Foodie Friday: My Addiction

I am addicted to recipes. If I hear of a new recipe email newsletter, I sign up for it. While reading magazines, if I notice there is a recipe in it, I will keep the magazine. Forever. The magazines grew to be so many, that all the family members became concerned that these periodicals soon would take over the family. We were overrun with cooking magazines. So, I sat down one night with scissors, page protectors, and a binder and began the process of looking through each magazine and cutting out one recipe that I wanted to keep. (Ok, so one just wasn't cutting it, so I sometimes cut out two or three or four or...you get the picture.)

I went through every last Cooking Light, Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Vegetarian Times, and so on, until I had thinned the herd substantially. The leftovers I stacked to donate to Spark's school, give to a friend, or recycle (in the case where almost every page had some nugget that deserved a page protector).

Now, I have a beautiful binder full of recipe clippings that I removed from various magazines. This binder sits with the rest of my cookbooks in the dedicated space in the kitchen. I inherited a beautiful, antique hutch from my great-grandmother. This hutch has the perfect spot for cookbooks, the other key component to my recipe addiction.

I have a hard time resisting the urge to buy new cookbooks. My hutch bulges with cookbooks so much that visitors swear it's moving under their weight. need more cookbook space. Don't mention that I could give away or sell some of the cookbooks. They are part of of my innermost self. Parting with me would be like giving away a finger or something.

When I tried using the local public library for cookbook browsing, it just wasn't the same. Oh, it was ok for perusing. Reading through a good cookbook while curled up on the couch is favorite hobby of mine. But, sitting a cookbook next to my stove and splattering random ingredients onto it? That's priceless.