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Do you read instructions?

June 5th, 2010 at 03:30 pm

How many of us read instruction booklets? Willingly?

Yet, those of us who cook do…Recipes are the instructions on how to make most dishes.

I have far too many cookbooks – I don’t use half of any of the cookbooks I have. I like looking through them when I’m trying to think of a week’s menu.
I have a friend who says she “collects recipes.” I think she has hundreds of them. I’m not sure she uses many of them because from what she says, she fixes the same things over and over.

We went to the library this week and I checked out a few mysteries and two cookbooks. One was about Midwestern cooking – appropriate since I live in the Midwest, don’t ya think? It was interesting to read over the recipes. I was looking at the cover and it was illustrated and it was very pleasing to look at. I wonder if that is a regional thing – do we like to look at things that make us feel at home? If I lived on either coast would I be more comfortable looking at something else? OK, I digress.

I decided a couple of years ago I wanted to create my own working cookbook. So, if I try a recipe and I like it, I type it into a Word document and save it on a thumb drive. I print it out, three hole punch it, and put it in a notebook under the correct category. Bet that was a dead giveaway that I’m a teacher, wasn’t it? The notebook and the three hole punching especially.

It’s sort of like my own cookbook. I’m not writing the recipes, but it does keep a record of what recipes I have found successful. I guess if I were really high tech I would just keep the computer in the kitchen and print out what I needed, but I think that would be a waste…printing it out each time. Yeah, I'm frugal. Or cheap. You choose.

I’ve seen those television shows where the counter top is connected to the Internet and you can search for a recipe and it displays right on the countertop. I wonder if you can save your favorites like you can on the computer?

Whoever came up with the idea of writing down a recipe was brilliant. If one can read a recipe, he or she can then recreate the dish with the instructions.
So, I think I’ll continue reading these little instruction booklets. Who knows, I might get creative and make something that isn’t totally Midwestern and like it!

2 Responses to “Do you read instructions?”

  1. Elisabeth Says:
    1275749808

    My very favorite recipes that I make frequently, especially if it is cut out of a magazine get taped to the inside of the kitchen cabinet where I store food. Never lost and right there when I want to check ingredients. I also had a personal recipe book like you do so it was in two places.

  2. whitestripe Says:
    1275804340

    I have started my own recipe book too, but I write the recipes in it by hand. It is a moleskine notebook my stepmother bought me for christmas last year and has beautiful clean crisp paper with no lines. I write with different pens and I draw in it too, I was thinking it might be nice to pass down to my kids one day, if it makes it. Sort of like a 'cooking diary' lol.

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