Ramblings on cookbooks
One thing that I really missed at Bible college is cooking. I’ve grown to love cooking in the past couple of years and making a box of Annie’s Mac and Cheese on Sunday nights just doesn’t cut it! And something that comes with my love of cooking is my love of cookbooks. I have twelve of my own and my Amazon wish list has many, many more. But the best of all my cookbooks is a three-ring binder stuffed full of papers covered in recipes. Until recently this lovely binder-cookbook was red (and rather dirty) and the plastic cover was coming off… Quite a few years ago (when it still had its covering intact…and clean!) I stuck some paper in it and went through some old Sunset magazines to cut out recipes that looked yummy. I glued them to the notebook paper…and voila!, a cookbook. It’s grown much since then and recently I came to the point where I had to get a bigger binder…but considering everywhere the red one has been (it even traveled all the way to Thailand and back!), it was a sad event and I held off changing it as long as I could. But the inevitable came and a couple months ago, the much-loved red binder was replaced by a very large black one. It’s nice to now have room to turn pages…but this binder is still relatively clean and so lacks character…but hopefully that will change soon!
My method for finding and keeping recipes has improved much since the cut-from-magazine-and-glue-to-notebook-paper days…I find most of my recipes on the Internet and when I find one I like, I copy-and-paste it to the running “Recipes” document on my computer. When that document gets up to forty or fifty pages (or longer when I don’t have a printer readily available…this most recent print-off was eighty-seven pages [with Arial eight point font]!), I make all the fonts, sizing, etc. the same and arrange them in such a way that I can fit the most recipes on a page without breaking them up. As such…there is NO order at all in my cookbook! More often than not, a dessert will be on the same page as a main dish, and Mexican food (of which I have quite a few recipes…YUM!) will be next to Italian or Asian food. It’s rather funny, considering how orderly I usually try to keep everything else in my life and possession…but at least I know where the recipes are…generally…
Due to my love of improvisation, I don’t often cook directly from a recipe, but cookbooks are great for ideas and getting the basics of a dish. And they’re also wonderful for just reading. Yes, as weird as it sounds, I admit that I read cookbooks. But at least I’m in good company…so does my dear SALT Sister, Rachel, and last winter we made T-shirts that proclaimed across the front: “We read cookbooks.” And they do make very good reading…as long as you don’t drool too much on the pages. Many a good cookbook has probably been ruined that way!
“But let all those rejoice who put their trust in You; let them ever shout for joy, because You defend them; let those also who love Your name be joyful in You.” ~Ps. 5:11
My method for finding and keeping recipes has improved much since the cut-from-magazine-and-glue-to-notebook-paper days…I find most of my recipes on the Internet and when I find one I like, I copy-and-paste it to the running “Recipes” document on my computer. When that document gets up to forty or fifty pages (or longer when I don’t have a printer readily available…this most recent print-off was eighty-seven pages [with Arial eight point font]!), I make all the fonts, sizing, etc. the same and arrange them in such a way that I can fit the most recipes on a page without breaking them up. As such…there is NO order at all in my cookbook! More often than not, a dessert will be on the same page as a main dish, and Mexican food (of which I have quite a few recipes…YUM!) will be next to Italian or Asian food. It’s rather funny, considering how orderly I usually try to keep everything else in my life and possession…but at least I know where the recipes are…generally…
Due to my love of improvisation, I don’t often cook directly from a recipe, but cookbooks are great for ideas and getting the basics of a dish. And they’re also wonderful for just reading. Yes, as weird as it sounds, I admit that I read cookbooks. But at least I’m in good company…so does my dear SALT Sister, Rachel, and last winter we made T-shirts that proclaimed across the front: “We read cookbooks.” And they do make very good reading…as long as you don’t drool too much on the pages. Many a good cookbook has probably been ruined that way!
“But let all those rejoice who put their trust in You; let them ever shout for joy, because You defend them; let those also who love Your name be joyful in You.” ~Ps. 5:11