create a personal recipe book

which I added to my recipe book. It’s from Martha Stewart Living—Strawberries-and-Cream Cheesecake

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I’ve asked the library to order it and can’t wait to get my hands on it. It’s on backorder for three weeks, but that’s probably good timing with the holidays anyway.

Supposedly the bread tastes great and there’s no kneading involved. I LIKE kneading, but I don’t like cleaning up my kneading “board” with the sprinkled flour and the bitsy scraps of dough. Also, it would be great to have REAL bread more often than once a month or so.

For all my separate little recipe collections: breakfast/brunch, appetizers/snacks/tea items, 2008 holiday cooking plans (all the holidays—not just Thanksgiving and Christmas), etc.

Great recipe from Nigella Express added to my collection last night. Dip 1 oz. goat cheese rounds in peppered egg then in panko. Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes. Yum!

(What a deal—it cost 40 dollars new but I got it barely used for 25 cents!) Anyway, I can’t say how much the pictures made me want to take a sabbatical to stay home and cook all the recipes I wanted for a year. That would be so great! Where’s my trust fund when I need it?

I am reducing most of them to more reasonable proportions for a single person (except of course for the few meals that freeze well). I CANNOT eat leftovers of a meal more than once—it reminds me too much of my college days and eating revolting hamburger helper meals for days on end. (What was I thinking?)

I also want to convert my recipes’ volume measures to grams—I got a scale for Christmas in 2006, and it is so much easier than fooling with measuring cups. I have to measure because I am “handicapped” when it coming to judging quantity (despite being an experienced cook); I am just missing that sense somehow. Plus, with grams, it’s really easy to scale a recipe up or down.

The bottom line is that my personal recipe book never gets finished because I’m always adding more recipes and tinkering with it. The dinner binders will eventually come to a conclusion because there are a set number of days in a year, but the side dishes, desserts, etc. just seem to keep multiplying. Eventually, I’ll just have to take this goal off my list regardless.

I’ve got a list of all 35 dinners, a seasonal grocery list (so I can be sure to get all the spices, condiments, dry goods, etc. at the outset of the season), seven weekly grocery lists, and the recipes themselves.

This little writing doesn’t really apply to this goal of creating a personal recipe book but since it is about cooking…

I just have to write about this because it gave me such a kick (which is proof of weirdness I think). I bought a whole chicken and watched YouTube cooking videos to figure out how to cut it up into parts—leg, thigh, breast, wing. I used the bones to make stock and even reduced the stock and made little stock ice cubes. The chicken cost $2.90. What a deal. Sometimes technology is really cool. I had read chicken “butchering” instructions but couldn’t tell what in the heck to do until I saw the video demonstrations. Some of my pieces were still a little odd but there’s a learning curve to everything. I plan to try again later. Right now I have all the chicken I need in my freezer. What can I say? I thought it was fun!

But I’m still working on grocery lists. I create them on my wiki and print them from there so I’m accomplishing two goals at once. I’ve used already prepared grocery lists now for the second week running. I’m happy to report that it’s definitely more convenient. Yipee! I’ll be glad when they’re all ready.

I’ve got the recipes in three binders in order, but only have weekly grocery lists for spring. I don’t have seasonal grocery lists for any yet.

Confession: I’ve worked on this project when I should have been working on my school assignments. Typical “productive” procrastination/avoidance on my part.