Projects, Projects, Projects

I suppose that hosting the Bat Mitzvah could be considered one BIG project, but it's over. Shipping the offspring back to college could be considered another project, but I have almost an entire week before that happens. In the meantime, I do have a project in hand -- something I've been meaning to get to for a long time. It made it up to the top of the priority pile at the request of Future Vet, who wants to do some cooking when he goes back to school.

For years, decades even, I have been collecting recipes that I like. The very best of the best -- at least in my mind and mouth -- get written into my own private recipe collection.

Nothing fancy, just one of those blank books with a cover that appealed to me 30 years ago. In addition to the basic recipes, there are notes about how I really prepare a recipe, experiments I have tried, and some inexplicable stains.

It's been clear for some time that several of the offspring would like to take this book off my hands some day, or at least would like to receive their very own copy. I am way too lazy to make four by-hand copies of this book, so a while back I researched recipe software and bought a package called Now You're Cooking. Every so often, I would type in a recipe or two, but this has been a back-burner project for a really long time.

Future Vet goes back to La-La Land on Sunday, so I've been slogging away at the cookbooks. You see, in addition to all the recipes that I have painstakingly copied into my recipe book over the years, there are a fair number of recipes in cookbooks that I never bothered to copy. Instead, I would just remember that, for example, Spinach-Noodle Casserole is on page 121 of American Wholefoods Cuisine by David and Nikki Goldbeck. The original edition, though I think we also have the revised edition lying around somewhere unless I gave it away to someone worthy.

Since neither my cookbook library nor my memory will be on hand once Future Vet goes back to school (Not that that has ever stopped him. When he was in a far away country, he used to call for recipes and help with metric conversions.), I decided it was time to put all these recipes into the recipe software and print them out for the offspring to use wherever they may be.

In addition to the flowery recipe book of my own, I have managed to get through a respectable pile of other cookbooks. The big brown book over on the left is my original copy of "American Wholefoods Cuisine", by the way.

I've also entered lots of loose recipes printed out from internet sources and kept with the intention of copying them into my recipe book as soon as I have time. Right.

Between recipes and pulling puncture vine, I have a very full life right now.