cookbook collector

I didn’t bake this morning because Matt and I are packing. We are moving. I’m excited and heartsick at the same time. I’m leaving my little pantry behind. Moving on to bigger and better square footage. This morning I started packing the kitchen. It could take years…just kidding. Not packing everything- yet- just things I don’t use on a regular basis. I didn’t get very far. I poured myself some coffee and started thumbing through my cookbooks. By the way, I counted them today, I have 34. I will go through them and see which ones I can part with. Some were gifts, some were inherited, some are Matt’s, 34 seems like too many though…

I find as I am going through them that many recipes are tagged with sticky notes, favorites or ones I want to make but haven’t yet. It is inspiring, it makes me want to cook and bake all the things. The only problem is that in our current situation, we are doing minimal grocery runs and I don’t have all of the ingredients for these recipes. We have the basics but we have cut back so that we don’t have to move a lot of food too. We are buying the essentials which to Matt are hot pockets, spicy nuts, and lunch meat and to me are apples and spinach… That is a different issue. Always send your husband to the store with a list. Lesson learned, time and time again.

A couple of my favorite cook book authors are Ina Gartan, Ree Drummond, Teighan Gerard, and of course Betty Crocker. Most of my favorite cookbooks have food stained and weathered pages, stains from ingredients for that recipe. They are well loved. Going through my cookbooks reminded me a few things:

1.) I love what food is capable of. I think that is why I love to cook and bake. It brings people together.

2.) If I wasn’t a nurse I would be a chef.

3.) Food is a way to be creative.

4.) Food still is and always will be a way that I show people I love them.

5.) I used to use my cookbooks a lot more than I do these days. That is because I have been using my own recipes adapted from these people I admire so much. Or, I have memorized the recipes that are dear to me and I don’t need the paper version because I know them by heart.

For the last few years I have been toying with my own recipes and writing them down in composition notebooks. I have recipes from friends and family too. Going through these cookbooks solidified another thing: I want to have my own cookbook someday. That, my friends is why I am doing this. To force myself to write down those grand slams so that I can recreate them and someday- someone else can too.