The Curse and Mystery of Loose Recipes

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone on this one -- Don't all cooks have that pile of loose recipes that have no real organization or system??? Well, mine may drive me to drink far too much champagne in the near future. I'm going to show you what I've got going on and you are going to think it doesn't look too bad --

For lack of any other better way, I call this the Chronos System; i.e., the clips as I call them are more or less in date order. This isn't all of them. This is probably just from the past twelve to eighteen months.
Anything older than that is jammed into binders. I did finally start separating out the ones that I've made from this pile of complete unknowns -- so that is somewhat of a help when I go back to look for something that worked out.





I just thumbed through everything from the past eight months and I have to say that there's some interesting stuff in there. I would definitely try these! I guess that's way I saved them in the first place...But, anytime I'm looking for something I'm usually in a hurry and don't have time to leisurely peruse through this pile.

Before the internet, I had boxes of newspaper and magazine clippings. When I first started cooking, I used to clip and paste them into blank journals. After many moves, these homemade cookbooks and the piles of clippings are gone. I'm a bit sad about that.

I was so fiendish for newspaper recipes that I used to buy both the Washington Post and New York Times each week for about $10 total for just the food columns and throw out the rest of the paper. A co-worker saw me doing it and we struck a bargain that if I gave him the rest of my Washington Post, he would give me the Sunday food section of the local paper. This was a pretty good deal until his wife wanted to read the paper on Monday mornings and he would be taking it away from her to bring to me. He explained that he had to give it to me to which she asked, "who is this woman?" We all became friends and now twenty five years have passed!!!

But, now we do have the internet and the truth is, collecting loose recipes is probably no longer necessary. Countless times I've gone to look for something, couldn't find it and just googled it with fine results. In fact, often I don't even look at cookbooks and turn right to Recipezaar (click here for this terrifc site).

The internet has slowed me down on having both the curse of and the mystery of what to do with loose recipes, but I'm still old-school enough to want some loose recipes around. And, there's something comforting in a little mess now and then. Not everything should be neat and tidy because life sure isn't.

Food & Kisses, GiGi