use it if I can't remember how long to boil shrimp or how many minutes per pound to roast the pork. I also have my mother's first cookbook that she earned for selling magazine subscriptions during WWII. I have four shelves of cookbooks, including Tempting Kosher Dishes by The Manischewitz Co. copyrighted 1930 and written in Hebrew. I can't read Hebrew, but it's a fascinating cookbook. I collect cookbooks and recipes like some people collect shoes or stray animals. It's very difficult for me to turn them away. Once or twice I've needed to thin my collection. When I feel compelled to do this, I choose the books from which I only use a handful of recipes, copy them out and then give the book away. In recent years, collecting cookbooks has given way to collecting recipes in general. This marked the turning point of my addiction.
Nowadays, it's so easy to share thousands of recipes over the internet. Magazines are also chock full of beautiful photos of foods and dishes to try. Southern Living, Martha Stewart, even House Beautiful all have good recipes. My friend B. started us on Bon Appetit several years ago and back issues still line one shelf in my cabinet. What's an addict to do?
Because I was collecting recipes in a whole new way, I needed some way to keep track of them and to save the ones we liked. In the beginning, I had manilla folders stuffed with pages ripped from magazines and index cards scribbled with recipes. In the 1980's I tried the recipe card index route. Painstakingly copying each recipe onto a card. The cards were filed in a kitcheny little box, but it was awkward to use and it just didn't do it for me. I needed something stronger for my addiction. I also wanted it to feel more organized. This was around the time that the computer came into our home and I learned about Microsoft Word. I had the brainstorm to type up all my folders of loose recipes and index cards and store them on our computer. Brilliant! Because I still wanted a hard copy to have on the kitchen counter when I cooked, I printed out each recipe. This way, I could glue accompanying photos onto them. I then slipped each one into a clear, plastic page saver and filed it into a binder categorized by food groups. In the beginning, I started out with one binder that held all of them. After the second year, it became too full, so I had to divide desserts out into their own binder. And recently, I introduced a third binder, sub-dividing appetizers, soups and breads out of the Main Dish binder.
The system works great for me. Every recipe is filed on my computer which Steve periodically backs up so that all cannot be lost. If a friend ever wants one of my recipes, I simply print it from my documents.
I had a few months worth of recipes to type recently. I tend to save this job for the winter months when I know I'll have more free time (and no one is home to see). The top photo shows my work spread over the table today, gluing photos to the typed recipes, slipping them into the plastic sleeves and filing them into one of three binders. I culled out some old recipes that we didn't like which made room for some new ones. I've also noticed that tastes in food and ways of cooking have changed over the years. Cookbooks can become outdated whereas cooking from current publications, including the internet, keeps things fresh. We're more tempted to try new things, eat healthier, or simply freshen up our menus a bit.
My two oldest daughters, who also love to cook, tell me that any recipe they want or need is on the internet. My eldest simply browses the food or recipe she is interested in, then props her iPad on the kitchen counter to cook. While that's a good idea too, I like to be able to browse my recipes when I'm writing a shopping list and more importantly, I want to save recipes that are our favorites. I don't want to look something up every time I need it and take the chance that I won't find it. Plus, I don't have an iPad or tablet or whatever. Maybe I'm just too old to change at this point. Whatever. My addiction is stashed in a safe place where I can easily get my hands on it.
I almost forgot! Last year, when our third daughter turned nineteen, I printed out all her favorite recipes plus ones that I thought she might like to have. I bought a new binder, made a decorative cover to slip into the front pocket and presented it to her as a gift. She liked it. I don't think she'll become a recipe addict like me, but she likes to be organized. Organizing can be an addiction too. I try not to let that one show. Oh, and bloggers like The English Kitchen and The Smitten Kitchen? Yeah, they're my enablers.
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| The plastic page-savers wipe clean! |
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| I tried a couple of different cheeses for this recipe and liked this one best, so I tucked its wrapper into the page saver as a reminder. |
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| I like to add notes. |
