The great cookbook cull

In an effort to get rid of the some of the clutter around our house, I have been going through the cookbooks and cooking magazines I have been accumulating over the years.  I have a ridiculous number of books - there's a bookcase in the kitchen, piles of magazines beside the bookcase and then a few shelves of books downstairs as well.  

I love cookbooks and recipes.  Everytime I bring a new one home, I go through each recipe and decide if it's something I would make.  I think about whether I have the ingredients or if I'd have to go out and buy ingredients I'd never use again.  I think about whether it's a week-day dish or something I'd save for a weekend meal - something that takes a bit more effort.  And I wonder why I bother buying new magazines because, lately, there's not much in them that's new or different or something I would make.

Time was, I would spend hours making dinner.  When we were first married and entertained a lot, Jim and I would spend an entire day getting ready for dinner - planning several courses, buying fresh ingredients, making bread to go with the meal, setting a more formal table ... the works.  We'd spend hours at the table over dinner, our guests were appreciative and we thought it was time well spent.  

Then came the kid.  Like most parents of picky eaters (and aren't most kids picky eaters?) I found it a struggle to put a meal on the table that would be eaten and enjoyed by everyone.  I refused to make a separate meal for said kid, but did provide different veggies that I knew he would eat, or a less spicy version of what I'd made.  I was spending an hour preparing a meal that would get wolfed down in 10 minutes.  That was not the most gratifying experience, so I changed the way I cooked.  I learned to throw things together in 10 or 20 minutes, and to spend 20 minutes putting something together earlier in the day so I could just throw it in the oven before dinner.  

This kind of cooking doesn't take a lot of thought or much in the way of recipes.  I would look at a recipe, decide what ingredients I needed or wanted to change and how to cook it faster or slower, depending on the dish.  The final product had a vague resemblance to the orginal recipe, but was usually something quite different. 

I started cooking that way for company, too.  If it took longer than an hour of my time to prepare an entire meal, including appetizers, I didn't make it.  I found out that our friends are just as happy to eat a stew or pasta or grilled meat, veggies and salad as they are something that takes much longer to prepare.  

Of course there are exceptions - every once in awhile it's nice to spend a good chunk of the afternoon on a weekend preparing something special, something new.  Sometimes there's a recipe that's calling out to be made, and I'll answer that call.  Special holiday meals are worthwhile, too - turkey and dressing, ham with scalloped potatoes; they are definitely worth spending the hours of preparation.  But those are all special cases.

Despite my pared-down cooking, I have continued buying and saving cookbooks and magazines through the years.  I'm always on the lookout for something that appeals. 

One of my favourite magazines is the LCBO's Food and Drink magazine - it's full of interesting recipes, and it's free.   I pick them up, read through them, identify a few recipes I'd like to make then put the magazine aside with the rest of the cookbooks.  Rarely do I go back and actually make one of the recipes.   Same with food magazines I buy at the grocery store, or the occasional cookbook I buy - I go through them, enjoy reading the recipes and imagine making or eating them, mark them then put them aside.

So now that I've been going through all these accumulated books, I'm finding recipes I marked.  Sometimes I wonder what appealed to me at the time, because they aren't all that appealing to me now.  And sometimes I find other recipes that are appealing but on thinking about it, I probably won't make because I already make something similar or I'm already substituting ingredients in my head and it's turning into something different altogether.   I'm also finding recipes I passed over before but are now calling out to me.  I have ripped out a few pages and kept a few of the magazines because there are multiple recipes I'd like to try, but for the most part they are going out the door and to the curb.

I'm not sure how I'm going to handle the cookbooks when I get to them.  There are some I haven't touched in years and should probably turf right off the bat.  There are others from which I use two or three recipes ... is that enough to keep the book and assume or hope I'll find other recipes I'll use?  I'll have to be ruthless if I want to pare down this collection into something I actually use.  And of course I need to leave room for the books and magazines I know I'll be bringing home in the future.

Is it contagious?

There's something going around that's affecting drivers in the Golden Horseshoe and it's reaching epidemic proportions.  Whatever it is seems to render the left hand useless, with the result that drivers are unable to use that  hand to switch on their turn signal when they are changing lanes. 

What's that you say?  The left hand is being used to hold the cell phone or shove food in the mouth or is sitting on the driver's lap, unused?  It's not a dread disease?  It's just .... stupidity?  Disregard for the safety of others?  Lack of courtesy?  Poor driving habits?

Oh.  I'll put away my bottle of vitamins - I was afraid of catching something.  Luckily stupidity isn't contagious.