Are you like me? Do you have recipe books that were your Mother’s, wedding gifts, one’s you have purchased because they were pretty, an ongoing subscription to Everyday Food? Are they rioting and rebelling to find space in your home, do they lob tomatoes at you in an expression of displeasure at their appalling treatment? Well, mine sure are, they are on the desk, in the book basket, spilling off the shelf in the kitchen and generally ready to rumble! Take cover books, I am about to fight back!
Here are my goals for the recipe mayhem over the next 30 days.
1) DO NOT renew my Everyday Food subscription! While I love the recipes, I simply have no space to keep receiving and storing them. I can find every recipe I could want for free on the internet. Why do I continue to waste money and space in my home receiving recipes in a magazine, or buying books – did you know the library loans cookbooks for free? I have been foolish - wasting time and resources and I am vowing here and now to change this cookbook obsession.
2) GO through all my Mother’s recipes, scan and print any that I want to keep for the girls (some are in her handwriting and for sentimental reasons; I am opting to scan those rather than type them out.)
3) GET an early start on Christmas by making each of my daughter’s a recipe book with all their favourite foods. This goes back to losing my Mum early in life and not knowing how to cook all the family favourites. I want to bless my daughter’s with the ability to make their favourite childhood meals for their families one day. At 18, 15 and 13, I know they will appreciate the gift and they can add new recipes to their books when we find new meal we enjoy.
4) COPY all my favourite recipes, toss any recipe books that are covered in goo, ripped and just plain gross, into the recycle bin.
5) DO NOT keep any books that I have not used in the past year – gulp, this will be hard because I truly love looking at recipe books but again, I can find any recipe I could possible want on the internet....these really can go...(I have The Little Engine That Could chuggin in my head right now "I know I can, I know I can" *huh*, weird.)
6) EDIT my cookbook collection! . I am committing right here, right now, to not keep any books that do not fit on the shelf. In the kitchen I have 2 small shelves that hold the girls lunch bags for school and my cookbooks That is all the space I have in the house, so if it does not fit, it does not belong in the house.
Thirty days may seem like an awfully long time for such a task but I am tying in recipe books for the girls at the same time. Hopefully I will get it done much more quickly but my goal is 30 days!
Today’s goal: I am going to begin with the “icky books” and pull the recipes I want to keep and toss the remainder of each book – okay, I am going to deal with the recipe riot taking place in my kitchen NOW!
