Sometimes on these snow-bound nights or weekends, if I don’t have a good novel or biography to read, I pore over my recipe collection.Once upon a time, it was small enough to fit into a couple of three-ring binders. Now it fills at least half a dozen shoe boxes, roughly one for each of the years I’ve been (a) paying more attention to cooking, or (b) writing about food.
A day or so ago, Tanna over at My Kitchen In Half Cups asked what drew us to make a particular recipe. Indeed, what draws us?
Taste is one reason, of course. Over the years, I have been drawn to anything that combined apples and cheese. I have a fairly impressive collection of these, from Apple-Cheese Salad to Cheddar-Apple-Walnut Bread.
Recipes using pumpkins, cranberries, blueberries and limes are also well represented. So are sun-dried tomatoes and anything laced with thyme or basil.
Then, too, I think the promise of romance play a role. I went through a stage where I saved dinner recipes “for two,” hoping, I guess, to impress someone special with my culinary prowess.
My husband married me anyway. Now I’ve made some progress in the kitchen.
(The romance thing might explain some of the chocolate recipes I’ve got stashed away. Wait, no, chocolate needs no explanation.)
A few months ago, I speculated here that the promise of our potential also drew us to a particular recipe. I might, for example, have a ground beef pocketbook but secretly yearn for filet mignon. So I save that recipe, too.
But the reverse is true, too. For years I saved a recipe for pretzel salad. I never made it, but it drew me because it sounded so plebian, if you will. A Saturday night side dish, maybe. I hope I run across that recipe again some day. I’m no big fan of pretzels, but it still sounds interesting.
What’s in your recipe box? What trends do you see? I’d like to know.
The photo, by the way, is the view from my kitchen door.
18 comments:
Funny you should write about recipe boxes, as I'm moving my office to another room in the house and taking a hard look at the boxes and papers I'm moving into the new space. I tend to tear out recipes from magazines and newspapers, and put them into "to be filed" piles -- which means recipes I plan to put on my computer file. But then, as I go through them before actually sitting down at the computer, I am ruthless and end up saving very few of them. Lots of recipes for biscuits, especially cheddar cheese biscuits for some reason, have not made the cut -- I saved them, but now can't eat too many carbs, so the recipes get tossed away. Same for pastas, and breads, and cakes. What's left? Lots of veggie gratins, and recipes for Asian and Indian food.
Same story here. Carbs must be rationed. I'm sorry I did not make more of those recieps when I was 25 — only I could not afford some of the ingredients then!
I love your photo Mimi, it looks just like a Christmas Card !
I would love a roll in that snow, we are pretty warm downunder right now.
I saved many recipies over the years too, my leaning has always been towards naughty foods, so I hope we get to see some of your chocolate recipes Mimi.
Naughty foods? There used to be a place called The Naught Baker or something like that in Madison.
Surely that is not what you refer to?
The chocolate is a recent addiction.
Like you, I started with 3 Ring binders for recipes cut from food magazines/sections of newspapers. I've moved on to accordion files labeled "meat", "dessert", "side dishes", etc. that live in a banker's box. I've actually made a concerted effort this year to start cooking from the files. Each week, I make the grocery list out around a menu I choose from cookbooks and these files. So far this year I've made a few interesting foods from my "recipe files" (sounds like a PBS cooking show doesn't it?) my favourites being pineapple/cucumber/scallion salsa and something MBH is calling "Chicken Fucacta", a chicken/ham layered lasagna type dish. My recipe box is full of family and friend's recipes like my Great Grandmother Crandall's fruit bars and my Great Auntie Nora's Angel Biscuits. I don't make these recipes enough which is a shame because it is my food heritage.
You've got more ambition than I have! I also have a banker's box but it is filled with recipes I got through my job, along with CDs of recipes and photos. I must try to get to it...
Mimi,
I just love, love, love your post - I haven't read any novels or such because I can't let go of my cookbooks - shame on me, I know.
I read "The catcher in the rye" again (first time was in the university, 6 years ago) because I love that book so much. But that was it. I just want to read Donna, Nigella, Pierre. ;)
My taste has changed so much over the years (whose hasn't?), so the recipe I kept from when I was a teenager don't appeal to me that much anymore.
I usually tag lots of beef recipes, because of my husband. And baking is my true love, so I'll tag as many cake, cookie, bread recipes I can. ;)
Anything with orange, lime or lemon , too.
Well, they say cookbooks are as good as novels or nonfiction.
I think it's true, because cookbooks do offer a kind of fantasy, don't they?
In a way, they are biography, too.
Fiction? Hmm. Could be.
My funniest was when I decided I would try this Once-a-Month-Cooking kick. I collected all these recipes people who do that recommended, and...they were SO BAD. I finally decided when I say "good food" I don't mean the same thing as when some other people say that. And I'm just a dabbler, especially compared to everyone else who comes to your site!
But I don't have a recipe box. I have computer files--lost a ton of recipes when my hard drive crashed--and lots of loose sheets tucked into cookbooks. Not very organized!
I'd prefer to keep mine online, too, Laura, but I've been collecting since before you could do that - LOL.
I don't like clutter, but I am surrounded by it, one way or the other.
I have a number of recipe boxes-so stuffed with recipes, the lids will not close-what was I thinking to collect so many!I have lots of pumpkin and dessert recipes which seem to be piling up everywhere-just not enough time to try each recipes.
I feel the same way — never enough time. Now I'm at the point where I can no longer eat all those dessert-y things. Some, but not all!
What draws me to a recipe? Hmmm....
Anything with Cilantro & Lime -I'll try that.
Anything that suggests an interesting take on something that I usually don't like. (well, I've never tried it that way)
Most of my recipes come from the internet, but are printed out and folded in half, then stuffed in the back of a 3 ring binder. (not even hole-punched!) I'm not the most organized cook, I'm afraid. If possible, I also save them on the website where I found them, so I can pull them up wherever I find myself.
You and I have the same food philosophy: everything has it's time and place and there is no room for snobbery. Some of the best cooks I know are chefs who know how to handle ingredients most of my friends never purchase in their lifetimes. Likewise some of the best cooks I know think Cool Whip is just as good as whipped cream. I know the difference but I refuse to count either side out. There is a time and a season for all things, even pretzel salads.
Chocolate needs no explantion...I love that.
The promise of our potential...that I see when I try those wildly complicated classics.
What's in my recipe box? My recipe box today is a series of about 10 3 ring binders divided into categories such as Bread & Breakfast, Meats, Soup & Salad, and on. Each of those will contain the recipes from my cookbook done years ago and then all the ones I've found on blogs that I would like to try.
I think most of you are more organized than I am about this.
Charles, I agree — love cilantro and love lime. In fact, I buy fresh cilantro just for the aroma.
Glenna, you are spot on - everything has its place. Depneds on time and mood and circumstance. My husband and I were just saying that Cool Whip is OK at our house. (What I really like — I have since age 2 — is Reddi Whip straight from the can. There. I've said it.
Tanna, if you come up to Wisconsin and organize my recipes for me, you will see snow!
My problem with all these recipes is there are only two of us in the house when we're home and I have recipes I want to cook now for at least 100 years. When do you suppose that will happen? Soon the only books in the house will be cookbooks or recipe notebooks!
Maybe the solution would be to move really far north, be snowed in half the year and just cook 24/7. But I think that's called a restaurant and I'm really not into a restaurant everyday.
Yes, I think cooking professionally might be tiring. I want to play!
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