Cooking Baking Eating

I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted. It’s been a trying few days and all I wanted and needed to do was just sit on my butt and relax for a bit.

But then again I don’t relax. I just don’t. So I had to do something.

I found this box of recipe cards at a local Good Will, you know me and my love for a good thrift store, and for only $3 there are hundreds of recipes in there. Awesome.

It even had little tabs to separate each section. I must have spent hours looking at all the recipes and getting ideas for new things to cook and different methods of cooking different meats. Besides it was a great way to relax, having the fire place going, covered in a blanket and reading through new and interesting recipes. Ah, heaven.

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I have something that I want to share.

This is a project that I’ve been working on for the past few years. It’s something that I hold very dear to me and I think I use it almost every time I cook.

This unmarked binder is something that is almost like another limb to me. I have a hard time opening up to others and showing people what I love to do and how I express myself… This book is a huge part of who I am.

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Sometimes when you’ve had a rough time of it, you just need a little inspiration to get yourself motivated to do something. Try something new. Just DO anything.

That’s happened to me this past week. I’ve been stressing out severely about getting my blood drawn for the first time in 8 years. Now to normal people this isn’t a big deal, but to a needle-phobic… It’s a huge and terrifying thing. Too many bad, bad experiences…

So while I was trying to get through the neurotic stress of waiting for the time to come where my schedule will allow for it, I found other ways to occupy myself.

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I made some brownies a little bit ago and I had some difficulty finding a recipe for it! It’s not the fact that there wasn’t ONE recipe for them, there were about 50 (I have lots of cook books).

After going through so many of my books, I took the recipe from Better Homes and Gardens new Cook Book circa 1953. And now just reading the fine print I realize that the book is a fifth printing, first edition. Huh, cool. I guess that is rather fitting since this is the book that Grandma has used for years and now has given me. I don’t think I could get rid of this book really.

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I seem to collect cook books.

I worked in a craft store for more than two years, and I was given the task of ordering, organizing, and keeping track of all books in the store. You could be sure that I knew exactly where each book was, how many we had, and where to find certain things in each book. I really am a book nerd.

Now that I have started doing the cooking adventures, my love of cook books has expanded. I can read them cover to cover like a regular novel and be completely entranced.

One of my favorite books is my Joy of Cooking book. It was given to me by a friend after my husband and I started hanging out with them more on weekends and grilling together. This was the first cook book anyone had ever given me; at least that I can remember. This was the first book I ever made something out of that turned out great, a blackberry and raspberry pie.

Needless to say this book has a great meaning to me. Especially since the friend who gave me this book passed away not long before my wedding. Even though I know it would be better to have a hard bound book and not one that could easily fall apart (like it is starting to do at the edges) but I really can’t see myself ever getting rid of it.

Now, not all the reasons why I love this book are purely sentimental. This really is a good book to have on hand. It will show you how to do almost everything in the kitchen, from how to cook meats properly, to pie, to everything. It even will tell you how to cook things that I don’t think I will EVER try.

I’m not a fan of how they lay out the ingredients and directions. They put the ingredients IN the directions so all of your ingredients are spread out. In a sense that’s nice since you don’t have to refer to a list for what you have to do and can just read the recipe, but i guess i just am used to the traditional way of doing things. It is definitely one of the books that every chef needs to have in their collection, especially beginners.