November 29, 2016 – Pack Rat – tossing out saved recipes 

         Today I took one – only one binder and purged the items in it.  It was hard work – tossing out recipes that I have collected over the years. 

I asked myself – Am I actually going to try this recipe?   The first run through was easy.  I had cut out things that I will classify as “interesting and different”.

Then I had a second cup of coffee and ran through them again.  With the thought: I would have to live to be 104 years old and make something new each day to accomplish testing each one of those recipes! Get real – purge deeper and I started to read the recipes in depth and tossed many due to complexity or too much sugar. Got to cut that back – the Doc says!

          Some I had actually tested out and they are fixed in my memory as I have made them many times.   An actual magazine version of the recipe I use seasonally happens to be taped to a page in the binder with a date and a note “good”.  The date made me smile.   1984 – that is a long time.

          Some of them are recipe cards written by friends and family and a few I don’t know who they came from, but if I begged a recipe off someone and they wrote it out for me and I saved it – it had to have tasted good when I begged for it.  Some of those I can actually think back and remember how good they tasted when I begged for the recipe.  One was Mini Chip Snowball Cookies my neighbor made.  She gave it to me in 1994. 

          The bulk of the recipes were cut out of different magazines over the years and often I wasn’t familiar with ingredients like “fennel” or “celeriac”.  However, I am now familiar with those “unknown” ingredients as well as many other ingredients that sounded so exotic and alluring to me when I cut the recipes out.    I find fennel tricky – my husband doesn’t care for it, so I have to use it subtly.  I adore celeriac and only wish I could afford to eat more of it.  It is a shame that it has a short season – It would be wonderful if I could get it year round.    That was the next cut; out went the exotic ingredients.

          But, the method in which I had collected them over the years was rather an interesting journey as well.  First I cut them out of the magazines and taped them to a 3 x 5 card or a 4 x 6 card.  Then, those got dog eared from being in a recipe file box and I taped those on 8 ½ x 11 sheets of paper and put them in a notebook binder.

          Since I disposed of about 2/3^rd of what I had, I had to cut many off the cards and affix them to fresh pages.  This time, I set them in those plastic sleeves, so that I can take them right to the kitchen and not ruin them when I test them out.

          I also made an index for them – not fancy, just a running name index.

          And, I didn’t shoot myself in the foot – I actually saved the real treasures that fall under KRAFTS:

          How to make Play clay – I made little Bear Christmas ornaments out of it one year with the neighbor’s kids – can’t toss that out!

          Cinnamon Ornaments – Potpourri balls – came out of Southern Living.  Made potpourri for friends as Christmas presents and also managed to make Christmas ornaments out of it as well.  Couldn’t part with that!

          And, lastly, the Papier mâché recipe I used to make large Easter Eggs for an Easter Basket to put outside once.

          Lastly, I kept the recipe for making Trio of spices and herbs to give as gifts to fellow cooks.  I haven’t tried this one yet – but it is a great Christmas Idea – especially for that hard to buy for friend. Also, the Pomander Ball I didn’t dare toss out. I hope someday I can find a windfall of cloves in order to try that ancient art.

          Some have glossy pictures attached to them cut from the magazines; some are from the backs of ingredients – like Baker’s Chocolate.

          So, at this point, I made my final cut asking, “What would I possibly cook in the future?  What would I definitely not cook in the future?”

          It is down to under 100 recipes now taking up one inch of shelf space.   I guess that is a pretty good day for a confirmed pack rat!

          Unless, I unearth another such binder and I will have to do it all over again?  Is that possible?  “Yeah.”