COMMON SENSE: SAVING RECIPES, OR PERHAPS, NOT

Do you have a recipe notebook or cardfile?  My friend Paula used to keep hers stuffed in an old coffee can!  Whatever you use, if you are anything like me, it's probably stuffed to overflowing with slips of paper holding barely legible instructions jotted down by one person or another, and page after page ripped from newspapers and magazines -- so many recipes that sounded great at the time, but which you rarely get around to trying!

The notebook from my last purge...

Every so often, when my notebook gets totally outta control, I do a purge.

which now holds waaaaay over 100 recipes!

This time, though, I decided that what I really need is a totally new kind of notebook -- one that is arranged not by food category, but instead, by seasons!

As I sat here pondering, on just how to go about this, a lightening bolt hit!  I suddenly remembered that the Bountiful Sprout website has a button I can click, which allows me to see all of my past orders -- almost three year's worth now! (can you believe it?)  By flipping back through those, I was able to create six handy little lists, each telling me exactly what I might expect to find available during that two month period, from growers and producers right here in the Texas Hill Country.

Next I plan to go through my current notebook, as well as the spiral food journal I mentioned recently, and create a page for each section that lists all my favorite ways to prepare those particular ingredients, as well as any menu plans that we especially enjoyed.  I will have room at the back for a few basic recipes, such as a vinaigrette dressing or a basic reduction sauce (which I'm sure I will refer to less and less often over time) and I can make notations on these pages about where to find certain recipes in my various cookbooks.  Hopefully, this will be the opposite of my other notebooks, a recipeless notebook if you will, as it will teach me to cook the way our grandmothers did -- by ingredient, and with Seasonality!  If so, then it just might be my best and final notebook.